Urdu popular fiction published in women’s digests in Pakistan frequently presents romance narratives that promote a carefully crafted feminism—one that harmonizes with indigenous culture, religious values, and tactfully addresses patriarchy without condemning it in explicit terms. The phenomenon or concept that I term “careful feminism” represents a nationally contextualized form of feminist thought that emerges from the collaborative efforts of writers and readers of digest genre fiction in Pakistan. It is a subtle effort on the part of the national popular digest genre community of women writers to include global progressive feminist ideologies as an act of subversion, resisting the country’s pervasive patriarchal structures. This study utilizes a mixed-methods approach to elaborate the concept and functioning of careful feminism. The methodology consists of three key components: a close textual analysis of selected works; an explication of the careful feminism model; and an assessment of the model’s validity through interviews with digest readers. The corpus for textual analysis includes 144 issues of the monthly magazines Khawateen Digest and Kiran. These serve as the primary sources for explaining the concept of careful feminism, which is then later validated by semi-structured interviews with 16 Pakistani female readers of the genre. The selection of Khawateen Digest and Kiran is based on their popularity among the genre readers and their availability in the retail ecosystem. Drawing on a theoretical framework informed by scholarship in popular romance studies and feminist theory, this study shows the diversity of feminist ideologies and the meaning-making functions of women’s leisurely reading choices in a patriarchal society.
In Pakistan, monthly women’s digests are published in a flexible paperback format, with a stapled spine, glossy, polychromatic cover, and monochromatic interior pages. These digests are typically compact, with dimensions of approximately 20.3 x 15.2 centimeters (8 x 6 inches), and contain an average of 290 pages.Footnote 1 Academic inquiries into digest fiction in the early 2000s were characterized by a broad, generalist approach, reflecting the nascent state of scholarship in this field at the time, as researchers predominantly focused on establishing the genre’s widespread popularity. Tracing the evolution of the modern Urdu short story and the women-centric narratives of late 19th-and early 20th-century North India, Kamran Asdar Ali shows how popular women’s magazines shape the domestic lives of middle-and lower-middle-class literate women in contemporary Pakistan.Footnote 2 He draws parallels to Western genres, such as Harlequin romances and soap operas, to examine how this national genre of commercially popular digest fiction is often regarded as lowbrow in comparison to more esteemed literary works.Footnote 3 In another study on digest fiction, Nadia Siddiqui utilizes focus group discussions and a reader survey to explore broad themes such as religious morality, romance, the influence of digest reading, and the evolving roles of women in Pakistani society.Footnote 4 Her survey includes 308 Urdu speakers from Pakistan and abroad (both face-to-face and online), and she compares the views of readers and non-readers of the digests to argue that these publications romanticize Islam as the ideal way of life for women and promote traditional values. Siddiqui maintains that the digests “claim responsibility for training their minds,” and “abhor and ‘deface’ the images of liberal and independent women.”Footnote 5 Siddiqui’s arguments are addressed in detail later, to show the evolution of the content in these genre texts.
Kiran Nazir Ahmed’s work, Stories with Oil Stains – The World of Women ‘Digest’ Writers in Pakistan, is the only book-length study on digest genre fiction.Footnote 6 Ahmed argues that digest fiction creates a unique social space that transcends traditional sociocultural boundaries, and “there is a need to go beyond a quick funnelling into good/bad, retrogressive/progressive” to focus on the “other dynamics” present in this genre.Footnote 7 Ahmed states that, in the community of digest readers and writers, “conversations shape identities” and regional or political ideologies give way to “a sociality that is based on a mutuality of feelings and experiential knowledge of what it is like to live as a woman.”Footnote 8 Unlike many other previous studies on digest fiction, Ahmed employs an interdisciplinary methodology that not only integrates qualitative interviews with literary analysis, but also incorporates autoethnographic elements and reflections on her dual role as both a researcher and a participant within the digest community.
Existing literature on the digest genre highlights its widespread appeal and the attributes of the female reading community, with occasional forays into its romantic elements.Footnote 9 However, there remains a significant gap in the scholarly understanding of how this popular national genre engages with progressive ideologies and women’s empowerment. The limited critical attention that Urdu digest fiction receives leans more towards general critique than in-depth literary engagement. Nazia Anwar and Isha Razzaq Butt’s recent discourse analysis, for example, identifies recurring patterns of idealized femininity, hegemonic masculinity, and the internalization of patriarchal gender norms to maintain that “Urdu digest fiction is an effective ideological machine that unexplainably naturalizes gender hierarchies of patriarchy by framing narratives using emotionally convincing language.”Footnote 10 While such broad views are useful in highlighting this national popular genre’s ability to reproduce dominant social structures, they gloss over the nuances of this reading culture. To use the niche research cliché, my study fills the gap in previous scholarship by examining how digest fiction actively engages with, and attempts to advance, contemporary feminist discourses through subtly embedded challenges to gender norms. My focus is on the sub genre of romance, which I critically engage with in a way that accounts for its ideological complexity, not as a neat lowbrow package.
My engagement with the genre commenced in the 2010s, but the corpus selected for this study consists of issues of Khawateen Digest and Kiran published over a six-year period, from July 2019 to July 2025. The digests are released monthly, resulting in a comprehensive dataset of 144 magazines, which, combined with my prior genre knowledge, ensures a strong foundation for analyzing both continuity and change within the field. On average, one digest publication in Pakistan contains a novella, two short stories, and a serialized novel that typically continues for at least one year. A common perception of the genre is that it only contains romance stories that give young women “an ideal version of a romantic relationship and married life.”Footnote 11 However, not all of the stories are romances—the serialized novels are sometimes thrillers or sociocultural narratives that may or may not have a happy ending. From the corpus of 144 digests analyzed, I identified 98 stories that closely align with the genre structure of popular romance as defined in predominantly Anglophone romance studies. To analyze the careful feminism construct in the romance narratives of the digests, I borrowed the “genre world” theory proposed by Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscol, and Lisa Fletcher, who define a genre world as “a textual, social, and industrial complex in which people work together to create and circulate specific types of books.”Footnote 12 Although the genre world model is drawn in an Anglophone context, I find it highly relevant for scaffolding research on the Urdu popular fiction landscape in Pakistan.
The publisher of the two digests selected for this study, Khawateen Digest and Kiran, is Aazar Riaz Publishers, based in Pakistan’s commercial hub of Karachi, which has served as the geographical center of digest publishing since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. In the 1980s, the digest publishing culture was significantly reshaped by Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization policies, which pushed digests with sexually explicit content out of the market and created conditions for a boom in women-centric publications oriented around domestic life.Footnote 13 The digests that emerged from this shift are stories of domesticity written by and for Pakistani women, commanding the highest circulation figures among all fiction genres sold in the country.Footnote 14 Their actual readership extends even further, as copies circulate through used bookshops and are shared among multiple readers, making the true audience considerably larger than circulation numbers alone suggest.Footnote 15 The world of digest production and circulation in Pakistan can easily be seen as a genre world in which social, cultural, religious, and educational elements play a crucial role in shaping readers’ interactions with and understanding of genre texts. Moreover, in Wilkins, Driscol, and Fletcher’s genre world model, genre competence refers to the ability of readers to discern meanings in genre texts that may not be seen by those unfamiliar with the genre. This skill is developed through extensive engagement with the texts.Footnote 16 In the context of my study, the genre competence of the readers of Urdu popular romances makes them acutely aware of the careful feminism framework that the national genre world carves for them.
In popular romance studies, a romance novel is typically defined as a narrative focusing on the emotional and romantic relationship between two main characters, culminating in an optimistic and emotionally satisfying ending. The group of American readers in Janice Radways’s oft-quoted seminal study, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, defined romance as a story of “two people who come together for one reason or another, grow to love each other and work together solving problems along the way—united for a purpose.”Footnote 17 Pamela Regis points out that the “romance novel puts the heroine at the center of the book, at least coequal with the hero, or occupying more of the spotlight than he does.”Footnote 18 In this way, “the romance novel’s focus on the heroine, then, is a focus on women’s problems.”Footnote 19 The romance novel, which has a love story and a heroine at its center, also allegedly provides an imagined escape to the readers by offering a world separate from daily life.Footnote 20 The romance escape requires emotional engagement and a willingness to surrender to the narrative, resulting in an amplified experience distinct from reality.
Discussing women’s engagement with popular romance fiction in the Western context, Stephanie Moody emphasizes the importance of affective reading practices, arguing that women have “a desire to feel their way through romance novels, to empathize, to identify, to be emotionally invested in and carried away by texts.”Footnote 21 Through reader interviews, she compares romance leisure reading practices with schoolroom reading practices to argue that women’s affective, embodied, and escapist reading practices of romances “are constitutive of an alternative framework for approaching texts and can provide critical pedagogues ways of thinking about the knowledges produced through such engagements.”Footnote 22 Readers’ engagement with romance novels not only offers opportunities for deep reflection but also reflects their ability “to recognize the instances where genre conventions conflict with ideological frameworks.”Footnote 23 The women in Moody’s study “primarily read for escape and pleasure,” but they also experienced “moments of the kind of analytical engagement promoted by critical pedagogies, especially when identifications with romantic characters fall short, disappoint, or change.”Footnote 24 Moody’s argument about the affective and escapist reading practices of Western romance readers can be easily extended to understand the culture of digest fiction in Pakistan, wherein women engage with the genre for both leisure and reflection. The digests’ romance narratives are a rich site for exploring feminism in the Pakistani cultural context because these stories both provide escapism and blend emotional investment with analytical engagement.
The evolution of the popular romance genre carries distinct meanings for diverse audiences and varies significantly across cultural contexts. Catherine M. Roach notes that romance novels “mirror shifting sexual norms for women,” and increasingly incorporate explicit sexual content and explore themes of self-discovery through active sexuality, moving away from traditional narratives centered on marriage.Footnote 25 Living in a patriarchal society translates differently for a “Western, educated, professional white woman” than a woman of color in the developing world, who is often denied the right to education.Footnote 26 In extending this theorization to the case of Urdu popular romance narratives, I am aware of my class privilege and my study analyzes these narratives as reflections of evolving female sexual norms in different cultural contexts. Any sexual relationship or an allegation of sexual relationship between consenting, unmarried adult men and women is a punishable offense in Pakistan, and love marriages cause irreparable damage to family honor, often leading to quasi-legal executions of women in rural areas.Footnote 27 Sexual orientations outside the sphere of heterosexuality are highly stigmatized due to religious and social values.Footnote 28 While digest genre fiction remains confined to heteronormative Muslim narratives, subtle changes in the portrayal of women’s issues and social emancipation are discernible even within the conservative Pakistani society.
My exploration of popular digest literature addresses the intersections between canonical writing and popular women’s writing. Although popular digest literature derives from established literary traditions, the dynamics of genre worlds are different. Afroz Taj notes that while women wrote approximately half of all Urdu novels published in India and Pakistan between 1947–1990, “Urdu pulp fiction was not considered literature by the arbiters of belles-lettres and thus was not collected by academic libraries.”Footnote 29 Taj analyzes A.R. Khatun’s popular Urdu novels, which do not follow a strict formula, but typically feature young female protagonists navigating family and marital conflicts, maintaining strict adherence to social and moral expectations while carefully balancing contemporary influences with traditional values.Footnote 30 The following pages carry out a close reading of selected romance narratives and an analysis of conversations with 16 Pakistani Urdu romance readers to better understand the genre’s evolution within the societal restrictions.
As previously noted, this study relies on a comprehensive analysis of a corpus of 144 issues of Khawateen Digest and Kiran monthly magazines from July 2019 to July 2025. From this sample, I identified 98 narratives as popular romance due to their happy-ending feature. Jodi McAlister, writing within the Anglophone context, highlights that the defining feature of the romance genre, as agreed by both industry professionals and readers, is the happy ending, where protagonists form a committed relationship that is either long term (“happy for now” or HFN) or permanent (“happily ever after” or HEA).Footnote 31 The two recognized key elements of the romance genre are that it must have “a central love story” and “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.”Footnote 32 In the context of the Pakistani digest genre, love stories and happy endings function in different and similar ways. While the love story sometimes appears to be sidelined, to highlight pressing social issues, the connection between the system of rewards for the good ones and punishment for the bad ones is inextricably connected with the heterosexual “happily ever after,” gesturing to the centrality of the romance narrative. A recurring trope in genre digests is the affirmation of romantic love between husband and wife, often through the reconciliation of their differences and the strengthening of their social position as a happily married couple.
The construction of careful feminism in digest romance fiction is linked to the history of Urdu literature in the subcontinent, the history of digests, and the parallel reading of anglophone romance fiction. Narrating the history of Urdu writing, Amina Yaqin connects the rise in ideological depictions of the secular and religious, two conflicting forces, with the increase in the production of Urdu books between 1868–1895 and the association of Urdu narratives with Muslim identity.Footnote 33 She examines three canonical Urdu novels, Miratul Arus, Bihishti Zewar, and Umrao Jan Ada, and shares that gendered politics in the Urdu literary landscape “utilizes feminine voice to maintain the moral credentials of an authentic Islam.”Footnote 34 Yaqin writes that the circulation of the earliest forms of the Urdu novel relied on its female readership. Novelists such as Nazir Ahmad educated their readers in “the etiquette of being good wives, mothers and daughters and leading virtuous, purposeful lives.”Footnote 35 Ahmad’s acclaimed novel Miratul Arus continues to be popular to this day, “inspiring the heroines scripted by women digest writers, television drama adaptations and school curricula.”Footnote 36 In this way, the Urdu novel created new audiences, particularly a female readership, who were schooled in the morality of being good.
The careful feminism model of contemporary digest fiction is more in line with the genre’s reformative and didactic heritage than the progressive elements. The South Asian Urdu literary idiom has historically avoided the acknowledgement and attraction of the central love story. What can be clearly termed as the popular genre romance novel was labelled as the social novel because “‘romance’ in the sense of love before—or outside of—marriage was a taboo topic,” and the limelight was given to family politics and marriage decisions.Footnote 37 The writers of the genre exclusively known as “rūmānī (‘romantic’)” were “almost exclusively men, and young, unmarried women were discouraged from reading such works.”Footnote 38 My conversations with readers of contemporary digest fiction reveal the continued legacy of the inherent taboo around the term “romance” and its association with a progressive, liberal class that is different from the middle-class restrictions and limitations of the everyday lives of Urdu digest readers. There is no visibility of Anglophone popular romance fiction, such as category romance novels or single-title romance novels, in the retail genre world of the readers of digest fiction. In my work, I have noted the classed and gendered structure of leisure reading in Pakistan.Footnote 39 The book shops that sell the latest issues of digests and resell old issues at half or less than half price are located in lower-income neighborhoods, which are not frequented by urban readers of popular romance novels written in English.Footnote 40
Studying the digest genre fiction in 2012, Siddiqui reported that “it was rare to find stories about highly educated and successful working women,” and “there was no story or article that raised concerns over domestic abuse or violence against women.”Footnote 41 The stories in digests revolved around “the art of becoming a ‘good’ woman, through adjustment, compromise, patience and tolerance, while the overall advice offered directly by editors and agony aunts in other sections is to deal with problems in silence.”Footnote 42 Siddiqui maintained that, in the genre landscape, education is viewed as a means to achieve Islamic knowledge and socially accepted values, and for many young women reader and writers, obtaining an institutional degree is a temporary engagement until marriage, which is regarded as a key milestone in their lives.
The overall themes and style of digest genre fiction, especially romance narratives, have evolved in the last ten years—a shift that can be attributed to increased exposure to the global world through easy access to the internet. This evolution does not invalidate Siddiqui’s earlier findings or suggest a sudden, dramatic progression in the status of Pakistani women, however. Rather, it is what Mary Bly suggests: very often, romance texts, patriarchy, and readers of romance “are reduced to ciphers in an ideological argument whose wide parameters diminish its value.”Footnote 43 Bly further states that analysis of romance narratives “would greatly benefit from more rigorous assessments of the complex and time-specific ways by which culture influences women’s lives.”Footnote 44 Building on popular romance studies that discuss the link between women’s issues and reading preferences, along with research exploring feminism in the Pakistani context, I now demonstrate how these digests tailor a careful feminism for their readers.
The careful feminism in digest romance genre fiction
The careful feminism model of romance narratives is arguably the most defining feature of the Pakistani digest genre world, as the model attempts to delineate and reinforce the complex and often nebulous boundaries imposed on women in the conservative, patriarchal context of South Asian society. The narratives navigate a delicate balance, subtly addressing feminist concerns while remaining mindful of prevailing social norms and expectations. The careful feminism conceptual model has three major domains: empowerment within cultural constraints, negotiation of traditional and modern values, and a subtle critique of patriarchy. These domains do not exist in isolation; rather, they are spread across the entire digest genre fiction, overlapping and manifesting themselves in a variety of ways. A character’s negotiation of traditional and modern values may get an expression through the critique of patriarchy. For example, in the romance story “Sheeshay key Par” (Wings of Glass), the relationship between the heroine, Zeemal, and her father, Zaka, offers a nuanced exploration of familial support and gendered expectations, exemplifying the careful feminism model of this study.Footnote 45 The dynamic between Zeemal and Zaka challenges the traditional patriarchal structures often critiqued by romance studies and instead presents strong paternal encouragement tempered with cautionary wisdom.
Zaka gives unwavering support for Zeemal’s ambition to become a television drama writer, but also emphasizes the significance of maintaining humility in life. He tells his daughter the tale of a princess who went flying over her petrified kingdom with her glass wings to explain the precarious nature of ambition and success in a world that remains hostile to female achievements.Footnote 46 The wings of glass metaphorically encapsulate the tension between empowerment and vulnerability that contemporary romance heroines face and contemporary Pakistani female readers experience in their everyday lives. In a significant twist, the author, Qurat-ul-Ain Khurram Hashmi, adds a feminist moment of triumph in Zeemal’s happily ever after ending with the hero, Azfar. When Zeemal faces harassment, Zaka and Azfar not only refuse to blame Zeemal, which is an uncommon act in the Pakistani context of honor killing and victim blaming, but both men also sue the harasser. Hashmi narrates:
Zaka’s thoughts were not just with Zeemal, but with all the girls in society who become victims of blackmail or defamation when their private data is criminally exploited on social media. It was crucial to take legal action against Aamir to send a message that individuals like him must learn that girls can stand up against abuse and violence. Women are not the sole bearers of honor—men can lose theirs as well.Footnote 47
Through the development of characters and their dialogues, the story especially illustrates how the constraints of the domains of careful feminism empower women.
Discussing the relationship between women, Islam, and the Pakistani nation-state, Saadia Toor writes:
women are generally interpellated as repositories of their culture and tradition and as embodying the honor of their kin/community, and the nation is imagined not just in communitarian but actually in familial terms, control over women’s (and occasionally men’s) sexuality becomes a constitutive feature of the process of nation-state formation.Footnote 48
In such a society, where the very idea of women’s emancipation is problematically linked with religion and society, the empowering stance of the story’s two main male characters offers a subtle critique of the prevalent patriarchal structures. Zaka’s support for Zeemal’s ambitions is tempered by caution and aptly symbolized by the “wings of glass” metaphor. This caution gives a more nuanced angle to both leading male characters’ refusal to blame Zeemal for the harassment she endures and their insistence on taking legal action against her harasser.
In the romance novella Aik Khawab Tha (It was a Dream), author Naeema Naz subverts traditional genre expectations by way of the heroine, Bubbly, whose apparent adherence to domestic ideals belies the determination of her spirit.Footnote 49 Bubbly’s quiet demeanor and devotion to household management are misinterpreted by the antagonist, Faizi, as indicators of intellectual inferiority, but readers are made fully aware of Bubbly’s capacity for astute analysis and unwavering self-determination. The debates between Bubbly and Faizi over the former’s chosen domesticity introduces a contemporary discourse on female empowerment and autonomy to the story. Bubbly’s response to Faizi’s suggested career as a TikTok content creator is her explicit refusal to “rely on her face card, expensive dresses, and coquettish behavior.”Footnote 50 The novella’s happy ending, featuring Bubbly’s marriage to the hero, Hashir, might suggest an endorsement of traditional patriarchal values, but closer reading reveals a more nuanced exploration of female agency. Bubbly’s articulate responses to both the hero and the villain highlight her wit and choices, including domesticity, as expressions of personal empowerment rather than societal imposition. Furthermore, the inclusion of Laiba, Faizi’s wife and a social media personality, as a victim of domestic abuse introduces an intersectional perspective on women’s experiences. The subplot and Bubbly’s quiet inner strength falls in the domain of empowerment within cultural constraints, while Faizi’s character provides a subtle critique of blatant patriarchal values.
One method of establishing the domain of the subtle critique of patriarchy is the digest genre’s attempts to explain masculinity to the readers. Writing about Anglophone popular romance, Jonathan A. Allan argues that masculinity is shaped by cultural dynamics and “always contingent on the social conditions in which it operates, continuously adapting to reinforce ‘the legitimacy of patriarchy’.”Footnote 51 Allan notes that men can “never achieve all of the qualities we define as masculine, precisely because these are always in flux, always changing, and this is precisely why the male in romance is so ideal, such an object of fascination and fantasy.”Footnote 52 In the context of digest genre romance narratives, masculinity is often defined by the hero’s unwavering respect for the heroine. A key element of this respect is the hero’s complete confidence in the heroine’s sound moral character; he harbors no doubts about her integrity. The hero’s refusal to exploit any woman—whether socially or financially—forms a crucial component of his masculinity, showcasing his ethical strength and reliability as a romantic partner. In the “Wings of Glass,” Azfar is described as the “perfect man” and “reliable life partner” because of his ability to support Zeemal and give her “the confidence to walk with her head held high.”Footnote 53 Faizi, the antagonist in It Was a Dream, faces social boycott and condemnation because he abuses his wife and does not know how to respect women, while Hashir, the hero, is highly respectful of Bubbly’s life choices and values her opinions.
The romance narratives in digest fiction frequently prioritize the hero’s supportive nature over his physical attributes, accentuating the ways in which he stands by the heroine’s side. Such a representation of the main heterosexual male character subtly suggests that female emancipation can be achieved within patriarchal frameworks. So, in the careful feminism framework, the happily ever after is realized through a man who respects and consistently supports his life partner, thereby reconciling traditional gender roles with progressive ideals of female empowerment. For example, in “Muntazir Naye Rastun Key” (Waiting for New Paths), the hero, Muneer, has “deep black eyes that exuded familiarity and comfort,” attracting the heroine, Arooba, to him.Footnote 54 Arooba’s journey shows her evolving priorities through her life choices and ideas of a romantic partner. Initially, she rejects Muneer’s proposal in favor of Hashir, who offers greater financial security. However, her tumultuous marriage to Hashir, marked by his anger issues and unfounded paranoia about her fidelity, lead Arooba to reassess her values. After reevaluating her relationship with Hashir, Arooba comes to appreciate Muneer’s quiet steadfastness. Her eventual declaration of love emphasizes Muneer’s authenticity and sincerity: “His tone was straightforward and not deceptive, without a trace of pretense. His words, his gestures, and the meaningful moment between them touched Arooba’s heart.”Footnote 55 The romance narrative arc thus valorizes emotional stability and genuine character over material wealth or the superficial attributes of an ideal Pakistani masculine figure.
Women’s financial independence is a key theme in the selected romance fiction texts, two-page short stories, and readers’ letters to the editor sections of digests. In this distinctive South Asian genre world of popular fiction, it is not essential for women to have careers, as they are entitled to receive financial support from their fathers or husbands—a right granted by religion. However, women are not supposed to cross the unwritten boundaries of social conduct, and must always respect the traditional structures of matrimony and the patriarchal family system. Eirini Arvanitaki analyzes the heroines in modern, postmillennial Harlequin Mills & Boon novels who initially appear to embody traits of 21st-century independence, empowerment, and feminist ideals, but later abandon their feminist principles in favor of traditional heterosexual relationships.Footnote 56 Arvanitaki argues that the “formula of popular romance fiction temporarily incorporates elements of modernity” or “signals of feminism,” but maintains its “boy meets girl” storyline retains its “essence.”Footnote 57 The essence of digest romance fiction is far more conservative than the essence of modern Anglophone romance novels because the former have to work within a regressive social structure to carefully craft a space of romance and emancipation for readers.
The three domains of careful feminism—empowerment within cultural constraints, negotiation of traditional and modern values, and a subtle critique of patriarchy—work together to create a layered code of conduct for women readers. Beth Driscoll, in her recent study on contemporary readers of Anglophone fiction, notes that women’s practice of reading novels has historically been seen as morally dangerous, an attitude that still lingers today in the idea that popular fiction is indulgent or shameful.Footnote 58 However, reading is now largely seen as a moral good, especially when compared with screen-based activities. Driscoll places the “positive moral expectations of reading” into “two overlapping categories: first, the expectation that reading will make you a better person, and second, the expectation that readers will make society a better place.”Footnote 59 Extending Driscoll’s comments about the moral force of reading practices to the context of digest genre, I argue that the careful feminism model disseminates moral codes to women readers through these texts. The transmission of ethical paradigms via this popular medium connects with and impacts the everyday realities of the audience. As Ahmed reminds us,
the question of what it means to live as a woman in contemporary Pakistan is a central one in digest fiction. Given the variety of background of readers and writers, there are numerous and diverse answers to this question. However, simultaneously there is a certain contextualization that occurs partly on the basis of editorial control and partly because of the perceived sensibilities of digest readers.Footnote 60
The careful feminism model is one way of contextualizing new, continually arising questions about women’s issues and identities in Pakistan.
Readers’ reception of careful feminism
Following the identification and analysis of selected romance narratives in Khawateen Digest and Kiran, this study now progresses to an empirical validation phase to discuss the findings of a reader-response analysis designed to corroborate and refine the careful feminism model. Using my engagement with digest reading groups on Facebook and in acquaintance circles, I contacted and interviewed 16 readers (Table 1) of digest genre fiction online and in-person, using an ethical protocol that ensured anonymity and avoidance of religious or politically sensitive questions.Footnote 61 Semi-structured interviews, lasting approximately 50–60 minutes each, were conducted, recorded, and transcribed. The interviews were originally conducted in Urdu and participant names have been replaced by common Pakistani names. The interview protocol was structured to obtain reader’ interpretations, emotional responses, and perceived behavioral influences stemming from their engagement with digest genre. Particular attention was paid to readers’ perceptions of feminist themes, negotiation of traditional and moral values, and their reception of the moral codes disseminated through these texts. This approach bridges the gap between textual analysis and lived experience of genre readers.
Demographic, Educational, and Reading Profile of the Participants
Table 1. Long description
A table categorizing readers by age group, gender, education level, years of reading, and geographic location. The table has 5 columns and 16 rows. The columns are labeled Category, Subcategory, and Number of readers. The rows are grouped under different categories: Age group, Gender, Education level, Years of reading, and Geographic Location. Row 1: Age group, 18-30, 3. Row 2: Age group, 31-45, 9. Row 3: Age group, 46-60, 4. Row 4: Gender, Female, 16. Row 5: Education level, High school [Intermediate], 7. Row 6: Education level, Graduate, 4. Row 7: Education level, Postgraduate, 5. Row 8: Years of reading, 0-5 years, 3. Row 9: Years of reading, 5-10 years, 0. Row 10: Years of reading, 11+ years, 13. Row 11: Geographic Location, Lahore, 5. Row 12: Geographic Location, Karachi, 4. Row 13: Geographic Location, Kasur, 1. Row 14: Geographic Location, Rawalpindi, 1. Row 15: Geographic Location, Bhakkar, 1. Row 16: Geographic Location, Sahiwal, 1. Row 17: Geographic Location, Peshawar, 1. Row 18: Geographic Location, Jehlum, 1. Row 19: Geographic Location, Pind Dadan Khan, 1.
Participants were asked the following open-ended questions:
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1. How often do you read fiction? How Long you have been reading Khawateen Digest and Kiran?
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2. Can you describe your ideal reading environment or routine?
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3. What kind of stories most resonate with you?
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4. What is your image of an ideal Pakistani woman?
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5. Should women get an education?
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6. Should women get married?
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7. Should they have a choice in their marriage?
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8. Should they obey their elders and listen to their parents, husbands, in-laws?
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9. How do you feel about the representation of Pakistani women in these digests?
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10. Do the digests explore any feminist themes? If so, how do these align with or differ from your own understanding of feminism?
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11. Has your reading changed or reinforced any of your views on women’s rights or roles in society? How so?
The interview protocol was structured as casual, conversational exchanges, to facilitate open and authentic responses from participants. My positionality as a digest genre reader was explicitly acknowledged and integrated into the interview process. Interviews were conducted over a seven-month period, from January 2024 to July 2024. This timeframe allowed repeat conversations with participants, until the point of theoretical saturation.
All 16 of this study’s participants were female readers of digest genre narratives. Their age distribution ranged from 18–60, with the majority (9 of 16) falling into the 31–45 age range. Therefore, the data is skewed towards the perspectives of middle-aged readers, with some representation from younger and older age groups. Another limitation is the geographic spread, which, while somewhat concentrated in major cities, still offers an opportunity to conduct a comparative analysis of urban and rural perspectives. Participants came from various locations across Pakistan, with the largest concentrations from Lahore (five participants) and Karachi (four participants). The remaining seven participants came from different cities and towns, including Kasur, Rawalpindi, Bhakkar, Sahiwal, Peshawar, Jehlum, and Pind Dadan Khan. This geographic spread provides a mix of urban and rural perspectives, potentially allowing for comparisons between readers from different regions. Furthermore, popular Urdu romance authors utilize digital platforms to expand their readership beyond traditional print audiences. These authors actively engage online communities through strategic digital presence. For example, Umera Ahmed maintains official Instagram and Facebook accounts, sharing online excerpts from her novels and television drama clips adapted from her works. Ahmed also provides free PDF downloads of her previous novels on her website and distributes audiobooks via YouTube. Another popular Urdu writer, Nemra Ahmed, has launched a dedicated app for Quranic education, which monetizes her distinctive teaching approach. Ahmed’s Instagram account, while maintaining personal privacy, showcases her global travels and reader interactions, as she seeks input on story endings and promotes career-focused, modest female protagonists.
In terms of education, the participants represented a variety of educational backgrounds. Seven had a high school education, four were graduates, and five held postgraduate degrees. This diversity in educational qualifications raises questions about the general assumption of genre readers and is likely to impact their engagement with and interpretation of digest narratives. One notable feature of the sample is the length of time participants had been reading digest genres. The vast majority (13 of 16) reported reading these narratives for over 11 years, indicating a sample of highly experienced, long-term readers. Only three participants had been reading for five years or less, and interestingly, there were no participants who had been reading for between five to ten years. The all-female sample supports the traditional readership patterns in romance genres but may limit insight into potential male readership. The high proportion of long-term readers validates what Wilkins, Driscol, and Fletcher identify as “genre competence,” which, in genre worlds, is “a type of knowledge gathered by ‘repeated encounters with genre texts’ that equip people to ‘recognize, respond to, and reproduce conventions specific to genres.’”Footnote 62 The genre competence of this study’s sample of digest readers emphasizes their ability to decode, interpret, and implement the careful feminism model in their lives.
The interviews with digest readers validated the careful feminism model developed with the help of romance narratives. The digest stories resonate strongly with readers, and they refused to acknowledge this genre of fiction as escapist leisurely reading. These women were predominantly Muslim, did not believe that religion confines women to the home, and valued the digests as a more significant and impactful leisurely activity than television and films. The first two interview questions and their slight variations established the readers’ level of engagement with the genre, contextualizing their responses within their reading experience. The participants’ minimum reading experience was five years, with three participants noting with immense pleasure that they had never counted their years of reading. Thirty-five-year-old Farah said, “I have been reading Khawateen Digest for over 15 years I think, or is it more? Who counts when they start reading? The magazines were always there on my mother’s bedside table. They are now like a friend who has grown up with me.” I asked Farah if her mother stopped her from reading the digests when she was young and she shared that her mother neither stopped nor encouraged her to read the digests. “They were just lying there, and I had access to them. But it was only during my college years that I actually started talking about the stories with her. Now we discuss everything. “She really thinks that I don’t really love my husband because my true love was Salaar Sikander.”Footnote 63 It is important to note that while interviews did not include questions about participants’ marital status, it frequently came up during the conversations.
While discussing readers relationship to the digest narratives and the physicality of the digest, it is useful to refer to some of Karin Littau’s arguments in Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania.Footnote 64 Littau maintains that the message is conveyed through the medium of reading, and the materiality of the reading experience has a profound and varied effect on the reader’s body and mind. The “materiality in which writing comes to us—whether in the form of engraved tablets, scrolls, bound pages for the codex, mass-produced printed copies, or on-line hypertexts available anywhere by anyone—is an important factor in shaping our relation to the written word.”Footnote 65 Littau looks at reading as an activity and books as “material objects which determine modes and habits of reading.”Footnote 66 In the context of this study, the inherent portability of popular Urdu digests, their lightweight paper and flexible bindings, facilitates accessibility and ease of use in varied reading settings, such as kitchens, clothes washing areas, and bedrooms.
The digests provide a special space of personal reflection for readers. Twenty-five-year-old Nida, who works in a bank in Karachi, shared that she reads digests on the weekend and they relax her:
It is my time. After lunch and Zohar prayer, I take the digests to my room and just don’t stop reading. I end up taking the digests with me to the kitchen and then to the lounge. Sad that I can’t take them to the bathroom as they have Quranic verses in them.
For 19-year-old Saira in Jehlum, the morning is the best time for reading digests, “I love reading in the quiet of early morning before the family wakes up. It is so peaceful then.” Some readers, such as Huma, talked about digest reading as a collective social activity. Living in the small city of Bhakkar, Huma, aged 23, shared that “Reading the digests is the best fun activity for me and my sisters and cousins. We discuss the stories, and the stories are about us, so they make sense. That and the television dramas are what we gossip about all the time.” Discussing the significance of preserving Pakistani women’s oral traditions, Suchi Kothari argues that gossip has been devalued in much the same manner as women’s cultural and popular taste, but that women still find their own voices and points of view through gossip: “Gossip becomes more than the promotion of moral consensus and generation of group esteem; it creates a familiar set of verbal and non-verbal codes that women share with each other and that men often do not understand.”Footnote 67 The stigmatized, frivolous act of gossiping about romance carries many shades of significance in the readers’ genre world. As Saira said, “One of my cousins thinks she is too special and too pure to read digests and there are only love stories in them. And my other cousins and I have so much fun discussing the stories and we especially enjoy when she [the non-reader] feels left out of the conversations. Crazy!”
The respondents initially only gave guarded responses on their story preferences. In the first interview, they were comfortable talking about narratives that balance traditional values with progressive ideas; it was only in the second round of conversations that participants began talking about romance narratives. Twenty-five-year-old Amna told me that she loved “stories where women find their goals in life.” While answering questions about marriage choices and obedience, all respondents gave approximately same answer, summarized as follows:
Everyone has the right to choose their life partner and Islam endorses their right. There is no harm in getting married for love, but it is preferable to involve parents and family elders in the decision to ensure their blessings are obtained. Men and women who disobey their parents and marry against their advice are not likely to have a stable and happy marriage. Love and respect are the most significant components in a matrimonial relationship, and even if love is absent in the beginning of an arranged marriage, a woman should never compromise on her dignity and respect.
Readers frequently used the Urdu word khawahish with reference to the decision-making authorities of middle-class Pakistani society, parents and elder relatives. The literal translation of khawahish in the English idiom is “wish” or “desire” and the readers linked their desires and wishes naturally with the figures of social authority in their lives. Talking about a popular national feminist movement, Aurat March (Women’s March), the authors Batool, Mujeeba, and Malik note that one major reason for the backlash against the activism was the controversial usage of the slogan “my body, my choice.”Footnote 68 Women demanded control over their sexuality and reproductive health, which appeared threatening to the patriarchal Pakistani family system. The assertion of authority and choice “not only threatens the family system but also questions the role men play in society as caretakers, custodians, and breadwinners.”Footnote 69 A survey included in the latest issue of Kiran, which poses questions to digest writers and readers, features the question: “Do you think Aurat March aligns with our social values? Does Aurat March represent women’s problems truly? What can we do to make it better?”Footnote 70 All six respondents shared negative opinions about the movement, arguing that the March contradicts religious and cultural values and does little for the betterment of women. One respondent, Shagufta Farhat, wrote, “This Aurat March is an attempt to imitate Western women that does not help women and only humiliates them by bringing them onto the streets.”Footnote 71 The idea of being labelled as a threat to social and moral structures is disturbing for many Pakistani women, regardless of their economic or educational status.
The readers thoughts of romance were intrinsically linked with sanctions from both their family and society. Their wings of glass, to borrow the metaphor from Hashmi’s story, allow them to fly with certain limits and cautions about social boundaries. In a recent study, Elliot Marcel Montpellier explored scenes from three popular Pakistan television dramas, written by authors who gained fame as digest writers, to show how collective notions of piety are created through visual registers.Footnote 72 While exploring prayer scenes and visual pious adornments within televised narratives, Montpellier draws attention to the complex ways in which a strict moral code is strategically “placed” on urban women.Footnote 73 The code subtly implies that to achieve empowerment, women must first abide by socially sanctioned behaviors, such as following conservative codes of dress and accepting every act of injustice with fortitude.Footnote 74 Montpellier states that the complicated role played by “religious outlooks” in these television narratives is “never mentioned directly, but instead is made apparent through the emotional registers of the characters in relation to behaviors and visual tropes.”Footnote 75 The theorization of collective constructs of piety corroborates my careful feminism conceptual model that underlines how female empowerment is tied to cultural constraints and promotes a rigorous negotiation of traditional and modern values.
The interviews with readers of Khawateen Digest and Kiran reflected a constant and highly ambiguous negotiation between modernity, piety, culture, and female empowerment. While these women consistently expressed beliefs aligned with feminist principles, they simultaneously harbored a deep-seated aversion to the English word “feminism” itself, which has recently infiltrated the popular cultural repertoire of Pakistan. Amna Chauhdry says that this society sanctions some feminist issues while censoring others: “A ‘good’ Pakistani feminist embodies ideals that are supported by dominant social and cultural institutions and validates pre-existing notions of what is ‘culturally appropriate.’”Footnote 76 To be a good feminist, a woman must never call herself a feminist, show acceptance of cultural values, and assert her belief in fighting for equality and the rights of all genders. Chauhdry writes that feminism in Pakistan “is inherently anxious, mirroring the worries around defining what it means to be a ‘good’ Pakistani woman. ‘Good’ Pakistani feminists do not transgress boundaries. The braid, as thick and unrelenting as ever, coils around them and they must contort themselves into various positions for fear of tripping over.”Footnote 77 In a similar vein, Rafia Zakaria writes, “the vision of Pakistani womanhood, like that of the nation itself, was to be a hybrid between modernity and faith, tradition and progress.”Footnote 78 Zakaria asserts that women, mostly middle and lower middle class, often find mobility in taking an Islamic stance.
The linguistic aversion to the word feminism is thus rooted in the complex interplay between societal pressures and cultural norms. To quote Fatima, a 32-old private school teacher from Lahore, “I believe women should have equal rights and opportunities, but we already have all the rights if we follow Islam in the right way. Bringing in feminism is unnecessary.” Huma echoed this sentiment: “Stories in digests are very sensible and give practical knowledge according to the ground realities. Everyone should have their rights, and no one is stopping women, but women should know how to behave themselves, especially around men.” The disconnect between readers’ understanding of freedom and their reluctance to embrace the feminist label persisted throughout the study. Their responses painted a picture of women caught between progressive ideals and conservative societal expectations. Nadia, a 52-year-old business owner from Lahore, was particularly averse to the word feminism:
I run my own boutique, and I am proud that I support the education and every other expense of my two children. But if you think that I don’t respect my culture and values, then you are wrong. You asked me why I read the digests, let me tell you why. These stories are real and give hope. I read them when I got married and I knew nothing and had no sisters to tell me how to deal with a husband or relatives-in-law. And I read them when I was all alone after the death of my husband. I am not a feminist, and I don’t want my daughter to be one. I want her to be a strong, independent woman who can take decisions for herself, knows her manners, and who will find her true love in a good man.
Nadia’s detailed comments and emotional response to and preference for digest genre fiction reflect the ways in which the apparently contradictory social understandings of genre romance fiction and feminism harmonize to form the layers of careful feminism.
Conclusion
The careful feminism model is a defining feature of Pakistani digest romance narratives, as evidenced by both textual analysis and reader responses. While the analysis and application of the model is limited to a five-year corpus and 16 interviews with genre readers, it can easily be extended to other genres of popular Urdu fiction in the country. The model attempts to pin down the slippery definitions of nebulous boundaries that are imposed on women in the conservative, patriarchal context of South Asian society, and subtly addresses feminist concerns while remaining mindful of prevailing social norms and expectations. Historically, “women’s novels in Urdu were mass produced for a readership that was largely educated, middle class and socially conservative.”Footnote 79 Urdu digest fiction in the contemporary national context is low brow, lower middle class, socially conservative, and makes consistent efforts to convey a careful feminist footing. The readers and the reading spaces of Urdu popular fiction are socially and economically different from the readers of Anglophone popular romance fiction, which has its retail ecosystem in upscale neighborhoods and middlebrow reading status.Footnote 80
This mixed-methods study underlines the potential of the popular romance genre to present progressive ideas without alienating readers or overtly challenging societal norms. As Arielle Zibrak states in an Anglophone context, unlike “explicitly feminist texts or political scholarship that purport to encourage a call to action,”
romances demand nothing of their readers beyond their own experience of pleasure. They do not force us to do hard work, to labor for our own liberation, or even our own survival, every single day while we endure the lack of power we have over it. They create a moment of not doing the work and not even pretending to care about it—a spiritual rest we all deserve.Footnote 81
Extending the idea of “spiritual rest” to Pakistani readers helps to understand their engagement with romance narratives in digests, which goes beyond mere entertainment, providing them with quasi-religious relief and social strength. The romance narratives seamlessly blend empowerment, value negotiation, and a subtle critique of patriarchy, representing the challenges and aspirations of an average middle-and lower-middle-class woman in Pakistan and reflecting the flexibility and soft power of this nationally popular genre with a global outreach.
Open access
