Feminism and Popular Culture: -

Introduction:

Over the time, Pakistan’s cultural fabric has evolved due to the external influences. Western

influences through media have resulted in behavioral changes in the culture of Pakistan. One

such change has been women empowerment. Social media has played an important part in

raising voices of the feminists and making a huge difference. In this essay, I will analyze the

relation between media and feminism and how media has played its part in bringing the effects

of feminism to Pakistan. Although being slow, there has surely been a change in general notion

about feminism in Pakistan.

The roots of the first wave of feminism date back to the nineteenth and early twentieth century,

second and third wave lasting for two decades starting in 1960s 1990s respectively, all sprung

out for different yet related reasons, from UK and US and caused its effects to reach the rest of

the world, resulting in behavioral changes.

The fourth wave or contemporary feminism beginning in 2008 is providing the women as well as

men a platform to speak up against the oppressions and horrors they get to face by the society

using the online media. MeToo movement being a product of the fourth wave has created a rift

and reshaped the landscape of the fourth wave or the contemporary feminism by adding the

element of solidarity and assuring people being heard across borders.

The waves of feminism are an example of the Accumulation theory. The idea has been present

for a long period. With every passing wave people became more aware. By the third wave, the

behaviors and attitudes towards feminism changed.

Media although being a source of information, education and entertainment has been a powerful

tool in keeping a social control as said by Louis Wirth and Talcott Parsons. [ CITATION Jan75 \l

1033 ] In other words, it shapes our behavior by forming our opinions about certain day-to-day

things including our culture. Mass media and culture are correlated. Media portrays culture in

media narrative and various forms of text and images according to our perceptions of the culture

as well as the perception of the producers of the content that they want to build [ CITATION Ali14 \l

1033 ]. Feminism and women empowerment has had cultural impacts on different societies.

Media has been used for positive and negative portrayal of feminism and hence, media and

feminism are and have been closely linked in the history.

In the 1960’s, advertisements emphasized on gender norms. An example is the Kenwood Chef

Mixer advertisement in which wife a wearing a chef hat is shown hugging her husband from

behind with the text written next to it “The Chef does everything but cook – that’s what wives

are for!” depicting those women are supposed to cook and take care of the house [ CITATION

Tay17 \l 1033 ]. Betty Friedan’s work “The Feminist Mystique” were of great significance for the

waves of feminism in which she questioned the discriminating roles women are given in movies

and asked why women found fulfillment in “sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing

maternal love” by watching the mainstream media.

Taking a look in the entertainment industry, there were works on feminism portrayal. Feminist

themes and characters started to emerge in movies such as Sea Shell and the Clergy Man(1928),

Marianne and Juliane (1981), The Gold Diggers (1983), Vagabond (1985), The First Wives Club

(1996), GI Jane (1997), Mulan (1998), Legally Blonde (2001), Brave (2012) to name a few.
These movies gave strength to the women with the idea that women are capable of dealing with

hardest of situations be it facing an army all alone or sending a rocket into space. According to

Neuendorf’s (2010) report, women started getting more representation in the films from 12% in

1960’s to 32% in 1990’s [ CITATION Gil10 \l 1033 ]. After assessing stated that roles of women can

be a true representation of the society. This tells us that women started to get empowered by the

films.

The effects of the movement started hitting Pakistan as well. The first person to support

feminism movements of that time was Rangeela, a director and a comedian. His serious concerns

led him into producing, directing and acting in a film called Aurat Raaj that portrays a woman

taking a stand against her sexist husband, leaves the country to join a political party in another

country, ends up becoming a leader [ CITATION Meh14 \l 1033 ]. Similarly, during Bhutto’ era,

Nusrat Bhutto another known Pakistani feminist, a participant of the First World Women

conference in Mexico in 1975 on women empowerment said in her interview that “women

should be heard as human beings rather be treated as commodities[ CITATION Sum18 \l 1033 ].

Due to the ongoing women empowerment movements around the world in the second wave of

feminism, United Nations declared the decade from 1975-1985 as “Decade of Women”

[ CITATION Wor \l 1033 ].

Further films and docudramas started to be made after the forth wave of feminism started. This

activated online feminists. Shirmeen Obaid Chinoy’s A Girl in the River, movie about honor

killings and Saving Face, a movie about acid attack victim, were strong works that created great

impact not only in Pakistan but Globally that led her to win Academy awards for it. This led to

protest in Islamabad in 2014 against honor killings. [ CITATION Shi16 \l 1033 ] Later dramas like

Zindagi Gulzar hai, Samii and Udaari made great marks. In a research by Aftab Associates in
Udaari, 69% of the sample realized the importance of women’s economic empowerment and its

awareness [ CITATION Kas18 \l 1033 ]. This again depicts the relation between media and feminism.

Before these films and even today, the dramas that were being created had the same image of

women as being weak, childish, dependent, gullible, irrational and scheming [ CITATION Ahm15 \l

1033 ].

The women’s march of 2017 showed the recent feminist view and the impact of social media. It

begun in response to the political discourse that offended the minorities that included women,

ethnic minorities, LGBTQ community, and sexual violence survivors. From a mere Facebook

event, this became one of the biggest events in the history in which people in Washington and

around the world organized marches to come together and support each other collectively.

[ CITATION Tri17 \l 1033 ] This trend came to Pakistan in 2018 in Karachi, an Aurat March was

held on International Women’s Day against harassment injustice and violence with 5000 women

participating in it. This got recorded as a historic event with the power of social media. Another

Aurat March was followed in March 2019 in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi that faced a lot of

backlash on the hashtags that got circulated on social media “mera jism, meri marzi” and “apna

khana khud garam karo” [ CITATION Sha19 \l 1033 ].

MeToo, another social trend that entered into Pakistan in 2018 after the Harvey Weinstein

incident in 2017 received support from the media Industry.in the first 24 hours 4.7 million times

the hashtag got shared in America alone and got tweeted more than 500,000 times. Adnan Malik,

Jami Moor, Fareeha Altaf in particular and cases like Meesha Shafi and Ali Zafar, Mohsin Abbas

and Fatima came into prominence due to this movement. Meesha’s tweet got shared 5400 times

[CITATION Rab18 \l 1033 ].

The impact of films on popular culture has remained massive in changing the behavior towards

feminism. If it was not for the films, the fourth wave of feminism might not have started and

women might not have been able to come out and speak for themselves. Be it a positive portrayal

of an issue or a negative. From above we can see the third wave of feminism brought about

changes in popular culture due to being covered in films. The impact however on the audiences

has been slower in Pakistan as it took time for Pakistan to reach the ongoing movements. The

reason has been a platform not available to every other person to raise their voice. The power of

social media can hence be estimated in mobilizing people around the globe in the fourth wave of

feminism. Social media’s impact has been relatively a lot quicker than the traditional media’s.

The trends that started in 2017 like Women’s March held in 2017 reached in Pakistan in 2018 in

which the organizer initially decide to keep their identities anonymous. Similarly, MeToo

reached Pakistan the next year, although people were aware in 2017 about the movement but still

it took a year for the social acceptance of the movement and being considered as “western

agenda” (Sumera Batool et. al, 2018).

The interpretations of these movements in Pakistan however have been different. Taking the

MeToo movement, initially women spoke up about genuine cases but recently the movement

was misinterpreted and misused by one of the students of MAO College who wrongly accused

her professor that resulted in the professor committing suicide. Jami Moor, known film maker

spoke against the misuse of the movement to save the essence of it and shared his own story to

assure that victims do suffer and not all victims lie about it. Mahira Khan too spoke to save the

essence of revolutionary MeToo movement [ CITATION Ent19 \l 1033 ].

Since social media is available to everyone, if women can raise their voices they can get serious

backlash from their activism, which in reality they have received in the form of death threats

[ CITATION Teh19 \l 1033 ]. Women are not safe even on the online space.

Overall, media and social media in particular has evolved the view of feminism in Pakistan over

the passage of time. Feminism is an ongoing struggle and the media has to support it in order to

further strengthen the position of women in Pakistan. The impact created in the past two years

can be said to somewhat weigh equal if not higher than the previous struggles in Pakistan. Media

in today’s age is needed to positively influence the behavior of the society.

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