Gender and society

In short

Gender and society studies how societies turn biological difference into unequal social roles, identities and opportunities — and how those arrangements are reproduced, contested and changed. In India the subject covers patriarchy and its regional variations, gendered division of labour, declining child sex ratio, violence against women, women's movements, and the body of law from the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 to the Women's Reservation Act, 2023. It is a compulsory unit in BA/MA Sociology under UGC CBCS, appears in UPSC Sociology Paper II and state PSC papers, and is tested in UGC NET Sociology and Women's Studies. Practically, the same material underpins jobs in CSR and diversity-equity-inclusion teams, POSH compliance, gender budgeting in government, and the NGO and development sector.

Explained

Sex, gender and the basic conceptual vocabulary

• Sex — biologically assigned characteristics (chromosomes, hormones, anatomy). Gender — the socially constructed meanings, roles and expectations attached to sex; it varies across cultures and over time. Ann Oakley (*Sex, Gender and Society*, 1972) made this distinction central to sociology.
• Gender identity — one's internal sense of being a man, woman, both or neither; gender role — the behaviour a society prescribes; gender expression — how it is displayed. Transgender identity shows identity need not match assigned sex.
• Social construction of gender: gender is not a fixed attribute but something produced in interaction. West and Zimmerman's "doing gender" (1987) treats it as an ongoing accomplishment; Judith Butler calls it performative — constituted by repeated acts, not expressing a prior essence.
• Patriarchy — a system in which men hold authority over women in family, economy, religion and polity, and this is normalised. Sylvia Walby identified six structures: household production, paid work, the state, violence, sexuality, culture.
• Hegemonic masculinity (R.W. Connell) — the culturally dominant form of manhood (breadwinner, assertive, heterosexual) which subordinates women *and* other masculinities.
• Gender socialisation — the lifelong learning of gendered behaviour through family (son preference, differential feeding, chores), school (textbooks, subject streaming), peers, religion, and media. Agents of socialisation reproduce patriarchy without coercion.
• Patriarchal bargain (Deniz Kandiyoti) — women accept patriarchal rules to gain security or power (e.g. a mother-in-law's authority over a daughter-in-law), which is why women sometimes uphold the system.
• Intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw) — gender intersects with caste, class, religion, disability and region, so there is no single "Indian woman". A Dalit woman agricultural labourer and an upper-caste urban professional face different constellations of disadvantage.
• Essentialism vs constructionism: the exam-standard contrast between "women are naturally nurturing" and "nurturing is assigned to women and then called natural".

Theoretical approaches

• Structural functionalism (Parsons and Bales) — the nuclear family works best with an instrumental (male, breadwinner) and an expressive (female, nurturing) role. Criticised for justifying inequality, ignoring conflict, and assuming the Western nuclear family.
• Marxist/socialist feminism — Engels (*Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State*) traces women's subordination to private property and inheritance; women's unpaid domestic labour reproduces labour power for capital at no cost. Dual systems theory (Hartmann, Walby) holds capitalism and patriarchy as two interacting systems.
• Liberal feminism — equality through legal reform, education, suffrage and equal opportunity (Mary Wollstonecraft, Betty Friedan). Criticised for accepting existing structures and speaking for middle-class women.
• Radical feminism — patriarchy is the primary oppression, rooted in control over women's bodies, sexuality and reproduction (Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone); emphasises violence, "the personal is political".
• Postmodern/poststructural feminism — rejects a universal category "woman"; attends to discourse and difference (Butler).
• Postcolonial and Indian feminist critique — Chandra Talpade Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes" attacks the image of the passive "third-world woman"; Indian scholarship (Leela Dube, Uma Chakravarti, Nivedita Menon, Sharmila Rege) insists caste and gender be analysed together.
• Brahmanical patriarchy (Uma Chakravarti) — caste purity requires strict control of women's sexuality and marriage choice; endogamy, early marriage and seclusion are therefore caste *and* gender institutions. Ambedkar argued in *Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development* (1916) that endogamy is maintained by controlling the surplus woman — through sati, enforced widowhood and child marriage.
• Feminist standpoint theory (Dorothy Smith, Hartsock) — knowledge is situated; starting from women's lived experience exposes what mainstream sociology misses.

Gendered institutions in India: family, work, education, polity

• Kinship and regional patriarchy: Irawati Karve mapped kinship zones; Leela Dube and Tim Dyson–Mick Moore contrast north India (exogamous village marriage, patrilineal, distant kin, lower female autonomy) with south India (cross-cousin/uncle-niece marriage, closer kin, higher female autonomy) — correlating with north–south differences in sex ratio and fertility.
• Matriliny — descent and inheritance through the mother among the Nairs of Kerala, Khasi and Garo of Meghalaya, and some Lakshadweep groups. Matriliny is *not* matriarchy: authority usually still rests with the mother's brother.
• Sexual division of labour — the assignment of productive work to men and reproductive/care work to women. Women's work is undercounted because it is unpaid, home-based, seasonal and treated as "helping".
• Double burden / second shift — employed women continue to carry domestic and care work. India's Time Use Survey 2019 found women aged 15–59 spent far more time on unpaid domestic and caregiving services than men (about 5 hours a day against about one and a half hours); the 2024 round confirms the same wide gap, with some narrowing.
• Labour market: occupational segregation (horizontal — nursing, teaching, anganwadi, garments; vertical — the glass ceiling), the gender pay gap, the motherhood penalty, informality (the large majority of working women are in informal or own-account work), and the feminisation of agriculture as men migrate.
• Female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) fell through the 2000s to around 23% (usual status, 15+) and has risen in recent PLFS rounds to roughly 40%+, largely through self-employment and unpaid family work in rural areas — the level and its interpretation are both contested, as definitional changes affect comparability.
• Education: gender parity has been broadly achieved at school level and female Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education now slightly exceeds male (AISHE), yet women remain under-represented in engineering and over-represented in arts and education — a "leaky pipeline" from degree to employment.
• Political participation: the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments (1992–93) reserved at least one-third of panchayat and municipal seats for women (many states now reserve 50%), producing over a million elected women — but also the critique of the "sarpanch pati" / proxy representation. The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023 (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam) reserves one-third of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats for women, to take effect after the next census and delimitation.
• Religion and personal law: gendered access to ritual and property; Shah Bano (1985) and the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 criminalising instant triple talaq; Sabarimala (2018) on temple entry; the unresolved Uniform Civil Code debate (Article 44) — Uttarakhand enacted a state UCC with effect from January 2025.

Gender inequality in numbers and the demographic question

• Sex ratio — females per 1,000 males. Census 2011: overall 943; child sex ratio (0–6) 919, the lowest since independence. NFHS-5 (2019–21) reported sex ratio at birth of 929 and a population sex ratio above 1,000, but survey and civil-registration figures are not comparable with census counts.
• "Missing women" (Amartya Sen, 1990) — the deficit of women relative to expected numbers, caused by sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, and neglect in food and healthcare.
• Declining child sex ratio despite rising income and literacy is the standard puzzle: prosperity plus small-family norms plus available technology produces *more* sex selection, not less (Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, western UP).
• Violence against women — NFHS-5 found about 29–30% of ever-married women aged 18–49 reported spousal physical or sexual violence; roughly 4.45 lakh crimes against women were recorded in NCRB *Crime in India 2022*, with "cruelty by husband or relatives" the largest head. Reported crime reflects both incidence and willingness to report.
• Other indicators: Maternal Mortality Ratio about 97 per lakh live births (SRS 2018–20; later estimates lower), female literacy 65.5% against male 82.1% (Census 2011), and India's middling rank on the WEF Global Gender Gap Index driven mainly by low economic participation and health scores.

Law, policy and the women's movement in India

• Colonial and nationalist phase: social reform — Sati Regulation (1829), Widow Remarriage Act (1856), Age of Consent Act (1891), Sharda Act (1929) on child marriage; reform led largely by men "for" women. Women entered mass politics through the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements; AIWC (1927) was founded.
• Autonomous women's movement (1970s–80s): anti-price-rise and Chipko mobilisations, Shahada and SEWA (1972), the Mathura rape case (1979) and the open letter by four law teachers leading to the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1983 (custodial rape, burden of proof), the anti-dowry campaign after Tarvinder Kaur's death, and protests over Roop Kanwar's sati (1987). The Towards Equality report (1974) was the turning point in official thinking.
• Post-1990s: NGO-isation and donor funding, Dalit feminism (the 1990s critique that the movement was upper-caste), the Vishaka guidelines (1997) after the Bhanwari Devi case, the Nirbhaya case (2012) and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 following the Justice Verma Committee — which widened the definition of rape, added stalking, acid attack and voyeurism, and the #MeToo wave from 2018.
• Key statutes: Special Marriage Act, 1954; Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961; Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (amended 2021, up to 24 weeks for specified categories); Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 (now subsumed in the Code on Wages, 2019); Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 banning sex determination; Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 giving daughters equal coparcenary rights (*Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma*, 2020, held this applies whether or not the father was alive in 2005); Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (covers physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse, and the right to residence); Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006; Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 — the POSH Act; Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019; Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.
• The four Labour Codes, in force from 21 November 2025, consolidated earlier labour law and carry the gender provisions: the Code on Wages bars sex-based wage and recruitment discrimination; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code permits women's employment in all establishments and in night shifts with consent and safeguards; the Social Security Code retains maternity benefit of 26 weeks (Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 levels) and creche provision. They replaced the Factories Act, Minimum Wages Act, Industrial Disputes Act and BOCW Act.
• POSH Act essentials (frequently asked): every workplace with 10 or more workers must have an Internal Committee chaired by a senior woman, with at least half its members women and one external member from an NGO or legal background; districts have a Local Committee; complaint within 3 months (extendable by 3), inquiry completed in 90 days, action within 60 days of the report; annual return to the district officer; confidentiality mandatory; the 2013 Act is sex-specific (an aggrieved *woman*), unlike internal gender-neutral policies many firms adopt.
• Judicial milestones: *Vishaka* (1997); *NALSA v. Union of India* (2014) recognising the third gender and self-identification; *Navtej Singh Johar* (2018) reading down Section 377 to decriminalise consensual same-sex relations; *Joseph Shine* (2018) striking down adultery; *Shayara Bano* (2017) on triple talaq; *Supriyo v. Union of India* (2023) declining to recognise same-sex marriage and leaving it to Parliament.
• Programmes: Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Mission Shakti (Sambal and Samarthya components — One Stop Centres, Women Helpline 181, Ujjawala, Palna creches), PM Matru Vandana Yojana, Ujjwala LPG, Lakhpati Didi and SHG-based livelihoods under DAY-NRLM, Sukanya Samriddhi, and gender budgeting (a Gender Budget Statement in the Union Budget since 2005–06, with Gender Budget Cells in ministries). Internationally: CEDAW (ratified by India in 1993 with declarations), Beijing Platform for Action 1995, SDG 5 and NITI Aayog's SDG India Index.

Changing gender relations and emerging debates

• Masculinity studies — men as gendered subjects; crisis of masculinity amid unemployment and changing family roles; men's role in care work.
• Queer and trans sociology — heteronormativity, the Transgender Act's self-perception clause versus its certification requirement, horizontal reservation demands, and continued exclusion from marriage and adoption rights.
• Technology and gender — the digital divide in device ownership and internet use, online harassment, and gig-platform work that offers flexibility with little social security.
• Work and the city — hostels, safe transport, Nirbhaya Fund projects, women-only coaches and buses; the debate over whether protection substitutes for access.
• Measurement debates — how to count unpaid work (Time Use Survey, satellite accounts), whether rising FLFPR signals empowerment or distress-driven work, and whether crime statistics measure violence or reporting.
• Agency and resistance — SHGs and SEWA-style unionisation, Kudumbashree in Kerala, women's panchayat leadership effects on public goods (Chattopadhyay and Duflo's work on West Bengal and Rajasthan), and the critique of "empowerment" as a depoliticised development slogan.

Key points

• Sex vs gender — sex is biological assignment; gender is the socially constructed role, identity and expectation attached to it.
• Social construction — gender is produced in interaction and institutions ("doing gender"), not expressed from nature.
• Patriarchy — institutionalised male dominance across household, work, state, violence, sexuality and culture (Walby's six structures).
• Brahmanical patriarchy — caste endogamy is maintained by controlling women's sexuality, so caste and gender are a single system (Chakravarti, Ambedkar).
• Intersectionality — gender disadvantage is modified by caste, class, religion, region and disability; no universal "Indian woman".
• Sexual division of labour — productive work to men, reproductive and care work to women; the basis of the double burden.
• Matriliny ≠ matriarchy — Nair, Khasi and Garo descent passes through women but authority typically stays with men.
• North–south contrast — village exogamy and patrilineal distance in the north versus closer kin marriage and greater female autonomy in the south (Dyson–Moore, Dube).
• Missing women — Sen's measure of the female deficit from sex selection, infanticide and neglect; child sex ratio fell to 919 in Census 2011.
• FLFPR paradox — female participation fell while education and incomes rose; recent PLFS increases are largely self-employment and unpaid family work.
• Occupational segregation and glass ceiling — women crowded into low-paid "feminine" occupations and blocked from senior ranks.
• Towards Equality (1974) — the report that reframed women from welfare beneficiaries to subjects of structural inequality.
• Vishaka to POSH — 1997 guidelines after Bhanwari Devi's case became the 2013 Act; Internal Committee mandatory at 10+ workers.
• 73rd/74th Amendments — one-third (often 50% in states) local-body reservation; 106th Amendment, 2023 extends one-third to Lok Sabha and assemblies after census and delimitation.
• Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 — daughters are coparceners by birth with equal rights; affirmed in *Vineeta Sharma* (2020).
• Labour Codes from 21 November 2025 — no sex-based wage or hiring discrimination, women permitted in all establishments and night work with consent, 26 weeks' maternity benefit retained.
• Gender budgeting — not a separate budget for women but an audit of all allocations for their gender impact; Gender Budget Statement since 2005–06.
• Key judgments — *NALSA* (2014) third gender, *Navtej Johar* (2018) Section 377, *Joseph Shine* (2018) adultery, *Supriyo* (2023) same-sex marriage left to Parliament.

Formulas and examples

Example 1 — Sex ratio and child sex ratio. A district has 5,10,000 males and 4,80,000 females; in the 0–6 group, 62,000 boys and 56,000 girls.

• Sex ratio = (4,80,000 / 5,10,000) × 1,000 = 941 females per 1,000 males.
• CSR = (56,000 / 62,000) × 1,000 = 903.
• CSR (903) is far below the all-India Census 2011 figure of 919 and below the natural band, so sex selection is indicated. "Missing girls" at a benchmark CSR of 950: expected girls = 62,000 × 0.950 = 58,900; deficit = 58,900 − 56,000 = 2,900 girls.

Example 2 — Sen's "missing women" arithmetic. Suppose a state has 3.00 crore males and expected ratio 1,000 females per 1,000 males, but records 2.82 crore females.

• Expected females = 3.00 crore × 1.000 = 3.00 crore.
• Missing women = 3.00 − 2.82 = 0.18 crore = 18 lakh, i.e. 6% of the expected female population.

Example 3 — Gender pay gap and the share effect. In a BPO, 400 men earn a mean ₹32,000 per month and 250 women a mean ₹26,400.

• Gap = (32,000 − 26,400)/32,000 × 100 = 17.5%.
• Women's share of the workforce = 250/650 = 38.5%.
• Overall mean = (400 × 32,000 + 250 × 26,400)/650 = (1,28,00,000 + 66,00,000)/650 = 1,94,00,000/650 = ₹29,846. If the firm hires 100 more women at ₹26,400, the overall mean falls to (1,94,00,000 + 26,40,000)/750 = ₹29,387 — a reminder that a falling average can reflect composition, not worsening pay.

Example 4 — Unpaid work valued at market rates. A woman spends 5.0 hours a day on unpaid domestic and care work; a man in the same household spends 0.8 hours. Local domestic help costs ₹60 per hour.

• Annual hours: woman 5.0 × 365 = 1,825 h; man 0.8 × 365 = 292 h.
• Replacement value: woman 1,825 × 60 = ₹1,09,500 per year; man 292 × 60 = ₹17,520.
• Ratio of her unpaid work to his = 1,825/292 = 6.25 times. None of this enters GDP, which is why Time Use Surveys exist.

Example 5 — POSH Act timelines. A complaint is filed on 1 March 2026 about an incident of 20 December 2025.

• Limitation is 3 months from the incident, i.e. 20 March 2026 — the complaint is within time.
• Inquiry must be completed within 90 days (by about 30 May 2026); the IC report goes to the employer, who must act within 60 days of receiving it; appeal lies within 90 days of the recommendation.
• If the firm has 9 workers, no Internal Committee is required and the complaint goes to the district Local Committee.

Where it is used

• Corporate DEI and HR compliance: POSH Internal Committees, pay-equity audits, gender-diversity disclosure in BRSR filings by listed companies, and SEBI's requirement of at least one independent woman director on the boards of large listed firms.
• Government and policy: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Gender Budget Cells, Mission Shakti and One Stop Centres, NITI Aayog SDG 5 reporting, PCPNDT district appropriate authorities.
• Development sector and CSR: SEWA, Kudumbashree, DAY-NRLM SHG federations, Azim Premji Foundation, Breakthrough, Jagori — roles in gender training, monitoring and evaluation, and safeguarding.
• Research and statistics: NFHS and PLFS field and analysis work with IIPS, NSSO and MoSPI; Time Use Survey analysis; CSDS and Lokniti election studies on the women's vote.
• Media, law and social work: gender-sensitive reporting, legal aid under DV and POSH law, protection officers, counsellors at One Stop Centres and child marriage prohibition officers.
• Teaching and examinations: school and college sociology and women's studies teaching, UGC NET, UPSC Sociology optional, state PSC and NGO recruitment tests.

Interview questions

• Q: What is the difference between sex and gender? A: Sex refers to biologically assigned characteristics, while gender refers to socially constructed roles, identities and expectations; sex is relatively fixed, gender varies across cultures and over time.
• Q: Define patriarchy sociologically. A: A social system in which men hold structural authority in family, economy, polity, religion and culture, and that authority is normalised through socialisation rather than only force.
• Q: What does "doing gender" mean? A: West and Zimmerman's argument that gender is not a property of individuals but an ongoing accomplishment produced and judged in everyday interaction.
• Q: What is Brahmanical patriarchy? A: Uma Chakravarti's concept that caste purity is sustained by controlling women's sexuality and marriage choice, making caste hierarchy and gender subordination parts of one system.
• Q: Why is matriliny not matriarchy? A: Matriliny only means descent, residence or inheritance traced through women; in Nair, Khasi and Garo societies decision-making authority still generally rests with men such as the maternal uncle.
• Q: Explain Amartya Sen's "missing women". A: The shortfall between the observed number of women and the number expected under equal survival chances, caused by sex-selective abortion, female infanticide and unequal food and healthcare.
• Q: Why did India's child sex ratio fall while incomes and literacy rose? A: Son preference persisted while family size shrank and sex-determination technology spread, so better-off, more literate families used technology to achieve a son within fewer births — hence the PCPNDT Act, 1994.
• Q: Why is women's work undercounted in official statistics? A: Much of it is unpaid, home-based, seasonal and treated as household "help", and surveys based on principal activity classify such women as homemakers rather than workers.
• Q: What is intersectionality and why does it matter in India? A: Crenshaw's idea that forms of disadvantage combine rather than add; in India a Dalit or Adivasi woman's experience of violence, wages and access to justice differs sharply from an upper-caste urban woman's.
• Q: What are an employer's core duties under the POSH Act, 2013? A: Constitute an Internal Committee at any workplace with 10 or more workers (woman presiding officer, half the members women, one external member), display the policy, conduct awareness and IC training, complete inquiries within 90 days and file an annual return.
• Q: What did the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 change? A: It made daughters coparceners in joint family property by birth with the same rights and liabilities as sons; *Vineeta Sharma* (2020) clarified the right exists whether or not the father was alive on the date of the amendment.
• Q: Does reservation for women in panchayats actually empower them? A: Evidence is mixed: it has placed over a million women in office and studies find shifts in public-goods priorities, but proxy rule by male relatives ("sarpanch pati") and short tenures limit substantive representation.

Common mistakes

• Treating sex and gender as synonyms, or calling gender "biological difference" in a definition answer — the marks are in the construction argument.
• Confusing matriliny with matriarchy, and assuming Kerala or Meghalaya are therefore female-ruled.
• Writing the sex ratio as males per 1,000 females; the Indian census convention is females per 1,000 males, and the answer should carry its unit.
• Quoting NFHS and Census sex ratios interchangeably — they use different universes and methods and are not comparable.
• Describing "the Indian woman" as one category, with no caste, class, religion or regional differentiation — the commonest weakness in both exams and interviews.
• Citing repealed or superseded law: the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 now sits inside the Code on Wages and the four Labour Codes have been in force since 21 November 2025; the Women's Reservation Act, 2023 is enacted but operative only after the next census and delimitation.
• Claiming empowerment from any single indicator — rising FLFPR, enrolment or reported crime can equally signal distress work, a leaky pipeline or better reporting.

Related topics

Caste, class and family in India · Social stratification · Population and society · Religion and society · Rural and urban sociology · Social movements and social change in India