Feminist Politics: Strategies for Achieving Gender Equality in a Patriarchal Society

Feminist politics is more than a set of slogans or a hashtag campaign. It is a deliberate, organised effort to dismantle the structures that have historically placed women and gender minorities at a disadvantage. From the suffragettes who chained themselves to railings to the lakhs of women sarpanches running gram panchayats today, feminist political action has been the engine behind almost every major shift in how societies treat gender. Let us unpack what feminist politics really means, the strategies it uses, and where it stands in our current moment.

What is feminist politics? 🔗

At its core, feminist politics is the practice of challenging gender-based oppression through collective political action. It treats patriarchy not as a personal misfortune that some women happen to face but as a systemic arrangement baked into laws, institutions, families, workplaces, and culture. Because the problem is systemic, the response has to be political; individual resilience alone cannot fix unequal inheritance laws or unsafe streets.

Feminist politics seeks three broad outcomes. First, legal and constitutional equality, meaning that laws should not discriminate against any gender. Second, substantive equality, which goes beyond paper rights to ensure women can actually exercise them, whether that is voting, owning land, or accessing healthcare. Third, transformation of social norms, the slow work of changing what families, schools, and media teach about masculinity, femininity, and power. The movement in India has, for nearly 70 years, pursued this articulation of feminist agency from within a patriarchal social system, combining street protests, courtroom battles, and policy advocacy.

Why patriarchy is the central target 🔗

Patriarchy is the social system in which men, as a group, hold disproportionate power over political authority, economic resources, and cultural meaning-making. Feminist politics is not anti-men; it is anti-hierarchy. It questions why a woman’s wages are seen as supplementary, why a girl child is still considered a “burden” in many households, and why caregiving is invisible in GDP calculations. Once you see the pattern, the political project becomes clear: redistribute power, voice, and resources more fairly.

Key strategies of feminist political engagement 🔗

Feminist movements are not monolithic. They use a wide toolkit, often in combination, to push for change. The strategies below are not mutually exclusive; the women’s movement typically runs them in parallel.

Legislative lobbying and law reform 🔗

One of the most concrete strategies is lobbying lawmakers to pass, amend, or strike down legislation. In India, sustained feminist pressure has produced landmark laws such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, and the criminalisation of triple talaq. The most recent legislative win is the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, which reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women.

Lobbying is slow, technical work. It involves drafting model bills, briefing parliamentarians, submitting memoranda to standing committees, and mobilising public opinion through media. Organisations like the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and the Centre for Women’s Development Studies have spent decades doing exactly this.

Grassroots organising 🔗

Laws written in Delhi mean little if women in a village in Bihar cannot access them. Grassroots organising fills that gap. Self-help groups, women’s collectives, mahila mandals, and trade unions like the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) build power from the bottom up. They train women in their rights, run legal aid clinics, support survivors of violence, and run candidates in panchayat elections.

The impact is measurable. After the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments reserved one-third of seats for women in panchayats and municipalities, research showed that women elected under the reservation policy invested more in public goods linked to women’s concerns, such as drinking water, sanitation, and primary schooling. Today, India has over 14 lakh elected women representatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions, the largest such cohort anywhere in the world.

International advocacy and solidarity 🔗

Many feminist demands cross borders. Climate change, migrant labour, sex trafficking, and digital harassment cannot be tackled by any one country alone. International advocacy uses platforms like the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the Beijing Platform for Action, and CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) to set global norms that national governments are then pressured to follow. India is a signatory to CEDAW, which obliges it to eliminate discrimination in political and public life.

Cultural and media interventions 🔗

Politics is not only about parliaments. Films, advertising, textbooks, and social media shape what people consider “normal.” Feminist cultural workers challenge stereotypes through documentaries, theatre, stand-up comedy, and online journalism. Campaigns like #MeToo in 2017-18, which spread rapidly in Indian newsrooms, film sets, and universities, showed how social media can compress decades of silence into a few months of accountability.

Strategic litigation 🔗

Courts have been a powerful arena. Public interest litigations have produced the Vishaka Guidelines on workplace sexual harassment, the decriminalisation of homosexuality through reading down Section 377, the recognition of transgender persons as a third gender in NALSA v. Union of India, and the entry of women into the sanctum of the Sabarimala temple. Each judgment was the result of years of feminist lawyering combined with movement-building outside the court.

Major achievements of feminist politics 🔗

It is easy to focus on what remains broken and miss how far the needle has moved. Feminist politics has changed the world in ways that would have been unimaginable a century ago.

Suffrage and political representation 🔗

The right to vote, which we now take for granted, was won through decades of protest. When India adopted universal adult suffrage in 1950, it did so without the prolonged battle that women in Britain or the United States had to fight, partly because Indian women had been active participants in the freedom movement. Yet representation in legislatures remained low. The journey from 5% women MPs in the first Lok Sabha to roughly 15% in the 17th, and the eventual passage of the women’s reservation law, reflects the slow but steady pressure of feminist politics.

Reproductive rights and bodily autonomy 🔗

India legalised abortion through the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1971, well before many “developed” countries. The 2021 amendment extended the gestational limit and recognised the rights of unmarried women. Access to contraception, maternal health services, and the criminalisation of marital rape (still a pending demand) all sit on this continuum.

Workplace and economic rights 🔗

Equal Remuneration Act, maternity benefits, anti-harassment frameworks, property rights for daughters under the amended Hindu Succession Act, 2005, and the recognition of unpaid care work in policy discussions all owe their existence to feminist advocacy.

Ongoing challenges 🔗

For every win, a new battlefront opens. The work is far from over.

Gender-based violence 🔗

Violence against women remains pervasive. According to data discussed in the National Family Health Survey-5, the weighted prevalence of domestic violence against women in India in 2019-2021 stood at 31.2%, with around 28.5% reporting physical violence. Conviction rates for rape and sexual assault remain low, and survivors face hostile police stations, slow courts, and social stigma. Online violence, image-based abuse, and stalking add new layers to an old problem.

The gender pay gap 🔗

Economic inequality stubbornly persists. As per the International Labour Organization’s 2024 estimates, women continue to be paid about 20 per cent less than men globally, and the gap in India is wider in self-employment and informal work. The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24 found that self-employed men earned roughly three times what self-employed women did. Female labour force participation, while rising recently, is still among the lowest in the G20.

Political under-representation despite reservation 🔗

Even with the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act in place, implementation is tied to the completion of the next Census and delimitation, meaning the reservation will likely take effect only after 2029. Critics also point to the “sarpanch pati” phenomenon, where elected women are used as proxies by male relatives. The legislative introduction of reservations needs to be accompanied by women’s improved ability to exercise their political choices at all levels, including caste and class dimensions.

Intersectionality and the question of “which women?” 🔗

A Dalit woman agricultural worker, a Muslim woman in a riot-affected neighbourhood, an Adivasi woman facing displacement, and an urban upper-caste corporate executive all experience patriarchy, but very differently. Feminist politics today is wrestling with the demand to be genuinely intersectional, addressing caste, class, religion, sexuality, disability, and region together rather than treating “woman” as a uniform category. The Global Gender Gap Report 2024 placed India at 129th out of 146 countries, a slip from 127th the previous year, with particular weakness in educational attainment and political empowerment. This composite score hides sharper disparities along caste and regional lines.

Backlash and shrinking civic space 🔗

Feminist organisations across the world, including in India, report tighter regulations on foreign funding, smear campaigns against activists, and a coordinated online backlash against women in public life. Anti-gender movements frame feminism as “anti-family” or “Western,” even though Indian feminist thought has deep indigenous roots in figures like Savitribai Phule, Pandita Ramabai, and Tarabai Shinde.

What feminist politics looks like in everyday life 🔗

You do not need to be in Parliament to practise feminist politics. It can mean attending a gender sensitisation workshop on your campus, calling out sexist jokes in a WhatsApp group, supporting a women-led cooperative, voting with women’s issues in mind, sharing household chores at home, mentoring a junior colleague, or simply reading and citing women scholars. The personal, as the second-wave slogan went, is political. Small consistent acts add up to cultural change, and cultural change is what makes structural reform possible.

What do you think? If you had the power to design one new law or policy intervention to advance gender equality in your state, what would it be and why? And which strategy, legislative lobbying, grassroots organising, cultural change, or strategic litigation, do you believe is most urgently needed right now?

References

1. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/12706.pdf
2. https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-constitution-one-hundred-twenty-eighth-amendment-bill-2023
3. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/Paper2/women-reservation-act-2023-women-in-politics
4. https://www.dalvoy.com/en/upsc/mains/previous-years/2025/psychology-paper-ii/gender-discrimination-issues-indian-context-evaluation
5. https://thesecretariat.in/article/mind-the-pay-gap-decoding-gender-wage-inequality-in-india
6. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/womens-reservation-act-2023-symbolic-gesture-or-0
7. https://www.risingpowersinitiative.org/publication/indias-gender-policy-successes-shortcomings-and-the-way-forward/