Bollywood Cinema and the New Single Indian Woman
Bollywood Cinema and the New Single Indian Woman
Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 11:15
Location: SJES021 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
Oral Presentation
The growing international scholarship on Bollywood (popular Indian cinema) has focused not just on its
stylistic features or mass appeal but on its enormous ideological influence, particularly on its
constructions of nationhood, family, community and gender relationships. Recent work on the post
1990s Bollywood films have examined how the emergence of a new kind of female protagonist, the
“new woman” has helped to articulate the tensions and possibilities of a neoliberalising, globalising
India (Megha Anwer, Anupama Arora). The proposed paper will look at how the single woman emerges
as a sub type of the new woman who forges a new understanding of Indian femininities, gender roles
and patriarchy.
Single women are emerging globally as a significant demographic category. 39.8 million single women
comprise 7.4% of the Indian population. However, women’s status and identity in society, state, law and
social discourses are still defined by marriage and the heteropatriarchal family making it impossible for
single women to access rights. Against this dominant construction, a trend is emerging in recent
Bollywood films [Queen (2014); Highway (2014); Piku (2015); Pink (2016); Masan (2015); Anarkali of
Arrah (2017)] of representing the independent single woman who asserts herself against family,
community and state power. Not a victim like the widows, divorcees and “fallen women” of older
Bollywood cinema, the new single woman is not overtly “feminist” either like the empowered women
walking out of marriages in the progressive cinema of the 1980’s. Hailing from villages and small towns
the new single women aspire for a life defined not by conjugal, kinship or community identities but lived
as autonomous citizens of a globalised India. The paper will examine how the new Bollywood single
woman challenges the patriarchal constructions of Indian women’s identities in everyday life, law, policy
and social discourse.
stylistic features or mass appeal but on its enormous ideological influence, particularly on its
constructions of nationhood, family, community and gender relationships. Recent work on the post
1990s Bollywood films have examined how the emergence of a new kind of female protagonist, the
“new woman” has helped to articulate the tensions and possibilities of a neoliberalising, globalising
India (Megha Anwer, Anupama Arora). The proposed paper will look at how the single woman emerges
as a sub type of the new woman who forges a new understanding of Indian femininities, gender roles
and patriarchy.
Single women are emerging globally as a significant demographic category. 39.8 million single women
comprise 7.4% of the Indian population. However, women’s status and identity in society, state, law and
social discourses are still defined by marriage and the heteropatriarchal family making it impossible for
single women to access rights. Against this dominant construction, a trend is emerging in recent
Bollywood films [Queen (2014); Highway (2014); Piku (2015); Pink (2016); Masan (2015); Anarkali of
Arrah (2017)] of representing the independent single woman who asserts herself against family,
community and state power. Not a victim like the widows, divorcees and “fallen women” of older
Bollywood cinema, the new single woman is not overtly “feminist” either like the empowered women
walking out of marriages in the progressive cinema of the 1980’s. Hailing from villages and small towns
the new single women aspire for a life defined not by conjugal, kinship or community identities but lived
as autonomous citizens of a globalised India. The paper will examine how the new Bollywood single
woman challenges the patriarchal constructions of Indian women’s identities in everyday life, law, policy
and social discourse.