In the three decades since India began to liberalise its economy in the early 1990s, the country has experienced sweeping transformations in its social and cultural landscape. Alongside the privatisation of industries, the rise of global media outlets and increased foreign investment, there emerged a new set of narratives around women’s empowerment and gender equality.
These narratives have undoubtedly opened some previously closed doors for women – particularly among the middle- and upper-middle classes – they have also been critiqued for promoting what is a neoliberal appropriation of the feminist vision.
India’s market liberalisation policies, initiated in 1991, encouraged foreign investment, privatised state-owned enterprises and slowly “opened up” sectors such as telecommunications, banking and the media to global capital. With the arrival of multinational companies and a flood of Western consumer goods, discourses around individual choice, personal success and consumer “empowerment” gained momentum.
At the same time, economic reforms brought more women into information technology, retail and service industries leading to a sense that women could now more actively participate in India’s economic growth story. The flip side of this success narrative was the continued and even intensified informalisation of labour, with lower-class and Dalit women shouldering a disproportionate burden of precarious, underpaid and undignified work.
Individual, market-based strategies for women’s empowerment became mainstream in the Indian public sphere and civil society.
Its key features centre individualism and meritocracy as ideals. It pushed the celebratory stories of “women’s empowerment” which show that any woman can “succeed” if she works hard enough, networks strategically, and develops the right set of entrepreneurial or professional skills. Structural barriers like caste discrimination, patriarchal family norms and workplace exploitation are downplayed or framed as obstacles that can be overcome through personal grit.
A second hallmark is the belief that “empowerment” can be purchased – via brand endorsements, personal care products marketed with feminist slogans or clothing lines proclaiming “girl power”. This presentation of consumer choice as liberation collapses meaningful political engagement into individual consumer decisions.
Corporate campaigns co-opt feminist vocabulary appear to embrace slogans of equality and empowerment, often featuring high-profile actors or celebrity activists. They highlight the success stories of female chief executives or entrepreneurs that sound inspirational but gloss over the systemic inequalities that prevent the majority of women from accessing similar opportunities.
Femvertising
In India too, these principles find expression in multiple realms – advertising, social media discourses and celebrity culture – shaping public attitudes about what it means to be an “empowered” woman in the 21st century.
One of the most visible forms of neoliberal feminism in India is the proliferation of advertising campaigns that invoke “women’s empowerment”. “Femvertising” examples range from detergent commercials showing husbands doing housework to beauty brands featuring glamorous models championing a message of “self-love”. Some of these ads do spark conversations about gender roles but empowerment is reduced to serving as a profitable branding strategy.
Cosmetic giants, apparel brands and e-commerce platforms often sponsor social media hashtags like “#GirlsInCharge” or “#LadiesFirst”. By equating empowerment with a branded consumer identity, these campaigns implicitly teach viewers that breaking stereotypes is less about collective and social transformation and more about making the “right” purchasing decisions.
The Hindi film industry plays a major role in shaping cultural norms, and its engagement with feminist themes has seen a noticeable uptick in recent years. A spate of films about characters who pursue careers, defy family expectations, or tackle social taboos now form a female-centric film genre, receiving both critical acclaim and box-office success. Critics point out that the film industry itself is rife with colorism, sexual harassment, and gender pay gaps, which casts doubt on the sincerity of these campaigns.
In India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem – particularly in metropolitan hubs like Bengaluru, Mumbai and Gurugram – the story of the “self-made woman entrepreneur” has gained traction. Conferences, investor summits and mentorship programmes hail women-led startups as the pinnacle of modern feminist success. Supporting women entrepreneurs is certainly valuable but the narrative of entrepreneurial triumph can sometimes obscure persistent structural inequalities. Access to venture capital, for instance, is heavily skewed toward those with elite networks and prestigious educational backgrounds. For this reason, “startup feminism” is a non-starter for women from marginalised communities, even if they possess the requisite skills.
But this co-option of feminist terms valorises capitalist risk-taking without questioning exploitative labour practices in gig economy startups or the precarious conditions faced by app-based delivery workers — many of whom are women. “Startup feminism” tends to focus on aspirational success stories rather than systemic reforms that would uplift all women workers.
Public policy campaigns too have turned into femvertising campaigns. For example, “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter) lacks substantial funding, institutional mechanisms or follow-through. These campaigns present the government as championing women’s empowerment, the deeper structural factors – such as rampant gender violence, deficiencies in public education, and strict patriarchal norms – require a more robust policy framework than a slogan-based campaign can offer.
Popularising or populist?
One could argue that repurposing feminist vocabulary and discourse as a marketing strategy popularises feminism and therefore is not a problem. But this circulation of “empowerment” involves its commodification for easy consumption. The commodification of feminist politics takes away energy and effort from collective feminist organising such as labour union struggles, grassroots protest and demands for state-funded childcare. Instead of transforming systemic injustices, the focus shifts to individualised solutions like confidence-building workshops, personal coaching and mentorship, or brand consumption.
Neoliberal feminisms have found fertile ground in India because of precarious economic conditions that confront vast sections of its population and media-saturated culture, offering aspirational visions of career-driven and consumer-oriented empowerment. These narratives have broadened public awareness of women’s issues, albeit in a selective manner that often privileges the experiences of some and blindsides the rest. It would not be much off the mark to say that this situation is a result of the fact that in most instances, it is the wealthy or socio-cultural elite women in India who become the public face of feminist advocacy. Their activism, advocacy and even academic knowledge production, while sometimes well-intentioned, are influenced by a pervasive neoliberal ideology.
The influence of neoliberal feminism is grossly underestimated. Even in the more critical feminist circles, the focus is never on women’s empowerment in terms of decision-making for the family, community or macro political economy levels but is focused on getting into the wage market somehow, even if it is in for underpaid and dehumanising work, or for getting paid for carework and reproductive work.
True gender justice requires robust public infrastructure – universal healthcare, accessible education, social security and housing protections. Neoliberal policy frameworks, however, tend to revile state interventions except to discipline and incarcerate, thereby placing more burden on individual families – and especially women – to manage social welfare needs.
Lean in, but what about justice?
In a market-driven environment, campaigns and corporate partnerships crave uplifting, celebratory stories – because success sells. This PR-friendly posture leaves no room to confront the messy, uncomfortable truths of caste oppression or the aggression of majoritarian politics that severely affect minority and Dalit women. Neo-liberal “lean in” feminisms are problematic mainly because of their reliance on palatable, easily digestible narratives that sidestep more harrowing social and political issues.
By constantly emphasising personal triumph and “positivity”, neoliberal feminisms portray those who demand justice – whether in cases of caste-based violence, lynching, discrimination in educational institutions, or impunity for sexual assault on women – as spoilsports, compulsive protestors – “andolan jeevis”.
Women who refuse to normalise oppression or “move on” get labelled as “unreasonable”, unaligned with the cheerful, success-oriented branding of mainstream femvertising campaigns. This not only trivialises the struggles of women who face structural violence daily but also actively discourages serious questioning of deep-rooted systems of exclusion, thus undermining civil liberties.
As a result, rather than galvanising solidarity around the issues that disproportionately affect Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, and other marginalised women, these campaigns end up endorsing a hollow version of “empowerment” – one that prioritises neat, marketable triumphs over collective struggle for human rights and justice.
It is precisely because of this reason that it has become a routine for public outrage over violence against women to be expressed in non-feminist ideals, which involve vengeance and retribution against individuals committing crimes rather than an impulse for social change. This feature of neo-liberal feminism makes it especially handy for majoritarian and regressive politics.
The challenge for feminist movement is to not concede to the logic of the free market in quest of ‘popular’ resonance and social media appeal but to keep insisting on addressing structural power imbalances across India. Such a transformation would require a collective reckoning with the role of neo-liberal markets in perpetuating inequality, and a commitment to social policies grounded in solidarity rather than mere consumer choice.
Ghazala Jamil is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
