Feminist Social Movements and Rape Laws in India

Dipali Anumol 

The aim of this research is to understand the relationship between social movements, legal reform and broader cultural change with respect to India’s rape and sexual violence laws. Rather than just focusing on ‘what’ legal reform is, it looks at ‘how’ legal reform is done. It aims to understand the ways in which the Indian feminist movement has advocated for legal reform and how it has used said legal reform to institute social change. Consequently, it is the study of the actual substance of the law as well as actors and actions involved in the push for reform. My study draws upon and contributes to a burgeoning anthropology of policy-making.