CERTIFIED model, actress and upcoming producer Joyline
Chiedza Basira said although women have made significant inroads in the film
industry over the years, many traditional and cultural bottlenecks still hinder
their progress into the male-dominated industry.
She cited a raft of challenges, including lack of financial
muscle, few opportunities and little airplay and coverage, which she said
frustrated female artists’ dreams.
Basira said unless there were efforts to give women greater
opportunities in the industry, many of them would fail to make an impact
regardless of their skill.
“It is a disease that has to be cured, otherwise the female
artist would be completely swallowed and trapped into the echelons of
hibernation, then extinction,” she said.
The thespian said the lack of opportunities often made a
lot of women in the industry vulnerable to sexual abuse as the “sex-for-jobs”
culture was prevalent.
“The present day woman has fallen prey to insatiable sexual
predators, who try by all means to manipulate women physically, emotionally and
worse still, sexually. They maximise on the financial challenges facing most
women in the arts industry and pretend to broker some shady deals so that they
use these as bait to attack vulnerable women,” she said.
Basira said the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Arts could do
more to facilitate access to opportunities for women as was the case in
business and education.
The beauty queen appealed to Sport minister, Kirsty
Coventry, to look into the matter: “If women were empowered by a bank,
universities and colleges of professional courses, why would you, Honourable
Minister, not open an arts centre for women as well so that they can be
nurtured to be the best, with requisite skills and knowledge?”
Basira said she was not advocating for the “quarantine” of
men, but highlighted that there was need to ensure that women in the industry
were not taken advantage of.
“Abused women usually face the dilemma of whether to or not
report such cases as the way they are handled sometimes take away their
dignity,” she said.
“As artists, we are in the public domain and our life is a
book in the public library, reachable to every interested individual hence some
may not take legal action just to protect their reputations, but at the same
time becoming prisoners of conscience.”
Basira said one of the major stumbling blocks in the
industry was that the majority of women faced the challenge of underpayment and
their roles were rated lowly in comparison with their male counterparts.
“Promoters also bank on those societal phenomena, where the
lady is observed as a cheap, useless and wasted effort, while the males are
taken as hard workers, creative and philanthropic individuals,” she said.
Basira, however, urged women to continue working hard even
if financial assistance was difficult to come by, especially because fewer
women had “collateral”.
“Honourable Minister of Youth, Sport and Arts, please
devise some ways that would help us access the money that we can use to promote
our art. Availability of cheap and accessible bank loans will go a long way in
freeing us from the chains of financial retributions,” she said.
She also implored women in the industry to work together to
fight abuse and prove that they could succeed without “having to offer more
than professional contribution to have our work done”. Newsday
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