Patriarchal primitive mindset has to change: Urfi Javed

Urfi Javed shares her thoughts on women empowerment, toxic feminism and more on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

Image: Urfi Javed/Instagram

Urfi Javed is one of the boldest actresses of the present times. She has, time and again, shunned everyone who has tried to troll her, proving that there is nothing that can stop her from doing what she loves. The actress has often been attacked by online trolls for fashion sense. But that does not deter her at all, establishing the modern-age, strong woman that she is! And on this International Women’s Day, Urfi speaks from her heart about women in films, toxic feminism, women empowerment and more.

Q. Women no longer stay in confines; how happy are you with the change?

Urfi Javed: I am very happy that women no longer stay in confines; they were never meant to in the first place. Women started staying in confines because of the patriarchal primitive mindset and that is something that needs to be changed.

Q. Talking about television, films and web series, women are no longer portrayed as vulnerable. Do you think it took time for this change to occur?

Urfi Javed: Yes, of course, it took a lot of time for this change to come in. I remember there was a time when we used to get to see only typical Saas-Bahu sagas where the saas was shown to be bahu's biggest enemy, which should never be the case. I think we should not feed people with such things, knowing that they might have a wrong influence on people. It was a very deprecated part of Indian Television. However, now we get to see stories about working women and women's issues; I think this is a very great change that our industry has seen.

Q. Women in some parts of India are still dismayed and looked down upon. What according to you can be done to eradicate that?

Urfi Javed: It is very sad that women are still looked down upon. According to me, in order to eradicate this aspect from our society, we need to start inculcating values from the grassroots level in children since their birth. We need to start telling our children to respect one another rather than preaching girls things such as don't do this, don't go there, don't wear this etc.

What’s your take on ‘toxic feminism’ that exists in society?

Urfi Javed: I feel women should not play the woman-card to misuse the rights given to them. I think we should emphasize more on equality.