PATRIARCHY AND GENDERED SPACES: EXAMINING THE COMPLEXITY OF WOMEN EXPERIENCES WITH “THE GREAT INDIAN KITCHEN”

Abstract

Bell hooks define feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and Oppression” It aims at transforming and reshaping the perspective of masculinity and femininity of the socially constructed categories of the gender power relation. Gender identities are mapped on the basis of choice, care, experience, spaces and time. The gendered spheres work with the binaries between the productions versus reproduction, paid versus the unpaid work, public versus the private, where the value of each depends on the participation in which gender inequalities are experienced through women’s unequal access to public life within the patriarchal underpinnings.  Indian Cinema is a cultural and social role player where depiction of male is valorised and women support the male character. Feminism based Indian films are less in number which concentrates on the empowerment and not majorly from the standpoint of women experiences. This paper explores the spatial distributed power relation of gender and the role of Patriarchy, its complexities in domestic space “Kitchen” by examining the Indian Film “The Great Indian Kitchen”. Feeding is one of the care concepts in which women have a high cultural value by affirming family relationship and achieve identity and celebrated as a mother or a women, where she never receive any kind of nurturance. Using Qualitative methodology, semiotic analysis will be used to study the signifiers and signified meanings of space and its relation to power and structural inequality through the patriarchal lens in Indian Context.