Exclusive! Regina Cassandra: Working women are made to feel guilty for choosing a career

No matter how many conversations are there around women's empowerment and their rights to practice their choices, the patriarchal society looks down on an ambitious working mother who chooses to work alongside parenting. But this does not apply to men.

This is one of the crucial points addressed in the upcoming cop-drama web series Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke. The show stars Regina Cassandra as the protagonist, alongside Barun Sobti.

In a conversation with OTTplay, the actress was asked how she views the working mother guilt. Regina said, "There are few points that I would like to make here in terms of shame and guilt attached to a working mother. And here I am only talking about the Indian society that I have grown up in. The general rule is that the man is the breadwinner and the woman should take care of the family and children. You see, there is a section of society who are financially not so well-to-do, from the lower socio-economic strata, and therefore those women have to go to work to run their homes. They do not have any option; it is their financial need to survive. So, those women may or may not feel guilty for not spending enough time with their families and children, but they do not do it out of choice. However, that is not the case with women who make the choice to work."

She went on to add, "When a woman decides to work, and choose a profession that demands a lot of physical and emotional investment like the investigating officer Kavya Iyer is in our show, they are made to feel guilty by the family and society. The moment it is a choice of the woman, the dynamics are so different! Kavya is trying to make everyone around her understand that she is trying to find a balance -- that she chooses to work. The show takes an interesting stand on that too."

Directed by National Award-winning film director Srijit Mukherjee, Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke also stars Barun Sobti, Sumeet Vyas, Gayathri Shanker, Deepika Amin, Mita Bashist and Sandeep Dhabale, among others.

It will be available to stream on OTTplay and ZEE5 on January 26.