Womanhood, Feminism and the New Indian Woman in Postcolonial Post-liberalisation India
(2022) MKVM13 20221Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- Gender roles and constructions of ideals have long imposed unrealistic expectations on people to behave in certain ways and even be certain types of people. Women, more so, than others. Ideals of womanhood, what it means to be a woman, a good woman, a new woman, have required women to perform who they are at all times. The imaginary of the “New Woman” is only of these ideals that has been around globally for a long time now. Every time there has been a transformation in social understandings of what it means to be a woman, there has evolved a new imaginary of the New Woman. In this thesis, I aim to critically analyse the postfeminist construction of womanhood and the “New Indian Woman” through the narratives of the selected the Indian TV... (More)
- Gender roles and constructions of ideals have long imposed unrealistic expectations on people to behave in certain ways and even be certain types of people. Women, more so, than others. Ideals of womanhood, what it means to be a woman, a good woman, a new woman, have required women to perform who they are at all times. The imaginary of the “New Woman” is only of these ideals that has been around globally for a long time now. Every time there has been a transformation in social understandings of what it means to be a woman, there has evolved a new imaginary of the New Woman. In this thesis, I aim to critically analyse the postfeminist construction of womanhood and the “New Indian Woman” through the narratives of the selected the Indian TV series Four More Shots Please on Amazon Prime Video, as well as to study the engagement of urban Indian woman with the series, and how they use this to talk about their own experience of womanhood, feminst ideology in their daily lives and how they imagine the New Indian Woman. I situate this in the historical context of postcolonialism and the liberalisation of the Indian economy to investigate how gender roles are shaped and reproduced in similar contexts to continue dominant ideology. The theoretical framework for this thesis is formed by the concept of narratives and how the function discursively (Hansen & Machin), TV watching for entertainment and pleasure (Ien Ang) and social imaginaries (Charles Taylor).
Through this study, I found that postfeminist narratives that employ discourses of empowerment and agency still reproduce dominant codes of gender roles in the post-liberalisation context of India. Urban Indian women had a dual mode of engagement with such narratives, they appeared to critique the series for its representations, and yet continued to engage for pleasure and entertainment, and using their interpretations of the series to form ideological positions around womanhood and feminism in the country. For my interviewees, there wasn’t much difference between what they considered to be their experience of womanhood in India and who they imagined the “New Indian Woman” to be. Most of them explicitly stated that they considered themselves to be the New Indian Woman and identified her and themselves as someone who has agency and control over her own life, someone who does not follow traditional norms, but carves her own path, who is laden with responsibilities but navigates them with ease. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9079524
- author
- Mazumder, Anisha LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20221
- year
- 2022
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Postfeminism, Narrative, Post-liberalisation, India, Imaginary, New Woman, Postcolonial
- language
- English
- id
- 9079524
- date added to LUP
- 2022-07-14 08:17:17
- date last changed
- 2022-07-14 08:17:17
@misc{9079524,
abstract = {{Gender roles and constructions of ideals have long imposed unrealistic expectations on people to behave in certain ways and even be certain types of people. Women, more so, than others. Ideals of womanhood, what it means to be a woman, a good woman, a new woman, have required women to perform who they are at all times. The imaginary of the “New Woman” is only of these ideals that has been around globally for a long time now. Every time there has been a transformation in social understandings of what it means to be a woman, there has evolved a new imaginary of the New Woman. In this thesis, I aim to critically analyse the postfeminist construction of womanhood and the “New Indian Woman” through the narratives of the selected the Indian TV series Four More Shots Please on Amazon Prime Video, as well as to study the engagement of urban Indian woman with the series, and how they use this to talk about their own experience of womanhood, feminst ideology in their daily lives and how they imagine the New Indian Woman. I situate this in the historical context of postcolonialism and the liberalisation of the Indian economy to investigate how gender roles are shaped and reproduced in similar contexts to continue dominant ideology. The theoretical framework for this thesis is formed by the concept of narratives and how the function discursively (Hansen & Machin), TV watching for entertainment and pleasure (Ien Ang) and social imaginaries (Charles Taylor).
Through this study, I found that postfeminist narratives that employ discourses of empowerment and agency still reproduce dominant codes of gender roles in the post-liberalisation context of India. Urban Indian women had a dual mode of engagement with such narratives, they appeared to critique the series for its representations, and yet continued to engage for pleasure and entertainment, and using their interpretations of the series to form ideological positions around womanhood and feminism in the country. For my interviewees, there wasn’t much difference between what they considered to be their experience of womanhood in India and who they imagined the “New Indian Woman” to be. Most of them explicitly stated that they considered themselves to be the New Indian Woman and identified her and themselves as someone who has agency and control over her own life, someone who does not follow traditional norms, but carves her own path, who is laden with responsibilities but navigates them with ease.}},
author = {{Mazumder, Anisha}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Womanhood, Feminism and the New Indian Woman in Postcolonial Post-liberalisation India}},
year = {{2022}},
}