Yogita Leve
“I’m not a feminist… but I still want to live on my terms.”
That line, spoken with quiet conviction by a young woman in a semi-urban town, captures a
truth I kept encountering throughout this journey. It wasn’t a rebellion. It wasn’t rejection.
It was something more complex — a desire for freedom, but hesitation around the language
used to describe it. I understood her immediately, not just as a researcher, but as someone
who has lived this tension personally.
Coming from a space where values, roles, and silence were deeply gendered, feminism
didn’t enter my life through theory. It arrived slowly, in fragments — in the form of
questions I wasn’t supposed to ask, opportunities I had to negotiate for, and boundaries I
had to assert gently. I carried that lived experience into this work, but I also tried to leave
space for others’ truths to emerge without filtering them through mine.
My project, Feminism Across Fault Lines, examines how young women in rural and urban
India perceive gender justice and law, not just as abstract concepts, but as forces that
influence their daily decisions. The young women I met and spoke to didn’t always speak in
feminist vocabulary, but their actions, desires, and hesitations often reflected a feminist
consciousness shaped by their context.
Many could name laws about harassment, marriage age, and education, but when asked if
they trusted the legal system, most said no. Legal consciousness, I found, wasn’t just about
knowing rights. It was about whether those rights felt real to them. Whether they could
imagine accessing them without fear, shame, or backlash. Often, they couldn’t.
Justice, for many, wasn’t imagined in terms of courts or cases. It was personal. It was about
being believed when uncomfortable. Being able to say no without guilt. Being allowed to
move freely, dress freely, and think freely. That, to them, felt like justice — not a verdict, but
a condition of dignity.
I kept returning to one theme again and again: there is feminism without the label. A girl
who refuses early marriage. Another who insists on completing her education. One who
speaks out against sexist jokes. Their choices may not be framed in theoretical terms, but
they are deeply political. They are acts of agency, often made in quiet defiance of gendered
expectations.
Social media plays a complicated role in this transformation. For many girls, platforms like
Instagram or YouTube are their first entry point into feminist ideas. They learn what
gaslighting is, what red flags mean in relationships, and how boundaries matter. But the
same platforms also create new pressures to look, act, or speak a certain way.
One participant said, “Instagram taught me how to recognise toxic behaviour — but it also
makes me feel like I’m not doing enough to be ‘empowered’.” That contradiction stayed with
me. It mirrors the broader experience of this generation — aware, expressive, but often
overwhelmed.
My sociological lens told me to pay attention not just to what was said, but what was left
unsaid. And what I saw was that caste, religion, and class profoundly shaped every feminist
impulse. Dalit girls spoke of being spoken over, even in progressive college spaces. Muslim
girls described the extra surveillance they face. Queer participants pointed out that while
they may no longer be criminalised by law, they are still not accepted by family. Feminism,
here, isn’t a single identity. It’s an intersectional, negotiated survival.
Through all this, I found myself reflecting not just on their experiences, but my own. I
realised how much I’ve been taught to balance ambition and obedience, modernity and
tradition, assertion and silence. The stories I heard weren’t just data. They were mirrors.
They reminded me that the personal is not only political — it’s sociological.
What emerged from this work is not a unified vision of feminism, but a layered, diverse,
context-sensitive one. It exists in fragments — across WhatsApp chats, lunch breaks,
Instagram posts, classroom exchanges, and family negotiations. It is lived, not declared. And
it doesn’t wait for validation.
We often look for feminism in headlines or movements. But perhaps we need to look at
smaller spaces — in a girl negotiating her hostel stay, in someone delaying marriage by a
year, in a quiet refusal to conform. These may seem like small acts, but they are shifting the
ground. They are pushing open spaces that didn’t exist before.
As a Sociology student, I’ve learned to value ambiguity — to resist flattening complexity.
What this journey taught me is that Gen Z women in India are not rejecting feminism.
They’re rebuilding it. On their own terms. Within their constraints. In ways that often go
unnoticed by policy or media, but are no less radical.
We need to stop asking whether young women are feminist enough. And start asking: what
does freedom look like to them? What does safety feel like? Where does resistance live in
their lives?
Because the answers won’t always be loud. But they will be true.
About the contributor
Yogita Leve is a fellow of Law and Public Policy Youth Fellowship (LPPYF) Cohort-5. She is a sociology graduate from the University of Delhi.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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