A talented young actress, Rasika Dugal has made a name for herself with stellar roles right from playing a cop in Delhi Crime to essaying the role of Bina Tripathi in Mirzapur. However, HT reports that her saying that acclaim doesn’t always mean it’s easy to quote the fee she deserves.
Rasika elaborates, “I’ve always heard that there’s a disparity in what people are paid, but I have no idea what people around me are being paid. That’s not the information which many people have access to. And in fact, every project is also priced differently.
She continues, “I might have one or two friends, who I know how much they charge. But their projects are set up differently than the ones that I might be doing. So, it’s very hard to compare.”
The 36-year-old actress explains why it is hard to fight discrimination, “You never know whether you’re being discriminated against. You can never pinpoint if you’re getting paid less because you’re a woman, or if you’re facing pay parity because of gender. The difficult thing about discrimination is that it’s so subtle, and hence, it’s hard to fight it.”
Speaking of how she evaluates her inputs in fiscal terms, she says, “It’s very hard to put a price on what I do. It’s sort of investing yourself wholeheartedly in something. Being paid is a part of what I expect to receive out of the work, but there are so many other things involved. Like what it takes out of me or what it teaches me,” she adds.
Rasika believes that a couple of years back, women characters were being written just as an act of tokenism, hoping it would become more real. “And now, the characters are very nuanced. They are actually celebrating femininity and not feeling the need to be masculine in any way. And it is very encouraging for an actor,” says Dugal.
Would you say there is a pay parity between genders in the industry you work in? Tell us.