This International Women's Day, let's talk about Hindi cinema's gross depiction of gendered housework

In the column Let's Talk About Women, Sneha Bengani looks at films, the world of entertainment, and popular media through the feminist lens. Because it's important. Because it's needed. And because we're not doing it enough.

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Last month, detergent brand Ariel launched a short advertorial film called #SeeEqual as part of its ‘Share the Load’ series, through which it questions the deeply ingrained misogynistic attitudes towards housework in India.

In the video, a married couple drops in to say hello to their new neighbours — two young, unmarried men. As they sit and the husband surveys their flat, the wife cannot help but notice their equal participation in housework. When she points it out to her husband, he laughs, and says he used to do it too when he lived with his friend before they got married.

In less than three minutes, the short film raises several pertinent questions. Why do men, who when living in hostels or by themselves, did all their housework, do not feel the need to do it anymore after they get married? Also, why is their time considered more valuable, has more currency than women’s?

Films like #SeeEqual, that question the gendered nature of housework in India, are rare in our culture that gloats on making women bear all the domestic burden. Take the recently released Gehraiyaan for instance. As posh and picturesque this Shakun Batra film may be, it still shows Deepika Padukone’s Alisha doing all the work in her suburban Mumbai flat while her boyfriend Karan [played by Dhairya Karwa] lounges about trying to write a novel.

Deepika Padukone in Gehraiyaan

The first few minutes of Yami Gautam's latest film A Thursday subtly reinforces gender roles too. As he is leaving for work, she is tidying up the kitchen, cleaning the mess her criminal lawyer fiancé has made while having breakfast. Sure, they are discussing work — she is telling him how he can better handle an ongoing case and he, how she would have made for a wonderful prosecutor. The irony? All of this is played out in his kitchen with her endearingly chiding him that he still eats like a child. All of this in a film on women’s rights.

Yami Gautam in A Thursday

Remember Anubhav Sinha’s 2020 film Thappad? It created quite a stir and unease, forcing couples to revaluate their relationships and reaffirm boundaries. The movie is a stinging critique on the entitlement that the educated, upper-middle-class men wear with such ease and confidence, you would think it is their second skin. Vikram’s [played by Pavail Gulati] meticulously organised life goes for a total toss after he unwittingly slaps his wife Amrita [Taapsee Pannu] during a house party. It is after she leaves him that he is forced to confront the rude realisation—the extent and the insidiousness of his dependence on her. His mounting frustration finally bursts off the lid in a beautifully crafted scene — standing clueless in his own kitchen, helpless, it dawns on him that he cannot make even a cup of tea for himself.

Tanvi Azmi and Taapsee Pannu in Thappad

However, my favourite is Neeraj Ghaywan’s 2017 short film Juice. With the kitchen as its epicenter, it packs such a hard-hitting punch, shows so much in under 15 minutes — gender-based discrimination and everyday sexism at home, work, across age groups, a hint at casual casteism, how women perpetuate patriarchy too, and how being a parent changes a man and a woman’s life so differently, unfairly. Though Shefali Shah hardly has any dialogues in this short film, its every moment screams. The men sit in the airy living room discussing Akbar’s dysentery and gorging on delicacies prepared by their wives, who are working by the stove, sweating like pigs in the fan-less kitchen. As the women talk about the burden of being a mother, Shah's character says, “Diaper badalna hai toh humi ko karna hoga na, inn logo ke haath se toh remote chhoot jayenge,” summing it all up in one sentence.

However, films like Juice and Thappad come few and far between. The majority of Hindi movies, in the garb of mirroring society, reinforce misogynistic gender roles, normalising them. Even those that do try, either end up parodying the problem [R Balki’s 2016 film Ki & Ka is an illuminating example of an attempt gone horribly wrong] or show women as rehabilitation centers for men. There are countless films that have done a commendable job of cementing this troubling notion, but Ayan Mukerji’s 2009 directorial debut Wake Up Sid deserves a special mention.

Why? Because it is a good film, made with a lot of heart, fronted by brilliant actors, cushioned by the kind of everydayness the upper-middle-class youth of urban India understands the best. But it doesn’t just normalise, it glorifies how it inevitably is a woman’s job to make a man out of irresponsible, entitled brats. And in doing so, it has given a shiny, new sheen to a centuries-old construct.

It’s an unsaid expectation to further the convenience of one gender at the expense of the other. So this time, when anyone wishes you on International Women’s Day, ask them to share the load if they do not already.

This International Women’s Day, I want to ask the same question that Alia Bhatt’s Gangubai Kathiawadi does in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest film. “Jab shakti, sampatti, sadbuddhi, ye teeno hi auratein hai, toh in mardo ko kis baat ka guroor?”

When not reading books or watching films, Sneha Bengani writes about them. She tweets at @benganiwrites.

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