“Write short note on The problem of Gender.” (2011)
The “problem of gender” has two senses. For sociology it is a conceptual problem: explaining how a biological difference becomes a social hierarchy, and what “gender” includes. For society it is a practical problem of persistent disadvantage that the Indian state recognised only gradually. A short note needs to cover both.
Gender as a problem for sociology
- Invisibility. Early sociology was “malestream”. Ann Oakley’s The Sociology of Housework (1974) showed that women’s work was not even counted as work, and stratification studies took a woman’s class from her husband’s.
- Nature or culture? Biological explanations treat inequality as natural. Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1949) and Oakley’s sex/gender distinction (1972) show that it is socially produced and therefore changeable.
- Rival explanations:
- Liberal feminists stress unequal rights.
- Marxist feminists, following Friedrich Engels, stress private property and unpaid domestic labour.
- Radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone make patriarchy and control of reproduction the primary cause.
- Black and Dalit feminists, such as bell hooks and Sharmila Rege, show that “woman” is not a single category.
- Beyond the binary. Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) argues that gender is performative. In India, the Supreme Court’s NALSA v. Union of India judgment (2014) recognised transgender persons as a third gender, followed by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. The gender problem now includes those outside the male–female divide.
Gender as a social problem in India
- Rediscovery. The Committee on the Status of Women in India report, Towards Equality (1974), with Vina Mazumdar as member-secretary, revealed a declining sex ratio and women’s marginalisation. That finding launched women’s studies in India.
- Survival. Amartya Sen (1990) estimated that over 100 million women were “missing” worldwide. The Economic Survey 2017–18 put India’s figure at about 63 million. The sex ratio at birth is still only 929 girls per 1,000 boys (NFHS-5).
- Work. Women’s labour force participation is 40.0% against 79.1% for men (PLFS Annual Report 2025), while most unpaid domestic work falls on women (Time Use Survey 2024).
- Violence. The NCRB recorded 4,48,211 crimes against women in 2023, and nearly a third of ever-married women report spousal violence (NFHS-5).
- Caste. Uma Chakravarti’s “Brahmanical patriarchy” links women’s subordination to caste reproduction through endogamy.
From welfare to mainstreaming
Policy approaches have shifted over time:
- from welfare, which treated women as dependants;
- to Women in Development, which added women to growth;
- to Gender and Development, which changes power relations;
- and finally to gender mainstreaming, which in India includes gender budgeting since 2005–06.
The approach has changed from “women’s problems” to the gendered structure of institutions.
Conclusion
The problem of gender is not the “woman question” alone. It concerns how societies turn difference into hierarchy for women, men and gender-diverse people alike. Legal equality has largely been won in India. What remains is the harder sociological task of changing the norms, divisions of labour and power relations that reproduce inequality.