Neoliberal Feminism at the Site of Social Media: Rediscovering Feminist Subversion Within the Digital Landscape (emphasis on the Indian context)

The proposed research investigates how social media platforms act as petri dishes for neoliberal feminism to thrive in the Indian context. Post the economic restructuring 1990s onwards, women’s empowerment has been inextricably linked to the market-led version of emancipation wherein the ‘girl-boss’ culture has gained currency. Social media sites are avenues of both ‘recognition’ (Honneth, 1997) and ‘redistribution’ (Fraser, 1995) presenting a unique opportunity for subjects to monetise their everyday activities as well as gain instant fame by performing and recording them for a carefully curated audience. Activities like ‘mothering’, performing household chores, and care work which were earlier under the ambits of unpaid care work are now monetised on social media. With reports being published of unemployment being at an all-time low because of women’s self-employment in the Indian context, it is important to look at the changing nature of gendered labour performed on social media.

This study also accounts for the Me Too movement (among others) in the Indian context which helped break the dominance of the Savarna (upper caste) narrative giving a chance for many intersectional voices to be heard. Drawing from the experiences of ‘content creators’ who identify as Indian women, this project explores the potential for feminist subversion in performing neoliberal feminism on social media platforms in the Indian context. This study also examines the burgeoning ‘influencer culture’ through the lens of existing theories such as the ‘social reproduction theory’ (Rai et al., 2014), post-socialist critical theory and MacKinnon’s (1982) ‘consciousness raising’ theory. The findings of this research will have larger implications on how we understand gendered labour, and women's empowerment in the digital context at the same time investigate the detachment of neoliberal feminism from its parent, liberal feminism. This research project also aims to question the relevance of some of the pre-established theoretical paradigms such as the public-private dichotomy and the ‘redistribution-recognition’ dilemma in the context of social media.