BGS 012 Gender Based Violence Solved Question Paper June 2026 for Certificate in Gender in Law and BA (Gender Studies)

Patriarchy and the feminist perspectives on it

Question 1: Define patriarchy. Evaluate the various feminist theoretical perspectives on it. (20)

Introduction. The word patriarchy comes from the Greek for rule of the father. In early anthropology it described households headed by the eldest male. Feminist scholars widened it into a concept for the whole social order in which men hold power over women and that power is treated as natural.

Definition. Sylvia Walby, in Theorizing Patriarchy (1990), defines it as a system of social structures and practices through which men dominate, oppress and exploit women. Gerda Lerner, in The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), describes it as male dominance over women and children inside the family, extended to society at large. Both stress structure rather than individual bad behaviour.

Patriarchy works through several institutions at once: the family (inheritance, marriage and control of mobility), religion and culture (ideas of purity and honour), the economy (unpaid domestic work and unequal wages), the state and law, and violence itself. For a course on gender-based violence the last point matters most, because violence is how patriarchal control is enforced when consent fails.

1. Liberal feminism

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), J.S. Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) trace inequality to prejudice, poor education and unequal laws. The cure is reform: equal rights, education and access to public life.

Evaluation: liberal feminism won the vote, property rights and equal-pay laws. Yet it rarely names patriarchy as a system. It treats discrimination as an error that law can correct and largely leaves the private sphere, where most domestic and sexual violence takes place, untouched.

2. Radical feminism

Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) brought patriarchy into feminist theory as the most basic form of power, visible in sexuality and the family. Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970) rooted it in women's reproductive role, and Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will (1975) read rape as a tool that keeps all women in fear. The slogan "the personal is political" comes from this school.

Evaluation: radical feminism made domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment public issues, which is the foundation of this course. Critics say it universalises women's experience, leans towards biological determinism and pays too little attention to class, race and caste.

3. Marxist feminism

Friedrich Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), linked women's subordination to the rise of private property and inheritance through the male line. Marxist feminists add that women's unpaid housework reproduces the labour force at no cost to capital, so women's oppression serves capitalism.

Evaluation: this view rightly connects gender to the economy and to class. Its weakness is reductionism: it cannot explain why patriarchy existed before capitalism or persisted in socialist states, and it often treats gender as a side effect of class.

4. Socialist feminism and dual-systems theory

Heidi Hartmann's essay The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (1979) argued that capitalism and patriarchy are two linked systems that support each other. Walby developed this into six structures of patriarchy: paid work, household production, culture, sexuality, male violence and the state. She also traced a shift from private patriarchy in the home to public patriarchy in jobs and the state.

Evaluation: this is the most complete account, and naming male violence as a structure fits this course closely. It can still read as Western in focus and gives less space to caste, religion and colonial history.

5. Black feminism and intersectionality

bell hooks and other Black feminists argued that white middle-class feminism ignored race. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined intersectionality in 1989 to show that race, class and gender combine to create distinct forms of disadvantage, so patriarchy is not felt the same way by all women.

6. Indian feminist perspectives

Uma Chakravarti's idea of brahmanical patriarchy (1993) shows that caste purity in India rests on control of women's sexuality, so gender and caste cannot be studied apart. Deniz Kandiyoti's Bargaining with Patriarchy (1988) adds that women often negotiate within these limits rather than simply submit. Dalit feminists add that Dalit women face caste, class and gender together, so a single idea of patriarchy cannot describe their lives.

Evaluation: these views fit Indian realities such as honour crimes and caste-based sexual violence. Their limit is that they are harder to turn into a single programme of change, because they describe many overlapping patriarchies.

Conclusion. No single perspective explains patriarchy fully. Liberal thought gives the language of rights, radical feminism exposes violence, Marxist and socialist feminism show the economic base, and intersectional and Indian views show how caste and race reshape it. Read together, they explain why gender-based violence is not random but a means of keeping an unequal order in place.

The intersection of caste, culture and patriarchy

Question 2: Analyse the intersection between caste, culture and patriarchy with suitable examples. (20)

Introduction. Caste is a hereditary, endogamous ranking of groups; culture is the set of norms, rituals and ideas of honour that a society lives by; patriarchy is male control over women. In India these three do not run side by side. They hold each other up, and women, especially Dalit and Adivasi women, carry the heaviest cost.

Ambedkar's explanation. In Castes in India (1916), B.R. Ambedkar argued that the essence of caste is endogamy imposed on top of exogamy. To keep groups closed, society had to control women's marriage and sexuality. He identified sati, enforced widowhood and girl marriage as customs that solved the problem of a surplus woman, so caste survival depended on patriarchal control.

Brahmanical patriarchy. Uma Chakravarti (1993) used this term for a system where caste purity is guarded through women's bodies. Texts such as the Manusmriti prescribe lifelong male guardianship of women, and purity rules make the upper-caste woman the gateway through which caste status passes. Culture turns these rules into ideas of honour and shame.

1. Control of marriage and honour crimes

Inter-caste and same-gotra marriages are often punished as threats to family honour. Manoj and Babli were killed in Haryana in 2007 after a khap panchayat opposed their same-gotra marriage. In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018) the Supreme Court held that khap interference in adult marriages is illegal and issued preventive and punitive directions.

2. Sexual violence as caste power

Rape is often used to punish a whole community or to put it back in its place. Bhanwari Devi, a Rajasthan saathin, was gang-raped in 1992 after she tried to stop a child marriage in a dominant-caste family; her case led to the Vishaka guidelines of 1997. The Khairlanji killings of 2006 in Maharashtra and the Hathras case of 2020 show the same link between caste dominance and violence on Dalit women's bodies.

3. Cultural practices with religious sanction

The devadasi system dedicated girls, mostly from Dalit communities, to temples, where many were sexually exploited in the name of tradition. States banned it through laws such as the Karnataka Devadasis (Prohibition of Dedication) Act, 1982. The example shows culture and religion giving cover to caste and gender exploitation at the same time.

4. Sanskritisation and tighter control

M.N. Srinivas used Sanskritisation for lower castes copying upper-caste customs to rise in status. For women this often meant stricter seclusion, bans on widow remarriage and the spread of dowry. Upward caste mobility therefore tended to increase, not loosen, patriarchal control.

5. Different patriarchies for different women

Upper-caste women face seclusion and surveillance of sexuality, while Dalit women work in fields and public spaces where they meet caste abuse and sexual harassment. Gopal Guru's essay Dalit Women Talk Differently (1995) argued that mainstream feminism and Dalit politics both missed this triple burden of caste, class and gender, and that patriarchy also operates within Dalit households.

Legal and constitutional response. Article 15 bars discrimination on grounds of caste and sex, and Article 17 abolishes untouchability. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 treat sexual assault on SC and ST women as an atrocity. Weak enforcement and social pressure on complainants still limit their reach.

Conclusion. Caste needs patriarchy to stay closed, patriarchy draws legitimacy from caste culture, and culture supplies the language of honour that excuses violence. Any answer to gender-based violence in India must therefore address caste and culture together, which is why intersectional and Dalit feminist analysis sits at the heart of this course.