Visitors at the Parliament House on September 20, 2023, the day of the debate on Women’s reservation bill in the Lok Sabha.
| Photo Credit: PTI
While current debates on delimitation focus on its impact on the federal balance of power, another historic rebalancing is contingent on it — the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023. The Bill marked a watershed moment: gender equity moved from the margins of political discourse to its centre. No institution can now afford to dismiss it. Yet, this very mainstreaming has paradoxically made it harder, at times, to engage with the discourse critically.
As a woman, I often find myself on the edges of the feminist discourse. It’s not because I’m “not a feminist” in the way some young women say. But I understand that clumsily expressed discomfort. Today’s mainstream feminist discourse can feel like a minefield — demanding disclaimers and caveats before one can step in.
Two terrains
There are two distinct terrains when we talk about women’s issues. The first is the structural — the way the design of our society can keep women at the margins. The second is the realm of interpersonal relationships. These overlap, but imposing the structural lens too heavily on the personal risks distorting both. It flattens the richness of human relationships, turning every minor conflict into a battle for power — even when the relationship may be undergirded by love, care, and a willingness to negotiate.
It is true that the personal is political, shaped by deeper hierarchies. But interpersonal relationships are often not reducible to oppression or domination. In India, many men labour quietly — denying themselves comfort, enduring difficult work environments — to support their families. That implicit sense of love and duty creates space for give and take. A husband may expect dinner on the table, but also give his monthly earnings to his wife. Men depending on their wives — emotionally and practically — inevitably reshapes the balance in those relationships. These are not straightforward expressions of patriarchy; they are messy, contradictory, deeply human.
Problematic behaviours exist. But they need to be addressed on their own terms — not simply labelled as misogyny or evidence of oppressive intent. After all, social change comes from public protest and policy reform but also from millions of daily negotiations — quiet shifts in family routines, small acts of solidarity, the rethinking of roles within daily lives. Often, the stories of women from marginalised backgrounds who have achieved unexpected successes include unexpected allies, such as a father who insists on sending his daughter to college. These accounts are part of the real story of progress.
Of course, where women’s agency is denied forcibly, we need to address that, through societal change and state power. For instance, daughters who are murdered for pursuing love, or the grassroots elected representative who is made her own proxy by her husband. To empower women we must address multiple interlocking factors: economic independence, legal protections, education, social networks, and cultural shifts. To address these structural issues, we must build state capacity to ensure that institutions actually deliver the protections they promise on paper. However, the most effective interventions work at multiple levels simultaneously — the state and society — and are context-sensitive.
Blurring of inequities
The nature of constraints on a financially independent urban woman who is negotiating household responsibilities is not the same as that of a village woman fearing rape as she steps out at night to access a toilet. Yet, too often, feminist discourse collapses these into a single narrative. It moves too seamlessly between the structural and the interpersonal, the privileged and the vulnerable — sometimes masking inequity more than illuminating it.
This blurring of vastly different inequities — some life-threatening, others negotiable — risks alienating people, especially if they themselves feel embattled as many men do. And while that embattlement is sometimes overstated or misdirected, it is not always imagined. A man earning a lower income who goes to work may endure public humiliation. While his wife may be doing unpaid work at home, she may also be insulated from some of those public indignities. These are not arguments against feminism, but calls for a feminism that acknowledges multiple forms of suffering and responsibility.
Writing this may seem like one is being unnecessarily moderate, complicit in patriarchal structures of power. However, this is also a response to the current moment which is rife with antagonism across all fronts. A more compassionate feminism may be tactically right in this moment, to engender support instead of backlash. When feminist discourse recognises the emotional and economic pressures that shape the lives of men, particularly those at the margins, it invites solidarity rather than defensiveness.
Perhaps what we need now is a feminism that can hold complexity not just within its own ranks but across society. One that can confront injustice without antagonism. One that can distinguish between structure and sentiment, between cultural patterns and individual acts. A feminism that can accommodate contradiction without becoming complicit. This is especially because unlike other battles for rights, within the terrain of male-female relationships, there is no way to segregate the personal from the public. Thus if we adopt an antagonistic framework, we will bring the battle home. That may ultimately be necessary in some cases, but it need not be the starting point.
Ruchi Gupta, Executive Director of the Future of India Foundation
Published – April 15, 2025 01:23 am IST