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UGC NET Women Studies study materials
UGC NET Women Studies study resources

UGC NET Women Studies practice questions

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Question 1Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which concept, central to second-wave feminist theory, describes the socially learned behaviours and roles associated with being a man or a woman, as distinct from biological sex?

  1. Intersex
  2. Sexuality
  3. Sex
  4. Gender Correct answer.

Explanation

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours and expectations attached to masculinity and femininity, whereas sex refers to biological and physiological characteristics. Feminist theory distinguished the two to argue that gendered inequality is not biologically inevitable but socially produced and changeable.

Question 2Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Simone de Beauvoir's claim that 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' is best understood as arguing that:

  1. Femininity is a historical and social construction rather than a natural destiny Correct answer.
  2. Biological sex differences do not exist at all
  3. Womanhood is a fixed biological essence present from birth
  4. Women should reject motherhood in all circumstances

Explanation

Beauvoir's statement in The Second Sex asserts that femininity is produced through socialisation and historical circumstance, not given by nature. It separates biological sex from the social construction of womanhood and underpins later feminist critiques of essentialism.

Question 3Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

In feminist theory, 'patriarchy' most precisely refers to:

  1. Any individual man's prejudiced attitudes toward women
  2. A legal system that formally bars women from voting
  3. A social order in which men hold dominant power across political, economic and cultural institutions Correct answer.
  4. The biological differences between men and women

Explanation

Patriarchy is a structural concept describing a system of male dominance operating across institutions, culture and the household, not merely individual attitudes or a single law. Feminist scholars use it to explain how power is reproduced through social arrangements rather than only through personal bias.

Question 4Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which theoretical approach holds that gender inequality is rooted in the material organisation of production and reproduction, and that women's unpaid domestic labour supports capitalist accumulation?

  1. Marxist and socialist feminism Correct answer.
  2. Ecofeminism
  3. Postmodern feminism
  4. Liberal feminism

Explanation

Marxist and socialist feminists analyse women's subordination through the relations of production, arguing that unpaid domestic work reproduces labour power and sustains capital accumulation. Liberal feminism instead emphasises legal and educational reform, while postmodern and ecofeminist approaches focus on discourse and nature respectively.

Question 5Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

The term 'intersectionality', coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, was developed to explain that:

  1. All women share a single common experience of oppression
  2. Intersex identities should be treated separately from gender analysis
  3. Multiple social identities such as race, class and gender interact to produce distinct experiences of disadvantage Correct answer.
  4. Gender is the only axis of identity that matters for discrimination law

Explanation

Crenshaw showed that Black women's experiences of discrimination could not be captured by treating race and gender as separate, additive categories. Intersectionality analyses how overlapping systems of advantage and disadvantage interact to shape distinct forms of marginalisation.

Question 6Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

In Gayle Rubin's framework, the 'sex/gender system' refers to:

  1. The legal regulation of marriage and divorce
  2. The chromosomal determination of sex at conception
  3. The set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity Correct answer.
  4. A medical protocol for assigning sex at birth

Explanation

Rubin used the sex/gender system to name the social mechanisms through which raw biological sex is shaped into culturally organised gender and sexuality. It is a conceptual tool for analysing how kinship and social institutions construct gendered subjects.

Question 7Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which concept describes the tendency to treat male experience and the male body as the default human norm against which women are measured?

  1. Heteronormativity
  2. Androcentrism Correct answer.
  3. Misogyny
  4. Gynocentrism

Explanation

Androcentrism is the practice of placing masculinity and male experience at the centre of analysis and culture, rendering women as the deviation. Misogyny refers to hatred of women, heteronormativity to the normalisation of heterosexuality, and gynocentrism to centring women.

Question 8Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity argues that gender is:

  1. A biological drive that determines gendered behaviour
  2. Produced through the repetition of stylised acts within a regulatory social frame Correct answer.
  3. Chosen freely and voluntarily by autonomous individuals
  4. A stable inner identity that is expressed outwardly through dress and behaviour

Explanation

Butler argues that gender has no prior essence but is constituted through repeated, stylised performances regulated by social norms. The repetition creates the illusion of a stable inner identity. Performativity is therefore not voluntary choice but a constrained process.

Question 9Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

A researcher studies how women factory workers in a global supply chain experience both exploitative wages and household labour burdens. Which framework most directly analyses this combination of paid and unpaid work?

  1. Social reproduction theory Correct answer.
  2. Psychoanalytic feminism
  3. Postcolonial feminism
  4. Liberal feminism

Explanation

Social reproduction theory examines how the unpaid labour of maintaining households and reproducing labour power is intertwined with paid production. It explains how women's domestic responsibilities subsidise and sustain exploitative wage work in global supply chains.

Question 10Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

The 'public/private dichotomy' is critiqued in feminist theory primarily because:

  1. It ignores the role of the state in the economy
  2. It overestimates the importance of family life
  3. It treats the private sphere as beyond justice and obscures violence and inequality within the household Correct answer.
  4. It assumes that men and women are naturally identical

Explanation

Feminists argue that the public/private split naturalises the household as a zone of privacy, shielding domestic violence, unpaid labour and unequal power from public scrutiny and legal remedy. The critique shows that the personal is political and that the boundary itself is a political construction.

Question 11Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which of the following best captures the 'politics of location' as developed by Adrienne Rich and later Black and postcolonial feminists?

  1. The geographical mapping of women's movements worldwide
  2. The recognition that knowledge and experience are shaped by one's specific social position and history Correct answer.
  3. The claim that all women occupy the same political standpoint
  4. The idea that political identities are chosen independently of context

Explanation

The politics of location insists that what one can know and claim is conditioned by one's concrete social position, including race, class, nation and history. It challenges the notion of a universal, unlocated feminist subject and demands reflexivity about one's own standpoint.

Question 12Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Standpoint theory, associated with scholars such as Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins, holds that:

  1. Scientific method is inherently neutral and unaffected by social position
  2. Marginalised positions can yield distinctive and potentially more complete insights into social relations Correct answer.
  3. Only the experiences of elite women are epistemically reliable
  4. Objective knowledge is impossible and all claims are equally valid

Explanation

Standpoint theory argues that because marginalised groups must understand both their own world and the dominant one, their perspectives can generate more comprehensive accounts of social relations. It does not claim all views are equally valid but grounds epistemic advantage in social location and struggle.

Question 13Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

In feminist economics, the failure to count unpaid domestic and care work in national accounts is described as:

  1. The glass ceiling
  2. The motherhood penalty
  3. The invisible economy or unpaid care work problem Correct answer.
  4. The gender pay gap

Explanation

Feminist economists argue that national accounting systems render unpaid domestic and care labour invisible because it produces no market transaction. This invisibility distorts measures of output and obscures women's economic contribution.

Question 14Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which statement best distinguishes 'gender mainstreaming' from earlier 'women-specific' policy approaches?

  1. It integrates a gender perspective into all policy areas and processes rather than adding separate women's programmes Correct answer.
  2. It replaces gender equality goals with general economic growth targets
  3. It targets only women's projects with dedicated funding
  4. It applies only to employment legislation

Explanation

Gender mainstreaming requires assessing the gendered implications of all policies and institutional processes, rather than confining gender concerns to discrete women's projects. It was endorsed internationally after the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as a cross-cutting strategy.

Question 15Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Heteronormativity refers to:

  1. The assumption that heterosexuality is the normal and natural default, with other sexualities as deviations Correct answer.
  2. The belief that gender and sex are always aligned in nature
  3. A legal prohibition on same-sex marriage in all jurisdictions
  4. The biological basis of sexual orientation

Explanation

Heteronormativity is the institutionalised assumption that heterosexuality is normal and preferable, which structures norms, laws and everyday expectations. It renders non-heterosexual identities as deviant and is distinct from the question of biological causation.

Question 16Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Chandra Talpade Mohanty's critique of 'Western feminist' scholarship focused on which problem?

  1. Its excessive attention to economic class analysis
  2. Its refusal to engage with questions of culture
  3. Its construction of 'Third World women' as a singular, victimised and homogeneous group Correct answer.
  4. Its overemphasis on quantitative methods

Explanation

Mohanty argued that Western feminist texts discursively produced 'Third World women' as a monolithic category defined by oppression, erasing heterogeneity and historical specificity. The critique became foundational for postcolonial and transnational feminism.

Question 17Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

The concept of 'hegemonic masculinity', developed by R. W. Connell, describes:

  1. Any masculinity practised by men in positions of authority
  2. The culturally dominant form of masculinity that legitimises men's power over women and other men Correct answer.
  3. A psychological disorder affecting men
  4. The most violent form of masculinity found in all societies

Explanation

Hegemonic masculinity names the culturally ascendant ideal of manhood that justifies and sustains gender hierarchy, not simply the behaviour of powerful individuals. Connell emphasises that few men fully embody it, yet it shapes norms against which masculinities are ranked.

Question 18Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

A legal scholar argues that a workplace policy banning braids disproportionately burdens Black women and cannot be understood through race or gender alone. Which concept best supports this analysis?

  1. Formal equality
  2. Gender neutrality
  3. Intersectional discrimination Correct answer.
  4. Comparable worth

Explanation

Intersectional discrimination addresses disadvantage that arises from the interaction of race and gender, which single-axis frameworks fail to recognise. The braids example illustrates how a policy may be neutral on its face yet burdens a group defined by intersecting identities.

Question 19Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which of the following best expresses the core disagreement between 'equality' and 'difference' feminisms?

  1. Whether men can be feminists
  2. Whether equality requires women to be treated the same as men or whether policies should recognise and accommodate gendered difference Correct answer.
  3. Whether women should be paid for their work
  4. Whether gender is a social construction

Explanation

The equality/difference debate concerns whether justice demands identical treatment or whether policies must recognise embodied and social differences such as pregnancy and caregiving. It shapes arguments about special measures, workplace accommodation and the meaning of neutrality.

Question 20Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

In feminist science studies, Donna Haraway's concept of 'situated knowledges' argues that:

  1. Objectivity requires transcending all perspective and location
  2. Feminist objectivity means partial, locatable perspectives rather than a view from nowhere Correct answer.
  3. Knowledge claims should be judged solely by their political usefulness
  4. Only natural scientists can produce valid knowledge

Explanation

Haraway proposes a feminist objectivity grounded in partial perspectives, insisting that knowledge is always produced from somewhere. The 'god trick' of claiming a view from nowhere is critiqued as a concealed and irresponsible position.

Question 21Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which scholar's work on the 'coloniality of gender' argues that the modern gender system was imposed through colonialism and reshaped precolonial gender arrangements?

  1. Nancy Chodorow
  2. Maria Lugones Correct answer.
  3. Carol Gilligan
  4. Sylvia Walby

Explanation

Maria Lugones developed the concept of the coloniality of gender, arguing that colonial power introduced a binary and hierarchical gender system that reorganised indigenous social relations. She critiqued both mainstream and decolonial theory for failing to theorise gender adequately.

Question 22Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

An analysis shows that a development programme increases women's formal employment while household care burdens remain unchanged, worsening women's total work time. Which concept best names this outcome?

  1. The double burden Correct answer.
  2. Occupational segregation
  3. The glass escalator
  4. The second shift as a voluntary choice

Explanation

The double burden describes the combination of paid employment with a continued, unequal share of unpaid domestic labour. The scenario illustrates how interventions that raise women's employment without redistributing care can intensify their total workload.

Question 23Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which critique is most central to Black feminist challenges to mainstream second-wave feminism?

  1. That mainstream feminism ignored the environment
  2. That mainstream feminism centred the experiences of white, middle-class women and treated them as universal Correct answer.
  3. That mainstream feminism placed too much emphasis on intersectionality
  4. That mainstream feminism relied excessively on Marxist class categories

Explanation

Black feminists argued that mainstream second-wave feminism generalised from the experience of white, middle-class women, marginalising race and class and overlooking issues such as welfare, policing and reproductive justice. This critique helped generate intersectional and womanist frameworks.

Question 24Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

The 'capabilities approach' as developed by Martha Nussbaum and applied to gender justice holds that:

  1. Equality should be measured solely by income per capita
  2. Gender justice is best achieved through economic growth alone
  3. Cultural traditions should determine the scope of women's rights without external critique
  4. Justice requires securing a set of central human capabilities for all persons, including bodily integrity and political participation Correct answer.

Explanation

Nussbaum's capabilities approach evaluates justice by whether people are able to realise central human functionings, including bodily integrity, affiliation and political participation. It provides a normative benchmark that goes beyond income measures and allows critique of practices that restrict women's capabilities.

Question 25Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which concept, developed within queer and feminist theory, describes the process by which bodies and identities that do not conform to normative sex/gender categories are rendered culturally unintelligible?

  1. Gender dysphoria
  2. Compulsory able-bodiedness
  3. Gender symmetry
  4. Monstrous or abject unintelligibility Correct answer.

Explanation

Feminist and queer theorists such as Butler use notions of the abject and unintelligible to describe how subjects who fall outside normative sex/gender grids are not recognised as legible persons. This is a cultural and normative process of recognition rather than a clinical condition.

Question 26Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

In feminist political ecology, the concept of 'feminist political ecology' is best described as an approach that analyses environmental change by examining how gendered divisions of labour, access to natural resources, and environmental decision-making intersect with which additional axis of power?

  1. Technological innovation alone, treated as independent of social relations
  2. Class, caste, race and colonial histories that shape differentiated access to and control over resources Correct answer.
  3. Purely individual psychological attitudes toward nature that are unrelated to social structure
  4. The biological capacity of women to nurture ecosystems more effectively than men

Explanation

Feminist political ecology extends political ecology by treating gender as inseparable from other axes of power such as class, caste, race and colonial legacies. It examines how these intersecting relations structure who gains access to land, water, forests and decision-making authority. The approach is therefore structural and intersectional rather than attitudinal or biologically determinist.

Question 27Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

A scholar argues that the category 'woman' in Indian feminist scholarship must be understood alongside caste, since upper-caste and Dalit women experience gendered oppression differently. This argument most directly illustrates which theoretical move?

  1. Intersectionality, where gender is analysed as co-constituted with other structures of domination Correct answer.
  2. Cultural relativism, where no cross-context comparison is possible
  3. Essentialism, where all women are treated as sharing an identical experience
  4. Biological determinism, where anatomy explains social position

Explanation

Intersectionality holds that gender never operates alone but is co-constituted with caste, class, race and other structures, producing qualitatively different experiences of oppression. The scholar's insistence that Dalit and upper-caste women face distinct gendered realities is a textbook application of this move. It rejects the assumption of a single, homogeneous 'woman's experience'.

Question 28Concepts, Theories and Debates in Women's and Gender Studies

Which statement best identifies the central analytical problem that 'postcolonial feminist theory' raises about mainstream Western feminist knowledge production?

  1. That it treats Western women's experiences as universal while rendering Third World women as a homogeneous, victimised category Correct answer.
  2. That it over-emphasises the agency of women in the Global South at the expense of documenting structural oppression
  3. That it relies too heavily on quantitative data rather than on ethnographic methods
  4. That it has historically excluded men from the study of gender relations

Explanation

Postcolonial feminists argue that much Western feminist scholarship universalises its own situated experience and constructs 'Third World women' as a singular, passive and tradition-bound Other. This discursive homogenisation obscures local histories, agency and heterogeneity. The critique is thus about the geopolitics of knowledge production, not about method choice or the inclusion of men.

Question 29Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which organization, founded in 1917, is generally regarded as the first all-India women's association, later merging into the All India Women's Conference in 1927?

  1. National Council of Women in India
  2. All Bengal Women's Union
  3. Bharat Stree Mahamandal
  4. Women's Indian Association Correct answer.

Explanation

The Women's Indian Association was founded in 1917 at Adyar by Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins and others, and it pressed for women's education, suffrage and social reform. In 1927 it federated with other bodies to form the All India Women's Conference. This makes it the standard answer for the first all-India women's association.

Question 30Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The All India Women's Conference was founded in 1927 primarily around which initial concern, before broadening to suffrage and legal reform?

  1. Environmental protection
  2. Trade union rights for mill workers
  3. Anti-dowry legislation
  4. Women's education Correct answer.

Explanation

AIWC grew out of a 1927 conference on women's education convened in Poona, and education remained its founding focus. Its mandate later expanded to include social legislation, suffrage and legal reform. This sequence explains why education is identified as the initial concern.

Question 31Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which colonial-era law, passed in 1929 after sustained campaigning by Indian women's organizations and social reformers, raised the minimum age of marriage for girls?

  1. Sarda Act Correct answer.
  2. Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856
  3. Age of Consent Act, 1891
  4. Special Marriage Act, 1954

Explanation

The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, widely known as the Sarda Act after Har Bilas Sarda, fixed a minimum marriage age of 14 for girls and 18 for boys. Women's associations campaigned for it as part of a broader social reform agenda. It is the standard reference for this reform.

Question 32Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Chipko movement, which became internationally known in the 1970s, is best described as a movement in which women played a central role in:

  1. Campaigning for reservation of seats in parliament
  2. Organizing industrial strikes in textile mills
  3. Demanding repeal of personal laws
  4. Protecting community forests from commercial felling Correct answer.

Explanation

Chipko emerged in the Garhwal Himalaya, where villagers, and prominently women such as Gaura Devi, resisted contractors' felling of trees by embracing them. The movement linked forest protection with local livelihood and ecological concerns. It is therefore associated with community forest protection rather than electoral or industrial demands.

Question 33Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), founded in 1972 in Ahmedabad, was established primarily to organize which category of workers?

  1. Women employed in the formal banking sector
  2. Women university teachers
  3. Women in the informal and self-employed sector Correct answer.
  4. Women in the armed forces

Explanation

SEWA, founded by Ela Bhatt, organizes women working in the informal economy, including vendors, home-based workers and agricultural labourers. It combines trade unionism with cooperative and credit activities. Its mandate is therefore the self-employed and informal-sector workforce.

Question 34Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The first wave of feminism in the West is conventionally associated with which primary demand?

  1. Postcolonial critique of development policy
  2. Deconstruction of gender as performance
  3. Women's suffrage and legal equality in marriage and property Correct answer.
  4. Queer theory and sexuality studies

Explanation

First-wave feminism, spanning roughly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, centred on suffrage, property rights and legal capacity of married women. Its landmark achievements include suffrage extensions in various countries. Later theoretical concerns belong to subsequent waves.

Question 35Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 is significant in the history of feminist movements because it:

  1. Established the first women's trade union in the United States
  2. Launched the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts
  3. Issued a Declaration of Sentiments demanding women's rights, including suffrage Correct answer.
  4. Founded the International Alliance of Women

Explanation

At Seneca Falls, New York, delegates adopted a Declaration of Sentiments modelled on the Declaration of Independence, listing grievances and demanding the vote. It is treated as a founding moment of organized American feminism. This distinguishes it from later organizations and campaigns.

Question 36Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Shah Bano case of 1985 and the subsequent mobilization by women's groups in India primarily raised which issue?

  1. Maintenance rights of divorced Muslim women and the relationship between personal law and constitutional rights Correct answer.
  2. Equal pay for agricultural labour
  3. Reservation for women in panchayats
  4. Environmental clearance for dams

Explanation

The Supreme Court granted maintenance to Shah Bano, and the political reversal through the 1986 legislation prompted protests by women's organizations. The episode crystallized debates over personal law, gender justice and constitutional guarantees. It is therefore tied to maintenance and personal law.

Question 37Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which of the following best captures the distinct contribution of the anti-arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh in the early 1990s?

  1. Urban women demanded equal inheritance rights in ancestral property
  2. Women workers demanded maternity benefits in the formal sector
  3. Women students demanded hostel facilities in universities
  4. Rural women linked liquor consumption to domestic violence and poverty and demanded prohibition Correct answer.

Explanation

The anti-arrack agitation grew out of literacy circles in rural Andhra Pradesh, where women connected alcohol sale to household debt and domestic violence, and they physically blocked liquor shops. The movement is noted for its grassroots, rural character and its link to theTotal Literacy Campaign. Its demands centred on prohibition rather than inheritance or workplace benefits.

Question 38Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Narmada Bachao Andolan is frequently discussed in women's studies for which reason?

  1. It was the first movement to demand a uniform civil code
  2. Women's participation in displacement struggles reshaped ideas of development and rights Correct answer.
  3. It secured constitutional reservation for women in local bodies
  4. It was exclusively a trade union of dam construction workers

Explanation

The NBA, led by Medha Patkar, mobilized displaced communities against large dams, and women's involvement highlighted gendered costs of displacement and rehabilitation. It is studied as a case where women's activism reframed development discourse. Its focus was displacement and environmental justice, not legal uniformity or electoral reservation.

Question 39Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The term 'second wave' feminism is most strongly associated with which set of concerns?

  1. Suffrage and married women's property rights
  2. Deconstruction of binary sex categories
  3. Workplace equality, reproductive rights and critique of the private/public divide Correct answer.
  4. Anti-globalization protests against international financial institutions

Explanation

Second-wave feminism, from the 1960s, broadened the agenda to employment discrimination, reproductive freedom, sexuality and the slogan that the personal is political. It critiqued the separation of public and private spheres. Suffrage and property rights belong to the first wave.

Question 40Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which document adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 is a key reference for international women's movements?

  1. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
  2. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Correct answer.
  3. Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies
  4. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Explanation

The Beijing Conference produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, covering twelve critical areas of concern including poverty, education, violence and decision-making. It remains a benchmark for gender equality advocacy. CEDAW and the Nairobi Strategies are earlier or separate instruments.

Question 41Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

CEDAW, often described as an international bill of rights for women, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in which year?

  1. 1993
  2. 1979 Correct answer.
  3. 1948
  4. 1966

Explanation

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted in 1979 and came into force in 1981. It obliges states parties to eliminate discrimination in law and practice across public and private spheres. India ratified it in 1993.

Question 42Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The term 'feminism of the second sex' is associated with which thinker whose 1949 work argued that woman is constructed as the Other?

  1. Carol Gilligan
  2. Simone de Beauvoir Correct answer.
  3. Mary Wollstonecraft
  4. Betty Friedan

Explanation

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) argued that femininity is socially produced and that woman has been defined as the Other against a male norm. The claim that one is not born but becomes a woman is central to later feminist theory. Friedan, Wollstonecraft and Gilligan wrote different foundational works.

Question 43Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Mahila Samakhya programme, launched in India in 1989, was designed mainly to:

  1. Enable rural women's collectives to address education and empowerment through mahila sanghas Correct answer.
  2. Train women for the civil services examination
  3. Provide loans only to urban women entrepreneurs
  4. Regulate dowry transactions through registration

Explanation

Mahila Samakhya, supported by the government with external assistance, organized rural women into sanghas to pursue literacy, health, legal awareness and local governance. It is widely cited in women's studies as a state-supported empowerment model. It was not an urban credit scheme or a dowry regulator.

Question 44Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

A researcher studies how women's collectives in a drought-prone district negotiated water allocation with local panchayats and argues that this changed both resource rules and gender norms. Which concept best describes this analytical focus?

  1. Difference feminism
  2. Gendered political ecology of collective action Correct answer.
  3. Ecofeminism as spiritual essentialism
  4. Liberal feminism

Explanation

The scenario combines resource governance with gendered institutions and norms, which is the terrain of feminist political ecology and analyses of women's collective action. It examines how bargaining over water reshapes both rules and gender relations. Liberal feminism, difference feminism and spiritual ecofeminism address different questions.

Question 45Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which of the following distinguishes the approach of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), founded in 1981, from many earlier reform-oriented women's organizations?

  1. It confined itself to legislative lobbying on education
  2. It rejected any engagement with personal law debates
  3. It linked women's oppression explicitly to class and agrarian struggles within a left political framework Correct answer.
  4. It opposed women's entry into paid employment

Explanation

AIDWA, associated with the left movement, frames gender oppression as intertwined with class exploitation and has organized rural and working women around wages, land and violence. It has also engaged in personal law and communal harmony debates. Its distinguishing feature is the class-based political framework.

Question 46Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The concept of 'intersectionality', introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, was developed to explain:

  1. Why class is the only relevant axis of oppression
  2. How race and gender combine to produce distinct forms of discrimination not captured by single-axis analysis Correct answer.
  3. Why legal reform alone is sufficient for equality
  4. How women's biology determines their social roles

Explanation

Crenshaw used the term to show that Black women's experiences of discrimination could not be reduced to either racism or sexism alone. Intersectionality analyses how multiple social locations interact. It rejects single-axis and purely biological or class-reductionist accounts.

Question 47Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

The Uniform Civil Code debate in India is contested within women's movements primarily because:

  1. All women's groups agree it should be implemented immediately
  2. Some argue reform of personal laws will secure gender justice while others fear majoritarian imposition on minority communities Correct answer.
  3. It concerns only property taxation rules
  4. It is unrelated to constitutional equality guarantees

Explanation

The debate pits a gender-justice case for reforming discriminatory personal laws against concerns that a uniform code may be imposed majoritarianly on minority communities. Women's groups have therefore taken divergent positions, often favouring internal reform over a single code. The issue is directly tied to constitutional equality.

Question 48Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which statement most accurately characterizes the relationship between the women's movement and the Indian state's women's policy machinery since the 1970s?

  1. Policy machinery preceded the movement by several decades
  2. The state created women's policy bodies without any movement influence
  3. Movement pressure contributed to reports and policies while the movement also critiqued state co-optation Correct answer.
  4. The movement rejected all engagement with state institutions

Explanation

The publication of Towards Equality in 1974 followed mobilization and research pressure, and it shaped later policy including the national perspective plan and the 2001 policy. At the same time, activists have warned against co-optation and depoliticization through NGOization. The relationship is therefore both productive and contested.

Question 49Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

In debates over the women's reservation bill in India, which argument has been advanced by critics who nonetheless support greater political representation of women?

  1. Women are inherently unsuited to legislative work
  2. Local body reservation has no bearing on national politics
  3. Reserving seats may entrench elite capture unless accompanied by sub-quotas and party reform Correct answer.
  4. Reservation violates the basic structure doctrine

Explanation

Some supporters of representation have argued that a blanket reservation could benefit mainly elite women, and have therefore demanded sub-quotas for OBC, Dalit and Muslim women alongside party-level reforms. This is a critique internal to the representation agenda. Claims of women's unsuitability or constitutional invalidity are different, weaker arguments.

Question 50Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally

Which pairing of movement and its characteristic organizational form is most accurate?

  1. Chipko and a formal political party contesting elections
  2. Mahila Samakhya and a purely judicial litigation strategy
  3. AIDWA and an autonomous funding-only foundation
  4. SEWA and the fusion of a trade union with a cooperative and credit structure Correct answer.

Explanation

SEWA combines union registration with cooperatives such as the Shri Mahila SEWA Sahakari Bank to serve informal workers' credit needs. This hybrid form is frequently cited as its institutional innovation. The other pairings misdescribe the movements' organizational character.