As years go by, the plot weakens for Indian women-centric cinema

The number of such movies has declined and their box office collection too

The movie Barbie earned $800 million at the global box office compared to Oppenheimer’s tally of over $400 million, according to box office collections data available as of Thursday. In India, the plot flipped: Oppenheimer’s box office collection of Rs 100 crore was nearly triple that of Barbie’s Rs 34 crore, drawing attention to the country’s limited audience for women-centric cinema.

The gender’s representation has remained lacklustre in India’s major box office successes; there are few women involved in the business and even fewer female-centric movies being made.

The number of female-centric movies peaked in 2014 and 2017 – 14 movies in both years – in the last decade. The number of such films has declined after that, with an average of five releases annually, according to data Business Standard collated from tracker Bollywood Hungama.

Box office collections of female-centric movies have declined: from more than Rs 300 crore over a rolling three-year period ending 2016 to under Rs 50 crore in 2022. Numbers were stagnant or declining even before the pandemic as seen in chart 1 (click image for interactive chart).


 

This seems to hold even after adjusting for the dip in the cinema business after the pandemic. A study of box office collections shows a smaller share for women-centric films in 2022 than in 2019.

The role of women in commercial blockbuster Hindi cinema remains stuck in the past. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) studied 1,503 characters in 25 box-office topper films in 2019 and 427 characters in 10 women-centric movies between 2012 and 2019. The leads were mostly men in the box-office toppers and their romantic interest was mostly played by women, said the 2023 study called ‘Lights, Camera and Time for Action: Recasting a Gender Equality Compliant Hindi Cinema’ (chart 2).

Also Read: Women's Day: Gender prism shifts in Bollywood with inclusive cinema


 

Women-centric films had 57 per cent of lead roles played by women, and less than 18 per cent of the roles of the romantic interest were by women. 

Women constitute only 14 percent of the elected representatives and chairpersons of the Central Board of Film Certification, the panel which certifies movies in India, according to the TISS report. It said that few women are involved in filmmaking overall. They constituted less than 15 per cent of the crew, six per cent of heads of departments and less than five per cent of those involved in filmmaking functions like sound or editing. They had no representation in lighting and spot teams (chart 3).

In some advanced Asian countries like South Korea, the representation of women in the media has improved in sync with increased participation in economic life. India’s female labour force participation has declined in recent decades, falling from 31 per cent in 2000 to under 24 per cent in 2022. Labour force participation is the share of people who are working or looking for work. Working women are more likely to have disposable income to spend on cinema, fuelling audience demand.

Also Read: Women my age were earlier pieces of furniture in a film: Surekha Sikri

Currently, two out of every three people buying an Indian movie theatre ticket are men.