Vidya Balan was told to 'know how to cook', even if husband Siddharth Roy Kapur didn't know it

Bollywood star Vidya Balan, who is awaiting the release of her upcoming film, ‘Sherni’, has revealed that she too has been a victim of gender bias and feels that it's ‘sharper for women’. The actor also recalled an incident where she was told that she should know how to cook even if her husband, film producer Siddharth Roy Kapur, didn't know it.

While speaking to Times Now, Vidya said, “I think all of us have faced gender bias and not just by the members of the opposite sex. Even I think we all tend to judge each other, box each other as human beings and it’s a little sharper for women or with women. Of course, I have faced gender bias. I get angry... I get angry and then I just give them a piece of my mind. It happens much less now, but still.” 

She further shared, “I remember people telling me over a dinner that Oh my god, you don’t know how to cook. I said, 'No both Sidharth and I don’t know how to cook'. They said, 'But you should know how to cook na...I wanted to say (enacting a hitting scene) why should it be any different for Sidharth and me?" She also recollected when her mother would ask her to learn cooking. "I would say why the hell should I learn to cook, I will earn enough to hire a cook or marry a man who can cook.”

In an interview with DNA, Vidya talked about how women find it equally challenging to give orders to men as men find it difficult to take instructions from a female even in this day and age. 

“It's because of our conditioning. Because we've been told that the man has to be in charge, or men have to be in charge and that we have to be told what to do because we don't know what to do. This is why we struggle so much when we have dreams and we want to achieve them. And you know, we feel so much fear and successful women also feel guilt. It's all the inflexions of the same malady. So, I think it's not just men, it's even women. We underestimate ourselves, we judge ourselves, because that's what we've been told forever. Feminism is a practice more than anything else. You have to practice to be equal because you're not used to it. What happens sometimes is when you ignore it, you're perpetuating something. Sometimes when you talk about it to the other person, maybe even they are not aware of it, then they become aware of it. And that can only bring about change awareness,” she said.

‘Sherni’ is set to release on Amazon Prime Video on June 18.