Darshana Sreedhar Mini’s research into gender and labor issues in the movie industry of southern India could not have come at a more historic time.
As it did in the United States, the #MeToo era exploded in India in 2017, but the initial reaction to women coming forward with stories of sexual abuse and harassment in the film industry there has been, in Mini’s words “tepid, if not hostile.”
One issue, she said, is that sex outside of marriage is taboo and not talked about openly, so “society as a whole is still struggling with ideas of consent and liability.”