“Though women in post-Independent India have excelled in various fields, the social attitude towards women and feminist movement has been patriarchal.” Apart from women education and women empowerment schemes, what interventions can help change this milieu?

Excellence amid a patriarchal milieu

Post-Independence India has seen women excel as Presidents and Prime Minister, Supreme Court judges, bankers, scientists and Olympians, yet NFHS-5 reports that nearly a third of ever-married women have faced spousal violence, female labour-force participation still trails far behind men's, unpaid care work remains overwhelmingly feminised (Time Use Survey 2019), and even discourse on women's issues is often mediated on terms set by men. Since schooling and schemes alone have not shifted attitudes, interventions must target the norms themselves.

Interventions beyond education and schemes

• Political voice: operationalise the 106th Constitutional Amendment reserving one-third of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats, and end 'sarpanch-pati' proxy rule in panchayats through capacity-building of elected women.
• Engage men and boys: gender-sensitisation modules in school curricula and campaigns such as HeForShe and Bell Bajao that reframe masculinity rather than merely protect women.
• Economic entitlements: enforce equal inheritance under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, promote joint land titles and equal-pay audits so that autonomy rests on assets, not goodwill.
• Redistribute care work: crèches under the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, paternity leave and flexible work, since unequal care burdens keep female labour-force participation low.
• Media and culture: gender-audited advertising under ASCI guidelines and balanced portrayals in cinema and OTT to dismantle stereotypes at scale.
• Responsive institutions: gender-responsive policing, One Stop Centres, fast-track courts and gender budgeting across ministries.
• Community platforms: SHG federations and adolescent programmes like Odisha's Advika that renegotiate norms from below.

Conclusion

Laws and schemes create opportunity; only sustained norm change — in homes, workplaces, media and politics — converts opportunity into equality. Treating men as partners and institutions as carriers of gender justice can finally align social attitudes with women's demonstrated excellence.