Take Action

Host a series of screenings for young people and use the film as an opportunity to talk about gender role expectations: Boys and Girls Clubs, Scout troops (both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts), girl-only groups, such as Girls Inc.

Have a Women's Pathways to Power event for girls and women (mothers, grandmothers, female community and business leaders, church elders). Invite the women to share the stories of their individual paths to success and compare those paths to those taken by the young women in the film.

Invite a speaker who specializes in women and development issues to compare conditions for women in India with conditions for women in other developing and industrialized nations, and/or to compare conditions for women with conditions for men. Discuss which conditions provide women with the greatest amount of freedom, security, health and economic opportunity.

Investigate the role that media play in perpetuating specific standards of beauty. Look at who sponsors and makes money from beauty pageants. Discuss how pageants are specifically designed to serve the economic interests of those sponsors or owners. Contact the sponsors to let them know what you think about their events' messages about women.