Shah Rukh Khan may be an Indian cinematic legend and star of record-breaking Bollywood blockbusters but he is not someone you would expect to appear in socioeconomic studies. And yet, for almost two decades, the actor has been central to my research into the economic lives of ordinary Indian women.
It started in 2006, when as a research assistant for a project with the Institute of Social Studies Trust and the Self Employed Women’s Association, a trade union. My job involved surveying home-based workers – women who made incense sticks and garments at home for less than the minimum wage – in a poor area of Ahmedabad.
But the women, many of whom were actively fighting for a wage increase, were bored and frustrated by the questions I put to them. They complained that this research would never result in any concrete change. I felt uneasy too – another well-intentioned but possibly pointless quest for data.
So I changed tack, putting the formal research to one side. To break the ice, I started asking them about the film stars they liked. Suddenly, women who were previously reluctant to talk began giggling. Many mentioned Khan as their favourite; the tone and texture of the conversations opened up. I noticed this same shift in energy when I tried the same tactic in other places I went for fieldwork.
This accidental atmosphere of joy and fun triggered by the mention of Khan introduced me to a set of women I would follow for most of my adult life, culminating in the publication of my book, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, in 2021. The research took me all way to the actor himself in 2022, when Khan invited me to his home and thanked me for putting him to “good use” as a research technique.
What have nearly two decades of conversations with Khan’s female fans revealed?
First, fun and leisure are important metrics of wellbeing and women’s purchasing power. Through following and repeatedly interviewing a cross-section of women who were keen to talk about their fandom and personal journeys, I was able to trace the trajectory of their emotional and economic lives; how their livelihoods and love affairs evolved over the years.
The conversations highlighted how the ability to watch a film star was an easier way for many women to catalogue and discuss their difficulties in finding disposable income, leisure time, safe spaces, jobs and financial independence. After all, the fandom for Khan required women to be able to access markets, money, mobile phones and media to watch his interviews, songs and films.
I heard too many stories of violence against women for simply watching a film on their own or keeping a film star’s picture in their room. Fandom was seen as an uncomfortable signal of female sexuality. Cinema tickets and private screenings of films were not simply individual purchases. They were collective acts of pleasure in a society that seeks to regulate female bodies and desire to maintain caste “purity” and “honour”. Being a Khan fan served as an unusual and subtle form of resistance against restrictive gender norms.
Second, access to paid jobs helped to change these gender norms within the families and communities I observed through the decades. Paid work opened up opportunities to make new friends and networks beyond the family circle, and imagine new ways of being and doing in the world. The changes were acute among the pairs of mothers and daughters I followed.
Unlike their mothers, daughters of working women abandoned the idea of marriage as being central to their sense of self, and sought greater romantic autonomy. “It is better to explore, be single and watch Shah Rukh on the screen when men or life make you sad,” the daughter of a home-based worker told me.
The story of each woman I followed shows that significant social change was happening in the missing middle of the gender narrative – ordinary women all around us who are neither heroes nor victims; those who may not be familiar with feminism; those who are busy renegotiating the rules within their marriages, relationships and workplaces.
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Finally, when I asked these women about the “empowerment” they were promised by politicians in this year’s elections, none used party politics, laws or statistics to explain how they saw different candidates. They articulated their hopes for a politics that could increase the ease and safety with which they could laugh and have fun.
Across classes and castes, despite different voting preferences and diverse interests, each woman demanded credible efforts to acknowledge women’s unpaid-care contributions, build friendly policing and improve connectivity through transport and technology for women to occupy the public sphere.
Yet these hopes for gender parity may be dashed in the near future. In a ranking of 146 countries in the 2024 World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index, India was in the bottom five for women’s economic participation. Only a quarter of urban women of working age hold paid jobs, woefully behind men at 75%; and care workers employed by the government continue to battle poor pay.
When women do fare better, there is a backlash – domestic violence is higher in districts where women are more likely to be employed, and professional women are penalised on match-making sites. India may have gained freedom from its colonisers, but women continue to fight for their independence every day. And as the fight for freedom continues, as reality disappoints, the fantasy of a movie star offers relief and refuge.
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Shrayana Bhattacharya is an economist and author