Feminism: patriarchy and gender equality

Detail

1. Core ideas

• Feminism means that women and men should have equal rights.
• Feminists say most inequality between women and men is made by society, not by nature.

• So it is not necessary. Society can change it.

• Patriarchy is a social, economic and cultural system. It values men more than women and gives men power over women.

• Its defence is that "natural" differences between the sexes justify the gap in power.

• Feminism challenges that defence.

• Sex–gender distinction:

• Sex is biology. Gender is the role society gives to each sex.
• Example: only women can bear children. That does not mean only women should raise them. Child-rearing is a gender role, not a fact of biology.
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949): "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". She means womanhood is shaped by society.

2. Public/private divide and the double burden

• Public/private divide: patriarchy splits life into two parts.
• The public sphere covers work, politics and decisions. It is given to men.

• The private sphere covers home and care. It is given to women.

• Double burden: most women also work outside the home, so the split does not hold. Yet they still do almost all the housework and care work.

• The result is two shifts of work, paid and unpaid.

• Women still have little say in public decisions.

• "The personal is political": feminists reject the public/private divide.

• Housework, family power and violence at home are shaped by power and law. So they are matters of politics, not just private life.

3. Waves and thinkers

Phase	Thinkers / ideas	Main demand
Early liberal feminism	Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); J.S. Mill and Harriet Taylor, The Subjection of Women (1869)	Reason and equal rights for women: education, property, the vote (suffrage)
First wave (19th–early 20th century)	Suffrage movements	Vote, university degrees, the right to work
Second wave (1960s–70s)	De Beauvoir's ideas; "the personal is political"	Equality at work, reproductive rights, the gender roles of family life
Intersectional turn	Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989)	Recognising overlapping disadvantages

• Intersectionality: a person's identities, such as caste, gender and class, overlap. Together they create a distinct disadvantage. This is more than adding one disadvantage to another.
• Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989.

• Indian example: Dalit women face caste and patriarchy together. Gopal Guru's essay "Dalit Women Talk Differently" (1995) argued that upper-caste-led feminism and male-led Dalit politics both left out Dalit women's voices.

• Indian pioneers:

• Savitribai Phule started girls' schools in Pune and worked with Jyotirao Phule against caste and gender oppression.
• Pandita Ramabai worked for widows' and women's education.
• Tarabai Shinde wrote Stri Purush Tulana ("A Comparison of Women and Men", 1882). It attacked the double standards society held for women and men.

4. Evidence: the gap today

• Time Use Survey (TUS) 2024 (fieldwork January–December 2024, by MoSPI):
• 83.1% of women and 26.4% of men did unpaid domestic services for household members on a normal day [2].
• Among people aged 15–59 who did such work, women spent about 305 minutes a day and men about 86 minutes [2].
• Women's time fell from about 315 minutes (TUS 2019) to 305 minutes (2024). This suggests a slight shift from unpaid to paid work [2].

• TUS matters because it counts work that the national accounts leave out, such as unpaid housework and care [2].

• Female labour force participation rate (LFPR) is the share of women who work or are looking for work. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) measures it.

• Female LFPR was 40.0% in calendar year 2025. Rural female LFPR was 45.9% [4].
• Urban female LFPR was 25.8% in 2024, up from 25.5% in 2023 [4].

• The gap between rural and urban women shows how strong the domestic role still is in cities.

• Political voice: women's share of seats in legislatures and the 106th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2023 are covered in the gender-religion-caste note. The Act reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women. It takes effect after the delimitation that follows the next census.

5. Equal rights need differential treatment

• The historical lesson:
• Women in the 19th century first asked for the same rights as men: the vote, degrees and jobs.
• Once they had these rights, they found they also needed special provisions, such as maternity leave and crèches, to actually use them.

• So treating people equally can mean treating them differently. This does not break the equality principle.

• Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017:

• Paid maternity leave went up to 26 weeks.
• Establishments with 50 or more employees must provide a crèche (a day-care facility for workers' young children).

• These provisions are now part of the Code on Social Security, 2020.

• Equal pay:

• Article 39(d) is a Directive Principle of State Policy (DPSP). DPSPs are goals the state should follow, but courts cannot enforce them. Art. 39(d) calls for equal pay for equal work for men and women.
• The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 put this into law. The Code on Wages, 2019 has now merged it with three other laws: the Payment of Wages Act 1936, the Minimum Wages Act 1948 and the Payment of Bonus Act 1965 [3].
• All four Labour Codes took effect on 21 November 2025 [5].

• Section 3 of the Code on Wages, 2019 bans discrimination on the basis of gender, including transgender identity. This covers recruitment, wages and conditions of work for the same or similar work [3].

• Women in the armed forces (NCERT's "Let's Debate" on combat units):

• In Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya (2020) the Supreme Court ruled that women officers in the Army must get permanent commission, meaning a full career rather than a fixed short-service term. It rejected arguments based on stereotypes about women's physical ability.
• The National Defence Academy (NDA) opened to women in 2021 after a Supreme Court order. The first batch of women cadets joined in August 2022 with the 148th course [6].
• 126 women cadets joined NDA between the 148th and 153rd courses [6].
• Combat roles for women continue to expand.

6. NCERT Exercise Q6: arguments for women's right to vote

• Some arguments for women's franchise (the right to vote) rest on usefulness or on stereotypes. Examples: "women will make politics purer" or "mothers will vote for children's welfare". These do not fit the equality principle.
• Only arguments based on equal agency fit it. For example: "decisions of government affect women too, so women must have a say in them".

Prelims Hooks

• The Subjection of Women (1869) was written by J.S. Mill with Harriet Taylor. Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman came out in 1792.
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949): "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". This is the root of the sex–gender distinction.
• Kimberlé Crenshaw coined intersectionality in 1989. Gopal Guru's "Dalit Women Talk Differently" was published in 1995.
• Tarabai Shinde wrote Stri Purush Tulana (1882).
• TUS 2024: 83.1% of women vs 26.4% of men did unpaid domestic services. Women aged 15–59 who did it spent about 305 minutes a day, and men about 86 minutes.
• Art. 39(d), equal pay for equal work, is a DPSP, not a Fundamental Right.
• The Code on Wages, 2019 merges four laws: the Payment of Wages Act 1936, Minimum Wages Act 1948, Payment of Bonus Act 1965 and Equal Remuneration Act 1976. All four Labour Codes took effect on 21 November 2025.
• Section 3 of the Code on Wages bans pay discrimination on gender, including transgender identity. The trap: assuming it covers only men and women.
• Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017: 26 weeks of leave, and crèches where there are 50 or more employees.
• Babita Puniya (2020) gave Army women officers permanent commission. The first women's batch joined NDA in August 2022 (148th course).

Mains Points

• Formal equality vs substantive equality: maternity leave, crèches and reservation for women show that equal rights may need differential treatment. This matches the idea behind Articles 15(3) and 39(d).
• Unpaid care work: women do far more of it (305 vs 86 minutes a day in TUS 2024), and this helps explain low female LFPR. Policy options:
• paternity and shared parental leave
• public crèches and care infrastructure

• counting care work in national accounts

• Intersectionality and policy design: Dalit, Adivasi and poor rural women face combined disadvantages that single-axis policy misses. One example is a debate over the 106th Amendment: it has no OBC sub-quota inside the women's quota.

• "The personal is political": the state now acts on domestic violence, workplace harassment and care. This shows the public/private divide breaking down. The trade-off is privacy and family autonomy against protection.