Former Miss World and actress Priyanka Chopra recently graced the 10th Annual Women in the World Summit in New York wherein she spoke about many important issues affecting women across the world. One such subject was the issue of sexual harassment. The wave of the Me Too movement which had hit Bollywood too last year had brought out many sexual offenders from the industry so it came as no surprise when the actress spoke on this grave issue. Priyanka revealed, “Sexual harassment had become a norm with women. Now, because of the support we are giving each other, people don’t have the power to shut us down. And that’s an incredibly powerful thing to see.”
Last year, many prominent names like Nana Patekar, Sajid Khan, Alok Nath, Vikas Bahl, Subhash Ghai and many others got embroiled in the Me Too controversy which further encouraged many women from the industry to come out with their story. Priyanka revealed that she has also not gone unscathed by the clutches of sexual harassment. She further went on to say, “Everybody in this room has probably faced one because it had become a norm with women. We always had a voice. Just nobody heard us. Now if I have a story I don’t feel I am alone anymore – and I am not ashamed of it.”
Earlier when Tanushree Dutta openly spoke against Nana Patekar and encouraged several other women from the industry to speak up about this issue, Fatima Sana Shaikh is the role model for many in the industry also broke her silence on the issue. She had stated, ““I think people have misunderstood the #MeToo movement if they restrict it only to the film industry. It’s not only ki film industry mein aisi cheez hoti hai. Har job mein hoti hai. Jo mere saath hua hai, woh bohot pehle hua hai. Aisa nahi hai ki Dangal ke time hua hai ya uske baad. It happened when I was very young. I think people assuming that it’s very current and wondering why I am not talking about it… that’s a lot of expectation. Every woman in our country has dealt with it and I’m sure not everyone wants to talk about it publicly.”
