Skip to content
1981
Volume 24, Issue 4
  • ISSN: 1539-7785
  • E-ISSN: 2048-0717

Abstract

This article reframes the practice of purdah as a gendered medium of communication, analyzing how its material forms; from architectural curtains to bodily veils, filter women’s visibility and structure social power. Moving beyond binaries of oppression and tradition, it employs a feminist media ecology lens to argue that purdah operates as a dynamic interface where control is both enforced and negotiated. A comparative thematic analysis of early twentieth-century life writing (Sunity Devee, Zarina Bhatty, Rokeya S. Hossain) and contemporary Indian cinema (, ) reveals a central tension: while purdah’s materiality disciplines the female body and segregates space, it simultaneously creates the conditions for its own subversion. The study finds that narrative genre fundamentally shapes the representation of this agency; textual memoirs articulate resistance through introspective reflection, while films externalize it through embodied performance and the reclamation of domestic geography. Ultimately, the analysis contributes to feminist media studies by demonstrating how purdah functions not as a static cultural artifact, but as an active, communicative system that mediates social reality across historical periods and narrative forms.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/eme_00265_1
2026-02-28
2026-04-12

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bhatty, Z. (2016), Purdah to Piccadilly: A Muslim Woman’s Struggle for Identity, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006), ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3:2, pp. 77101, https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Boyatzis, R. E. (1998), Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Brickell, K. (2012), ‘“Mapping” and “doing” critical geographies of home’, Progress in Human Geography, 36:2, pp. 22544, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511418708.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Chaudhuri, D. (2016), ‘The house in South Asian Muslim women’s early Anglophone life-writing and novels’, doctoral dissertation, Binghamton, NY: Binghamton University.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Deshpande, A. (2016), Lipstick under My Burkha, India: Prakash Jha Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Devee, S. (1921), The Autobiography of an Indian Princess, London: John Murray.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Devi, L. and Kaur, M. (2019), ‘Purdah or Ghunghat, a powerful means to control women: A study of rural Muslim and non-Muslim women in western Uttar Pradesh, India’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 26:3, n.pag., https://doi.org/10.1177/0971521519861162.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Droogsma, R. A. (2007), ‘Redefining Hijab: American Muslim women’s standpoints on Veiling’, Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35:3, pp. 294319, https://doi.org/10.1080/00909880701434299.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Ekici, D., Blessing, P. and Baudez, B. (2023), Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism, London: Taylor & Francis.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Engels, D. (1989), ‘The limits of gender ideology: Bengali women, the colonial state, and the private sphere, 1890–1930’, Women's Studies International Forum, 12:4, pp. 42537, https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(89)90038-1.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Farooq, S. (2023), Modest Mobility: Pakistani Women in the Workforce, Karachi: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Goldstein, E. (2003), ‘Curtain lectures: Public domesticity and bourgeois pedagogy in nineteenth-century France’, The American Historical Review, 108:3, pp. 694725, https://doi.org/10.1086/532358.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Guindi, F. E. (2005), ‘Gendered resistance, feminist veiling, Islamic feminism’, The Ahfad Journal, 22:1, p. 53.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. James, D. and Drakich, J. (1993), ‘Understanding gender differences in amount of talk: A critical review of research’, in D. Tannen (ed.), Gender and Conversational Interaction, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 281312.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Jeffery, P. (2022), Architectures of Honor: Gender and Space in Muslim, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Mahmood, S. (2005), Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. McLuhan, M. (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Moors, A. (2022), Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and North America, London: Bloomsbury.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Mulvey, L. (1975), ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16:3, pp. 618, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Papanek, H. (1973), ‘Purdah: Separate worlds and symbolic shelter’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15:3, pp. 289325, https://doi.org/10.1017/s001041750000712x.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Platts, J. T. ([1884] 2018), A Dictionary of Urdū, Classical Hindī, and English, London and New Delhi: W. H. Allen & Co. and Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Rokeya, B., Jahan, R. and Papanek, H. (1988), Sultana’s Dream and Selections from the Secluded Ones, New York: The Feminist Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Rozario, S. (1992), Purity and Communal Boundaries: Women and Social Change in a Bangladeshi Village, London: Zed Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Shaji, J. (2018), ‘Veiling and unveiling desire: The use of burkha as a motif in the Bollywood movie “Lipstick Under My Burkha”, Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, 6:12, pp. 4951, https://www.questjournals.org/jrhss/papers/vol6-issue12/p3/K0612034951.pdf. Accessed 26 January 2026.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Sharma, U. M. (1978), ‘Women and their affines: The veil as a symbol of separation’, Man, 13:2, p. 218, https://doi.org/10.2307/2800246.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Sinha, A. (2020), Thappad, India: Benaras Media Works and T-Series.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Sultana, A. M., Jawan, J. A. and Hashim, I. (2009), ‘Influence of purdah (veil) on education and employment of women in rural communities’, European Journal of Social Sciences, 11:2, pp. 26780.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Volcic, Z. (2008), ‘Media, identity, and gender: Tracking feminist media and journalism theories and methodologies’, Media Research: Croatian Journal for Journalism and Media, 14:1, pp. 520.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Shrivastava, A. (2017), Lipstick under My Burkha, India: Prakash Jha Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/eme_00265_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test