In order to make the world of entertainment more inclusive for women, nothing matches the potential of building a community where iconic women professionals come together to create a safe space for other women to grow and excel.

Prime Video, India’s most-loved entertainment destination, today released a new session of Maitri: Female First Collective. The collective is an endeavour to help build a community for women from media and entertainment where they can come together to discuss their experiences, challenges and successes, and offer their perspective and advice on how to bring about a positive shift.

Graced by nine eminent women professionals from Indian entertainment including producers, directors, creators, talent and corporate leaders, the latest session features discussions on making the industry more inclusive for women by creating more opportunities, recognizing their contribution and building a safer work environment.

Moderated by the creator and curator of Maitri, Smriti Kiran, the participants comprised Aparna Purohit, Creator – Maitri & Head of India Originals, Prime Video; Indhu VS, Writer & Director; Ratheena Plathottathil, Writer, Director & Producer; Elahe Hiptoola, Creator & Producer; Parvathy Thiruvothu, Actor & Director; Rima Kallingal, Actor, Producer & Performing Artist; Shreya Dev Dube, Filmmaker & Cinematographer and Neha Parti Matiyani, Cinematographer.

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In order to spark conversations and foster meaningful collaborations, Prime Video also launched a social community for Maitri that will enable women in entertainment to share successes and work together towards unblocking challenges even more easily. View Maitri’s social community here: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

“With the new session of Maitri, we wanted to take stock of where we stand with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion, understand the challenges ahead, and collaborate to find the right solutions,” said Aparna Purohit, head of India originals, Prime Video. “We are very heartened by the encouragement and support we have received for Maitri: Female First Collective so far. While it is a gradual journey, I am happy to see some change already coming through. To hear things like ‘we have women writers in our writers’ rooms’, or ‘our women characters have agency’ and ‘our content will definitely pass the Bechdel test’, in conversations with creators, for me, is a major step in the right direction. At Prime Video, we remain deeply committed to DEI. As the next step, we want to strive to have at least 30% women HODs across all our productions,” she added.

With the participants sharing their personal stories, experiences and challenges in the session, Smriti Kiran, creator and curator, Maitri, emphasised, “Maitri is a space we all wanted but didn’t have. It has been created to connect women working across the vast and varied Indian film industry, have honest conversations about challenges we face, try and find solutions to those problems and build opportunities that lead to a seismic shift in representation. It is that first step one hopes will lead to giant leaps.”

Neha Parti Matiyani, Cinematographer and one of the participants of Maitri, shared experience and said, “I feel the misogyny now after 15 years, more than when I started. At that time, it did not bother me so much. Then I felt that I had to prove myself. But now it is hitting me that I am stuck in a specific zone professionally where people in the industry feel that because I am a woman, I can only work on a certain kind of films, mostly romantic comedies, while I know I am capable of exploring a much wider palette of genres. What is needed today is that we support other women, bringing more women onboard one’s team, give them the freedom to share their views and opinions, to be creative.”

Shreya Dev Dube, Filmmaker & Cinematographer said, “I feel that in the world of cinema it may still be a little easy, because we have women bosses to create a space for us women, but in a lot of other aspects of the art and the creative world it will not be easy to create the sense of safety for women. I want to create a safe space where both men and women are allowed to be vulnerable, a space where people I am working with feel comfortable to talk to me, share their thoughts, be part of the whole creative process.”

With platforms like Prime Video taking steps towards changing the narrative about women in entertainment, we’re already riding a period of change. Iconic women, such as the participants of Maitri, set an example for other aspiring women to be fearless and move forward.
Prime Video remains deeply committed towards promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within its content and productions. With Maitri: Female First Collective, the platform aims to raise awareness of the pivotal role women play within the entertainment industry.

Watch the latest session of Maitri: Female First Collective here.