Where is India’s feminist revolution?

India has a larger problem of seeing women as accessories to the economy rather than as equal participants in it. In most parts of the world, the emancipation of women was driven by increased safety in the workplace and equality in the economy. India needs all of that, fast.

As India mourned the gruesome rape and murder of a young female doctor in Kolkata last week, I was reminded of a simple truth that should frankly haunt all of us every day: The subordination of women by men is unnatural and there is truly nothing like it.

Let’s get one thing straight: There has never been a properly egalitarian society in human history. At any given point in time, and in every empire, kingdom or country in the world, one dominant ethnic, linguistic or religious group has inevitably enjoyed power over another. Muslims have ruled over Christians, and Christians have ruled over Muslims. Persians have ruled over Greeks, and Greeks have ruled over Persians.

But while each of these groups rose and fell with time, there has always been one fundamental truth: Across time and across geographies, for thousands of years of recorded history, women have always been dominated and controlled by men — everywhere and all the time.

In the West, the advent of industrialisation created the social and political winds necessary to build a movement against this unfair schism. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, as democratic rights expanded in Britain and America, women built formidable movements for gender equality — first, for equal voting rights, and then for equality at the workplace. The expansion of material aspirations was a key part of these efforts: Many people argued that if women were not allowed to go to school or achieve employment, nations cannot grow or get richer. And as women gained access to these opportunities, their voice grew with them.

In the aftermath of World War II, as technology and globalisation took hold, and economic opportunities became more accessible, there was a global reckoning with the plight of women. As more women gained financial independence, women as a whole made great gains across health, education, political representation and other metrics.

But India has found a way to break the mould. Girls in India are going to school, but women are not able to go to work.

Sample some data from the World Bank: In 2022, over 90% of girls from the relevant age group had completed lower secondary school in India. But only 28% of the women were participating in the workforce that year.

When compared against other lower middle-income countries, India’s women have consistently done better at schooling and worse in the workforce. In such countries, on average, less than 74% of girls had completed lower secondary, but over 36% of all women were in the workforce.

Why am I bringing up these numbers? Because a working female professional was brutally attacked in her place of work. Indians often see sexual crimes as a law-and-order problem. They may be. But India has a larger problem of seeing women as accessories to the economy rather than as equal participants in it. When a recent Pew survey asked whether men should have more rights to a job than women, as many as 55% in India said, yes — the second-most out of 61 countries surveyed. That was part of a broader sentiment expressed by many Indians in that survey: That men belong in the workforce and women belong at home.

The proliferation of crimes against women is often the result of women being subordinated to men in the economy. Many people might scoff at this as cynical materialism, but the most accurate barometer of any group’s status in society is its success in the economy. In most parts of the world, the emancipation of women was driven by increased safety in the workplace and equality in the economy. India needs all of that, fast.