Column | India@80: How Free are Our Women, Asks Ranjana Kumari

Every year, as Independence Day approaches, we speak with pride about India’s achievements. This year is particularly significant. We are close to completing eight decades as an independent nation. We are among the world’s largest economies. We are sending missions into space, building digital public infrastructure and aspiring to become a developed country by 2047.

As someone who has spent more than 40 years working with women across India, I cannot help asking a simple question: has freedom meant the same thing for Indian women as it has for Indian men? I have been asking this question for most of my professional life.

When I entered the women’s movement in the early 1980s, gender equality was not part of mainstream public discourse. Violence inside the home was considered a private matter. Dowry deaths rarely made national headlines. Survivors of rape, instead of the accused, were often put on trial. There were very few women in public life and even fewer in positions where decisions were made. Many of us believed that if we changed the law, society would gradually change as well.

The Laws Did Change

The women’s movement, supported by committed lawyers, academics, journalists and parliamentarians, helped bring important legal reforms. Today, we have stronger laws against domestic violence, sexual harassment at the workplace, child marriage, trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. Women have entered universities, the civil services, the armed forces, science, sports and business in numbers that would have been difficult to imagine 40 years ago.

I celebrate these achievements because I have witnessed the struggles behind them. But experience has also made me cautious about celebrating too quickly.

The success of a few women cannot become evidence that all women are equal. Over the years, I have travelled to hundreds of villages and towns. I have met women who head panchayats, but are still expected to seek permission before travelling outside their village. I have met young women with university degrees who are unable to work because there is nobody to care for their children. I have met survivors who spend years seeking justice while being questioned more harshly than those accused of committing crimes against them.

These stories are different, but together they tell us something important. Patriarchy has not disappeared. It has adapted. Today, India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Yet international reports continue to remind us that women are not participating equally in this growth. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report places India far below where an economy of our size and ambition should be. More importantly, millions of educated women remain outside the workforce or are concentrated in informal, insecure and poorly paid employment.

This is not because women lack ambition. It is because our economy still depends on their unpaid work. We continue to treat child care, elder care and domestic responsibilities as women’s natural duty rather than recognising them as work that sustains families, communities and the economy itself. Until we redistribute care work, invest in child care and create safer and more flexible workplaces, we cannot speak honestly about women’s economic empowerment.

Forty years ago, the violence we encountered was largely confined to homes, workplaces and public spaces. Today, it enters through a mobile phone. In recent on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. I have met young women whose lives have been shattered by deepfake images, online stalking, image-based sexual abuse and coordinated digital harassment. AI, while opening extraordinary opportunities, has also become a new instrument for exploiting women and girls.

Our response cannot simply be to ask women to stay offline. Just as women claimed their right to occupy public spaces, they must also enjoy equal rights in digital spaces. Technology cannot become the newest face of old discrimination.

Political representation has undoubtedly improved. The constitutional provision reserving one-third of seats for women in Parliament and state Assem­blies is an important milestone in India’s democratic journey. It is the outcome of decades of advocacy by women’s organisations across political ideologies.

But numbers alone will not transform democracy. Women must shape policy, influence budgets and participate equally in decisions on the economy, climate change, AI and national security. Gender equality cannot remain confined to issues traditionally labelled as ‘women’s concerns’. Looking back, I sometimes think our greatest achievement has not been changing laws. It has been changing aspirations. When I first started working, many parents wanted their daughters to become good wives. Today, many daughters want to become scientists, judges, entrepreneurs, police officers and political leaders. That is a profound social transformation. Yet aspirations alone are not enough.

Every time a girl drops out because there is no safe transport, every time a woman leaves her career because child care is unavailable, every time an online platform fails to protect women from abuse, every time a survivor abandons her pursuit of justice because the process itself becomes a punishment, we fail the promise of our Constitution.

I have often said that gender equality is not a women’s issue. It is a question of democracy. No country can aspire to global leadership while excluding half its population from equal opportunity, equal safety and equal decision-making.

As India prepares for the centenary of Independence in 2047, I hope we shift the conversation. Instead of asking how many successful women India has produced, let us ask whether every ordinary woman has an equal chance to succeed. Instead of treating gender justice as a welfare agenda, let us recognise it as central to economic growth, technological innovation and democratic governance.

The Constitution promised every citizen justice, liberty, equ­a­lity and dignity. Eighty years since Independence, Indian women have moved much closer to that promise than my generation could have ima­gined. But we have not reached it yet. That unfinished journey should define the next chapter of India’s develop­ment.

(Views expressed are personal)

Ranjana Kumari Director, Centre For Social Research, Delhi

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)