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In a world where testosterone-driven, super-hero sequels rule the Hollywood framework, women and their choice of cinema become a “niche” rather than a holistically accepted choice of half our human genome sample. In a patriarchal society like Pakistan, the decisions of media production as well, unsurprisingly, rest mostly on males. Likewise, the projections of women in the media are corresponding to male expectations of women in the society whereby the single female is allowed to dress more sexy and provocative and the minute she gets married, she is wrapped in modest attire and immediately submissive to her man. She is always a source of distraction or an object of attraction. The only consistently respectful female figure in the media would have to be the "mother" as socio-religiously, she is considered close to God in Islam. To top it all, women's stories are not considered "commercial" enough because they lack the machismo. The root of superhero and machismo cinema, I beg to differ, is not the debatable splurge of the young male viewer, the root is in the decision making powers that be - males who have grown up loving the comic book, superhero, action genre. It is not a consumer-incentivized decision, it is a producer-incentivized decision that worked on the consumer level. Now it is about the profit margin that a big-budget film can make. The reality is that women's stories and women directors are going to be sidelined because their “brand” is considered a niche that many a executive are scared to fund because niches by definition don't make the same profit margin. So be open, don't tell me that no one wants to see women's films, tell me bluntly that they don't give you a pie big enough to stuff in your shareholder's portfolio folders. 
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