Feminist Movements and Women's Movements in India and Internationally
This domain tests chronology, campaigns, organisations and the difference between women's movements and feminist movements. International questions often turn on UN conferences and instruments; Indian questions on reform, nationalist politics, grassroots movements and legal aftermaths.
International landmarks
- First-wave suffrage and property campaigns; second-wave movements from the 1960s; third-wave critiques from the 1990s; digital fourth-wave mobilisation.
- UN Decade for Women (1976-85); world conferences at Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995); CEDAW adopted in 1979.
Indian trajectory
- Nineteenth-century social reform: Sati abolition (1829), Widow Remarriage Act (1856), Age of Consent Act (1891).
- Organised women's associations: AIWC (1927), NFIW (1954).
- 1970s-80s: Shahada movement, Chipko (1973), anti-dowry agitation, the Mathura rape case (1979) and the campaign that produced the 1983 criminal-law amendment.
- 1990s: 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments (1992-93) on local government reservation.
- 2012 Nirbhaya case and the Justice Verma Committee; 2018 #MeToo India.
Worked example
A question asks which case triggered the 1983 Criminal Law Amendment on rape. Reasoning: the Mathura rape case produced public outrage over custodial rape and led to the amendment. Vishaka (1997) instead produced workplace sexual-harassment guidelines.
Traps that cost marks
- Conflating Chipko with anti-dam Narmada mobilisation.
- Treating 'women's movement' and 'feminist movement' as identical; the former may pursue welfare without challenging patriarchy.
- Assuming the wave model fits Indian history neatly.