Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Zoe Dupler and I'm a sophomore from Gainesville, Florida majoring in psychology and international affairs.

Women Representation in Bollywood Films

Abstract

Cinema and other cultural artifacts inhabit a special place in a cultural landscape because they both influence and are influenced by the societies in which they originate. For this reason, our research project has focused on the portrayal of women in Bollywood, the film industry of India, where women have traditionally been characterized according to misogynist interpretation of a woman’s role in society. The intention is to collect quantitative data that may provide more information to determine if cultural expectations are portrayed more divergently, specifically for female characters when there is a female director. Following the methodology of several US-based studies on gender in Hollywood, this project uses film coding to determine the types and frequency of women's representation. Each female character within the films is examined in clothing, religion, relationships, education, and taboo behavior and is coded accordingly into the system. This project is still at its initial stages; therefore, we cannot have conclusive data/results. However, we can see trends across the films we have finished coding.

Keywords: Film, Bollywood, Representation