Evolution of the ‘woman’s question’ in India

A number of recent incidents, including the rape and murder of a young woman at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital last week, brought renewed attention to women’s rights issues in India. The question of women’s rights, including their right to equality, liberty and security, has been a longstanding issue.

In that context, a brief overview of the evolution of the ‘woman’s question’ in India would help contextualise the women’s rights issues.  

The British and the ‘woman’s question’ in India 

British interest in the ‘woman’s question’ in India represented an interaction of Western morality, political strategy, and reformist zeal. Under the then Viceroy Lord Ripon, the Indian census in 1881 revealed a skewed sex ratio due to frequent female foetuses and infanticide. There was no accurate estimate for the female population with regard to age, occupation, caste, and class, especially of rural women. 

At the exact time, the exploitation and sexualisation of Indian women by the ruling classes of the British through a series of Cantonment Acts, including the significant one in 1899, for regulating prostitution in the British military bases, exploitation of domestic servants through long hours of work with no/low wages and with no kind of legal protection needs to be taken into account. 

These have perpetrated invasive medical examinations and forced imprisonment and stigmatisation of women in prostitution initiated by the Contagious Diseases Acts, passed between 1864 and 1869 by the British, to fight venereal disease in soldiers stationed in territories under British occupation. 

These laws developed a legacy that had a psychosocial impact on women’s rights, social justice, and the objectification of women’s bodies even today.

Social reforms in India

At the same time, with the dissolution of Mughal rule and the advent of the East India Company, the Bengal Renaissance between the late 18th and early 20th century, in which space the cultural revival could occur. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, also known as the father of ‘Indian Renaissance’, played a vital role in the abolition of Sati, which compelled widows to be immolated on their husband’s funeral pyre. The practice was abolished on December 4, 1829, when the Bengal Sati Regulation was passed under the first Governor-General of British-ruled India.

On the other hand, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, adopted a traditionalist stand on social reform and believed in the revival of Vedic values. Moreover, many women activists, like Begum Roquiah Sakhawat Hossain of Bengal and Rukhmabai Raut,  joined the campaign against sati and child marriage. 

Women reformers depended upon their male allies; a fact that has to be closely examined. Were there possibilities, or space, for women to articulate their struggles openly? Did literacy have a defining role in such discourses? If so, to what extent? One need only consider in this context the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act of 1856, which was carried through by Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, with the help of many women reformers who had no chance of influencing the formative process of legislation. 

Some of the reforms took time to accrue—like legislation to abolish child marriage, the Child Marriage Restraint Act, commonly known as the Sarda Act, named after the founder Harbilas Sarda, was passed in 1929 and came into force in 1930. The legislation fixed the age of marriage at 18 years for boys and 14 years for girls against the earlier prevailing one of 5 years or below for girls.

Political representation

While several global suffragette movements were raising their demand for universal adult franchise in the Western countries, Jawaharlal Nehru proposed to engage women in the political process, including in franchisee, at the Indian National Congress (INC) meeting in Lucknow in 1937. 

However, the continuous absence of women from Indian politics is traceable to the very roots of the Constituent Assembly of India. Of the 299 members of the Constituent Assembly, there were only 15 women, including Sarojini Naidu, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Hansa Jivraj Mehta, Durgabai Deshmukh, Renuka Ray, Leela Roy. Dakshayani Velayudhan was the first and only Dalit woman and Begum Aizaz Rasul was the only Muslim representative. Later, in the first Lok Sabha, during 1952-1957, only 4.4 percent of the members were women.

At present, only about 14 per cent of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha are held by women – of the 542 Members of Parliament (MPs), only about 78 are women. In the Rajya Sabha, there are just 24 among the total 224 members. Women MPs continue to grapple with entrenched patriarchalism, party structure and ticket distribution reservations, as well as voter perception.

Female candidates have been judged by strict norms of “winnability” unlike their male counterparts. Very few female candidates are fielded only to meet the quotas.

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Interestingly, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments provided for 33 per cent reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions in 1993, thereby increasing women’s representation at the grassroots level. The Women’s Reservation Bill, officially known as the Constitution 108th Amendment Bill, is a proposed legislation that seeks to reserve 33 per cent of seats in state legislatures and the Indian Parliament for women, with a rotation of seats in every election cycle. 

Many reformers have attacked this bill, terming it as mere ‘tokenism’ toward achieving quotas, rather than actual emancipation of women—more so the Dalit and Muslim women.

Economic challenges 

According to the International Labour Report 2024, prepared in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation, “the proportion of women not in employment or education is almost five times that of their male counterparts – 48.4 percent compared to 9.8 per cent – and accounts for around 95 per cent of the total young population not in employment or education in 2022.” 

The Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) for women is about 25 per cent of the total female working-age population in 2022. In this scenario, too, there are supply and demand dynamics. The effects range from underrepresentation of women in official statistics to education and income gaps, gender pay gaps, and issues of female migrant workers. Mechanisation of agriculture, decrease in animal husbandry at the household level, occupational segregation, and decline in demand for labour-intensive activities on the demand side continue. In effect, the supply and demand sides tend to reinforce each other.

According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the average earnings of women in India are about 25-30 per cent lower than those of men. Underrepresentation of women in highly paid employment and over-representation in low-paid work—particularly in the informal sector—exacerbate this gap. 

However, the definition of a farmer and the techniques which data collection agencies such as the NCRB use have been largely criticised for under-representing women as farmers, besides male land ownership. At the same time, in its 2022 report, the NCRB said, “about 30 per cent of the total suicide cases in India are of women.” While this gap is what the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) and the Mental Health Care Act of the government of 2017 intend to bridge, data gaps have to be addressed within this sample survey on rural women and the ones who access these services.

Trends in the education and skill gaps 

Though the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) mentions that the proportion of women in higher educational institutions is about 50 per cent, which, of course, is a positive trend, it is still variable across regions. In case of women belonging to Scheduled Tribes, the literacy rate, as per the 2011 census, was 59.6 per cent compared with 75.6 per cent among the general female population. This again points to a wide gap in literacy rates. 

Though the literacy rate of tribal women has improved, as per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) in 2019-21, it is still below the national average. The dropout rate at the primary and secondary levels among girls is still a challenge. The major challenges in front of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, introduced in 1995, and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Scheme, introduced in 2015, are: it has remained piecewise in different states, lack of proper monitoring, and lack of some of the important scholarship programs.

Socio-cultural issues

Even with the Untouchability Offences Act, 1955, and the constitutional provisions of Articles 15 and 17, besides the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, the subtle power of caste and class discrimination that works against Indian women has by no means ended. The many nuances of this intermeshing of caste and class in gender representation have been captured for long, through different writings by several scholars like Dr. Savita Ambedkar, Dr. Uma Chakravarti, Dr. Sharmila Rege, and Dr. G. R. G. Krishnamurthy.

An essential case example is that of the Devadasi system, where women were institutionalised as a religious and social entity to worship deities in temples. In this regard, the marginalisation and sexual exploitation of devadasis by temple priests, patrons, and others led to the passing of legislation known as the Devadasi Abolition Act in 1988. Nevertheless, according to data from the National Commission for Women, there were 48,358 devadasis in India in the year 2011. 

In relation to the impact of disability on the socio-cultural identity of women, it can be noted that while the 2011 census estimated that there are around 11.8 million women with a disability living in India who face significant hardship, discrimination, isolation, and marginalisation in everyday life.

The NCRB further says that a rape is reported in India every 16 minutes, much after the enactment of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, popularly known as the Nirbhaya Act. However, the enactment of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, also tried to provide an integrated and comprehensive legal framework to deal with increasing incidents of sexual abuse of children, including penetration, sexual harassment, and exploitation—yet the stigma of rape remains.

How many rapes are reported? In fact, how often do even the media report it if it happens in rural and Dalit areas? The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace [Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal] Act, 2013 makes it mandatory to set up Internal Complaints Committees (ICCs) at all workplaces with over 10 employees to redress complaints connected with it, but how are these employees appointed and by whom is a question of ethics. What are the mechanisms applied in instances the report by the ICC is not filed in the prescribed timeline?

Post Read Question

The ‘woman’s question’ in India emerged as part of the 19th-century social reform movement. Discuss major issues and debates concerning women in that period.

Write a short note on women’s political representation in India.

Discuss major economic and socio-cultural issues that impede women’s empowerment in India.

Discuss ways to empower women in India.

(Dr. Shubhda Chaudhary is the founder of Middle East Insights – a volunteer-driven youth coalition that aims to create leaders of tomorrow.)

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