Gender, Language, and Power in Contemporary Indian Women's Writing

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection of gender, language, and power in twenty-first-century Indian women's writing, analyzing how contemporary women writers deploy linguistic and narrative strategies to challenge patriarchal structures, assert female subjectivity, and reimagine gender relations in the Indian context. Through close readings of works by Arundhati Roy, Meena Kandasamy, Geetanjali Shree, and Janice Pariat, the study investigates how women writers use stylistic innovation, multilingual practice, narrative form, and the representation of women's speech as tools of feminist resistance. The paper argues that language is both a site of patriarchal oppression and a resource for feminist transformation in Indian literature.