For generations, storytelling in India, from literature and cinema to television and digital content, has largely been filtered through the male gaze. This gaze, often subconscious, has shaped how women are portrayed: objects of affection, symbols of sacrifice, or mere side characters in male-led journeys. But over the past decade, a quiet and persistent shift has begun to take root. Across formats, Indian women writers are stepping into the spotlight, reclaiming narratives and reframing how women are seen, spoken about, and understood. The rise of the female gaze is not just a trend—it’s a reimagining of perspective, power, and presence.
Their storytelling does not just include women, it centres them. It does not idealise or victimise, it humanises. In doing so, these writers are challenging long-held norms and offering a new way of seeing the world through the female gaze.
From Passive Subjects to Active Protagonists
One of the most evident shifts brought by women writers is how female characters are now written. They are no longer props, plot devices, or moral compasses. Instead, they are flawed, complex, and fully realised human beings. The female gaze in storytelling is not about perfection. It is about honesty. A woman can be ambitious, conflicted, vulnerable, sexual, or angry, and still worthy of empathy.
Take the rising body of fiction by writers like Avni Doshi, Meena Kandasamy, or Janice Pariat. Their protagonists are not heroines in the traditional sense. They are difficult, introspective, often at odds with family or tradition, and not always likeable. And that is the point. They are not written to please. They are written to reflect a fuller emotional spectrum that women live with.
Even in screenwriting, shows like Made in Heaven, Four More Shots Please, and Bombay Begums carry the imprint of the female gaze. These narratives show women not in isolation, but in negotiation with class, power, ambition, and desire. The gaze here is intimate and observant, but never judgmental.
Writing Desire Differently
The portrayal of desire, particularly female desire, has undergone a dramatic change under the influence of women writers. Earlier, Indian storytelling treated women’s sexuality either with taboo or with titillation. But the female gaze allows for a gentler, more embodied understanding of intimacy.
Women writers approach desire not just as a plot point, but as an interior experience. It is woven with emotion, vulnerability, curiosity, and sometimes conflict. Whether it is the restrained longing in a short story by Ismat Chughtai or the unapologetic exploration of love and lust in contemporary poetry by Indian Instagram poets, the message is clear. Desire is not shameful, and it does not need male permission to exist.
Reclaiming Domestic Spaces
Another subtle but powerful shift comes in how women writers depict the domestic world. Where male narratives often treat the home as a backdrop, a static place from which the male protagonist departs, women writers transform it into a site of emotional complexity, resistance, and history.
In novels and newer screen adaptations led by female writing teams, the kitchen, the bedroom, everything becomes a site of storytelling. These spaces, long considered mundane or feminine, are now rich with meaning. Through the female gaze, domesticity is not reduced to submission. It becomes narrative terrain.
Beyond Representation: A Change in Voice
It is not just the stories that are changing, it is the voice. The female gaze brings with it a shift in tone, language, and rhythm. There is more space for introspection, more comfort with silence, and a refusal to rush. The narrative voice does not shout for attention. It draws you in slowly.
This shift is being embraced across formats. In long-form journalism, memoirs, and even in podcast scripts and newsletters, women writers are telling stories that feel like conversations. They are candid, layered, and emotionally honest. They are creating a different kind of authority, not based on loudness or logic alone, but on listening and lived experience.
The Gaze That Expands the Frame
Perhaps the most radical act of the female gaze is that it does not just flip the lens, it widens the frame. It includes queer women, Dalit women, women from small towns and villages, women whose stories have long been dismissed as unremarkable. Writers like Bama, Baby Halder, and Yashica Dutt are expanding the canon, ensuring that the female gaze is not just urban or elite, but plural and intersectional.
Their work shows us that the female gaze is not about exclusion or inversion. It is about multiplicity. It is about seeing more, feeling more, and allowing more voices to coexist. In a world where so much of what we consume is still filtered through patriarchal structures, the female gaze offers not just an alternative, but a necessary corrective.
Even in the world of micro drama, platforms like Reelies are championing the female gaze with layered, women-led stories like Sang Rahiyo, Secret Ameerzadi and I Love Revenge, where love, power, and betrayal collide from a woman’s point of view.
The Future Is Being Written Differently
As women continue to find their voice and claim the pen, the stories we tell and how we tell them will keep evolving. The female gaze in Indian storytelling is not a fleeting trend. It is a tectonic shift in narrative power.
And as more readers and viewers seek stories that feel real, expansive, and emotionally intelligent, women writers are answering the call. Not with loud proclamations, but with quiet revolutions in every line, every sentence, every story.