UGC NET Women Studies cheat sheet

Sex/gender distinction (Oakley, 1972): sex is biological, gender is socially constructed; Butler (1990) argues gender is performative, a repeated stylisation of the body rather than an inner essence.

Patriarchy: Rubin's sex/gender system and Walby's six structures (paid work, housework, culture, sexuality, violence, state) describe male dominance as systemic, not individual.

Waves model: first wave (suffrage, 19th–early 20th c.), second wave (1960s–80s, 'personal is political'), third wave (1990s, difference and intersectionality), fourth wave (digital, post-2010).

Liberal feminism seeks reform through law and equal opportunity; radical feminism locates oppression in patriarchy and sexuality; socialist/Marxist feminism links it to capitalism and unpaid labour.

Black feminism and womanism (Walker, Collins): intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) holds that race, gender, class and other axes co-constitute rather than merely add.

Postcolonial feminism (Spivak, Mohanty): critiques Western feminism's 'third-world woman' as a monolithic colonial construct and insists on situated, local knowledge.

Standpoint theory (Hartsock, Harding, Hill Collins): marginalised positions can yield epistemically privileged insight because the dominant group has no incentive to see the system.

Queer theory (Butler, Sedgwick, Rich's 'compulsory heterosexuality'): denaturalises binary sex, gender and desire; heteronormativity is the institutionalised assumption of opposite-sex desire.

Ecofeminism (Shiva, Merchant) links the exploitation of nature to the domination of women; critics warn against essentialising women as naturally closer to nature.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848) is the landmark first-wave US women's rights gathering; the Declaration of Sentiments paraphrased the Declaration of Independence to demand suffrage.

Second-wave milestones: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), NOW (1966), and the UK Women's Liberation Movement (1969); the 1970s saw equal-pay and abortion-rights campaigns.

UN framework: CEDAW adopted 1979 (in force 1981); four World Conferences on Women - Mexico City 1975, Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985, Beijing 1995; Beijing Platform for Action has 12 critical areas.

Indian social reform: Sati abolition (1829, Bentinck), Widow Remarriage Act (1856), Age of Consent Act (1891), Sharda Act (1929); reformers include Ram Mohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Phule and Pandita Ramabai.

Indian women's organisations: WIA (1917), AIWC (1927), NFIW (1954); the 1970s autonomous wave followed the Mathura rape case (1979) and the Towards Equality Report (1974).

Chipko movement (1970s, Uttarakhand) and the anti-dowry and anti-alcohol movements in Andhra Pradesh (1990s) show women's mobilisation around livelihood and bodily safety.

The Shah Bano case (1985) and the Roop Kanwar sati case (1987) shaped debates on secularism, personal law and women's agency in India.

Global South movements (e.g. Chile's 2018 feminist wave, #NiUnaMenos in Argentina) mobilise against femicide and for abortion rights, showing transnational diffusion of protest repertoires.

Constitutional guarantees: Articles 14 (equality), 15 (no discrimination, with 15(3) permitting special provisions for women and children), 16 (public employment), 39(d) (equal pay), 42 (maternity relief) and 51A(e) (fundamental duty to renounce practices derogatory to women).

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005: civil remedy; defines 'domestic relationship', 'shared household' and 'aggrieved person'; provides protection, residence, monetary and custody orders, and appoints Protection Officers.

Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 (after the Nirbhaya case, 2012): expanded IPC 375/376, criminalised stalking, voyeurism, acid attack and disrobing; consent defined as unequivocal voluntary agreement.

Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH): based on Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997); requires Internal Committees in workplaces with 10+ workers and Local Committees elsewhere.

Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017: 26 weeks paid leave for first two children, 12 weeks otherwise; 12 weeks for adoptive and commissioning mothers; crèche facility in establishments with 50+ employees.

Other key statutes: Dowry Prohibition Act 1961; MTP Act 1971 (amended 2021 to raise the upper limit to 24 weeks for special categories); POCSO 2012; Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956; Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006.

Personal law pluralism: Hindu Marriage Act 1955, Muslim personal law, Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872 and Special Marriage Act 1954; the Uniform Civil Code debate turns on gender justice versus minority rights.

Landmark cases: Shah Bano (1985), Vishaka (1997), Shayara Bano (2017, triple talaq), Joseph Shine (2018, adultery struck down), Sabarimala (2018) and the 2019 MTP/adultery-linked bodily autonomy rulings.

Labour force participation: India's female LFPR (PLFS) remains far below male LFPR; measurement debates hinge on whether unpaid domestic and subsistence work is counted.

Time-use surveys (India's first national Time Use Survey, 2019) show women spend several times more hours on unpaid domestic and care work than men - the 'double burden' or 'second shift'.

Occupational segregation: horizontal (women concentrated in teaching, nursing, domestic work, agriculture) and vertical (under-representation in senior roles) - the 'glass ceiling' and 'sticky floor'.

Gender pay gap: measured as the difference in median earnings; explained partly by segregation, career interruption and negotiation, but an unexplained residual persists across countries.

Unpaid care economy: ILO estimates value unpaid care work at a substantial share of GDP; SDG 5.4 targets recognition and redistribution of unpaid care and domestic work.

Informality: a large majority of Indian women workers are in informal or self-employed work; MGNREGA's statutory one-third reservation for women is a key entitlement.

Feminisation of agriculture: male out-migration leaves women managing farms as 'de facto' heads, yet land titles and extension services often remain in male names.

Care economy frameworks (Daly, Folbre) treat care as a public good; policy tools include crèches, paid parental leave, flexible work and social protection for domestic workers.

Reproductive rights (ICPD Cairo 1994) reframe population policy from demographic targets to reproductive health and rights; India's shift from targets to the National Population Policy 2000 reflects this.

Maternal mortality ratio: India's MMR has declined substantially since 2000 under NRHM/NHM; SDG 3.1 targets MMR below 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

Sex ratio at birth: the Child Sex Ratio (0–6 years) fell to 919 in Census 2011; the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act 1994 bans sex determination.

Health determinants: gender norms shape nutrition (anaemia prevalence is high among Indian women), care-seeking, mobility and exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass fuel.

Mental health: gendered risks include intimate partner violence, perinatal depression and the 'gendered burden' of caregiving; the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 recognises advance directives and decriminalises attempted suicide.

Sexuality: 'compulsory heterosexuality' (Rich) and 'heteronormativity' describe institutionalised assumptions; Section 377 was read down in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018).

Bodily autonomy: consent is central to medical ethics and criminal law; forced sterilisation, virginity testing and coerced contraception are recognised violations of bodily integrity.

HIV/AIDS: gendered vulnerability arises from unequal power in sexual negotiation; female condoms and PrEP are harm-reduction tools; sex workers' collectives (e.g. Sonagachi) model peer-led prevention.

Gender parity index (GPI) is the ratio of female to male enrolment; a GPI of 1 indicates parity, below 1 female disadvantage at that level.

India's NEP 2020 commits to universal access, a Gender Inclusion Fund and a target of 50% gross enrolment ratio in higher education by 2035.

RTE Act 2009 guarantees free and compulsory education for ages 6–14; it mandates a 25% quota for disadvantaged children in private unaided schools.

School-related barriers: distance to school, sanitation facilities, early marriage, care responsibilities and safety concerns reduce girls' retention, especially at secondary level.

Curriculum critique: 'hidden curriculum' transmits gendered expectations; textbooks historically depict women in domestic roles and omit women's contributions to science and history.

Women in STEM: leaky pipeline from school to senior academia; role models, mentoring and institutional childcare are evidence-based retention levers.

Feminist pedagogy (hooks, Freire-informed) treats the classroom as a site of dialogue, values lived experience as knowledge and challenges the teacher as sole authority.

Knowledge production: citation and authorship gaps disadvantage women; gender budgeting in research funding and double-blind review are proposed correctives.

The male gaze (Mulvey, 1975) describes visual pleasure structured around active male viewers and passive female objects; the 'female gaze' and counter-gaze are responses.

Symbolic annihilation (Tuchman) is the under-representation, trivialisation or condemnation of a group in media; measured by screen time, speaking roles and occupational portrayal.

Stereotype content model: women are often rated high on warmth but low on competence - the 'competence–warmth' trade-off that penalises assertive women (the 'backlash effect').

Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts) links sexual objectification to self-objectification, body shame and anxiety, with downstream mental-health costs.

Representation in Indian cinema: the 'vamp' versus 'ideal mother' dichotomy, item numbers and the court-ordered 'Nirbhaya' film ban illustrate censorship and gender debates.

Feminist literary criticism (Woolf's A Room of One's Own; Showalter's gynocriticism) asks how women write and are written, and recovers neglected women authors.

Digital media: online harassment is gendered (mob trolling, non-consensual image sharing); platform content moderation is uneven across languages and regions.

Cultural relativism versus universalism: honour crimes, veiling and FGM debates test whether cultural practice can justify harm; 'harmful traditional practices' is the CEDAW framing.

Intimate partner violence (IPV): NFHS-5 (2019–21) reports that roughly 29% of ever-married Indian women aged 15–49 have experienced spousal physical, sexual or emotional violence.

Types of gender-based violence: physical, sexual, psychological, economic, coercive control, stalking, trafficking, acid attacks, honour-based violence and technology-facilitated abuse.

Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) originates in Black women's experience of employment discrimination; it rejects single-axis analysis of discrimination.

Social exclusion is multi-dimensional: economic, political, cultural and spatial; Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, disabled and transgender women face compounded exclusion.

Dalit feminist critique (Guru, Rege): mainstream Indian feminism under-represents caste; 'Brahminical feminism' names the dominance of upper-caste perspectives.

Transgender rights: NALSA v. Union of India (2014) recognised a third gender; the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 has been criticised for lacking self-identification and reservation.

Disability and gender: disabled women face higher rates of violence and are often sterilised without consent; the RPwD Act 2016 and CRPD Article 6 address this.

Shelters, one-stop centres, 181 helplines and the Nirbhaya Fund are India's main institutional responses; conviction rates remain low relative to reported cases.

WID (1970s) focused on integrating women into development projects; WAD critiqued this for ignoring structural power; GAD (1980s–90s) centres gender relations and empowerment.

Gender and Development tools: gender analysis, gender budgeting, gender audits and gender-disaggregated indicators; India institutionalised gender budgeting from 2005–06.

SDG 5 targets gender equality and empowerment; it has nine targets including ending discrimination, eliminating violence and recognising unpaid care.

Women's political representation: the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments (1992–93) reserve one-third of local body seats for women; the 106th Amendment (2023) reserves one-third of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats.

Panchayati Raj evidence: women sarpanches change public-goods investment toward water, sanitation and health, though 'proxy' representation (sarpanch pati) is documented.

Climate and gender: women face higher mortality in disasters (e.g. 1991 Bangladesh cyclone, 2004 Asian tsunami), partly due to mobility, information and clothing constraints.

Environmental governance: Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan and the 'environmentalism of the poor' (Guha & Martinez-Alier) show women's leadership in resource conflicts.

Gender-responsive budgeting tracks allocations across ministries; 'gender-mainstreaming' means assessing policy implications for women and men at every stage.

Feminist empiricism holds that bias can be corrected by stricter method; standpoint epistemology claims marginalised positions yield privileged knowledge; postmodern feminism rejects a single truth.

Reflexivity: the researcher's positionality (caste, class, gender, nationality) shapes access, interpretation and disclosure; field notes should record it explicitly.

Quantitative methods: probability sampling, confidence intervals and significance testing; disaggregating all data by sex and other axes is a minimum feminist practice.

Qualitative methods: in-depth interviews, focus groups, life histories, oral history, participatory action research (PAR) and ethnography are common in women's studies.

Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, no-harm and the right to withdraw; research on violence requires referral pathways and trained interviewers.

Positionality and power: the 'insider/outsider' debate (Naples) shows shared identity can aid rapport but does not guarantee access or truth.

Intersectional sampling: oversampling small groups (e.g. trans women, disabled women) to avoid statistical invisibility; weighting must be reported.

Validity threats: social desirability bias, recall bias, interviewer effects and the 'deficit model' of asking only about problems; mixed methods triangulate these.