At a recent TEDx talk in Thiruvananthapuram, Malayalam actress Rima Kallingal spoke about gender disparity in the Malayalam film industry and the kind of abuse the actors receive on social media. She spoke about the gender disparity in pay and biased depictions of women on screen.

Speaking of the social media abuse, she said, "In the wake of this incident the president of all the Malayalam Movie Artists Association remarked that harassment and sexual harassment, in particular, was a thing of the past. Social media abuse on women is alarming right now but if any of you want to feel any better, please listen to the comments section of an actress’ Facebook profile. They kind of have our whole life figured out because they tell us what to wear, what to do, how to act, how to behave as a woman, a daughter in law, a wife.

The life lessons that you want, come to a comments section and you will also get to know all the different sexual positions that they would like to rape us in. It is 2017 and female actors get paid one-third of their male counterparts. We are told that we have absolutely no value when it comes to satellite rights, that is when they sell a movie to a television house, and also play any part in box office collections. So I am thinking they might as well buy a few extra furniture for the set design or maybe they actually do think of us as furniture already."

She also spoke about how men are given well-crafted roles and that women are often neglected. She said, "A male actor in between say 20 and 70 years, whether married or unmarried, with or without kids and grand-kids are given a platform to explore their craft, to excel in roles that are exclusively written for them; to grow, to evolve and to see their career take off when they are in their prime. And that is the way it should be. And I am so happy for them as an artist. But not so much for an actress who takes every decision in her personal life and it affects her career: getting married, getting divorced, getting a baby, if at all her career gets till there. Everything that she does affects her career."