Feminism

🎯 How This Word Works in UPSC Writing

The movement and body of thought advocating equality between the sexes. Naming its internal divisions is what separates a considered answer from a generic one, because feminism is not a single position: liberal feminism seeks equality through legal reform and equal access; socialist feminism locates women's subordination in the economic structure and in unpaid reproductive labour; radical feminism treats patriarchy as the primary and independent system of oppression rather than a by-product of class; and postcolonial feminism objects that a universal category of woman erases differences of race, class and colonial history. The Indian critique belongs here and is examinable: Dalit feminist writing argues that mainstream Indian feminism assumed an upper-caste subject and treated caste as a separate question, whereas caste and gender operate together, which is the substance of intersectionality applied to the Indian context.