Feminist clarity begins at home
ET Year-end Special Reads
What kept India's stock market investors on toes in 2024?
India's car race: How far EVs went in 2024
Investing in 2025: Six wealth management trends to watch out for
Steinem recalls that Chattopadhyay listened patiently to her, before responding, 'Well, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.' She proceeded to explain how Mohandas Gandhi himself had been inspired by India's decades-long women's movements. You will be hard-pressed to find this insight in textbooks for Indian schoolchildren.
As I listened to Steinem discuss Chattopadhyay some months back on 'Wiser Than Me', a podcast hosted by actor-comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I was reminded not just of how women's contributions are routinely erased or diminished by patriarchal historians, education systems and news media, but also of how Black and Brown women are relegated to the margins in the global — and even Indian — discourse on feminism. This issue is particularly on my mind as we bid goodbye to 2024, a year on which India's Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) has had a profound impact.
Too often, public conversation on feminism in India portrays White women and those operating in the West as leaders of this transcontinental ism. Steinem and Germaine Greer are more likely to be cited than Savitribai Phule, Chattopadhyay, Mary Roy, Bhanwari Devi, or the numerous others whose courage, diligence, perseverance and sacrifices reformed society and opened doors that were once shut to women.
During a TV panel debate about a decade back
