The Oscars were a damp squib. The red carpet was snooze-worthy, host Neil Patrick Harris’ jokes fell repeatedly flat and Boyhood didn’t win any of the big ones. So, thank you academy members for Patricia Arquette’s win. When Arquette made an impassioned plea for wage equality for women, she was speaking for Priyanka Chopra as much as for Sheryl Sandberg.

“To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights, it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she said in her speech, as Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez cheered lustily, inspiring a million memes. Several recent studies in the US have proven the prevalence of gender gap in pay, no matter the field, education or experience. Much like racism, wage equality is a subject seldom addressed, particularly in Hollywood.

The recent email leak between Sony executives revealed the disparity in the film fraternity — while Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale took home 9 per cent of the profits for American Hustle , Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence got only 7 per cent. Closer home in India, it was only in November 2014 that the Supreme Court lifted a 60-year-old ban on female make-up artists, thanks to Charu Khurana.

If the Khans get ₹40 crore a film, our leading ladies make one-tenth that amount. According to the first-ever global study on female characters in popular films, the percentage of women on-screen in India is less than a quarter of all speaking parts in the movies — zero per cent of Indian films have balanced casts; the behind-the-camera gender ratio is at 6.2 to 1; 34 per cent of our films bank on sexually revealing attire, 35 per cent on nudity and 25 per cent on female beauty. Arquette’s call to unite all women to fight for wage equality must resonate in India; we need more Charus.

Priyanka Kotamraju, Chief Sub Editor

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