The concept of Women & Gender in the Indian context is a broad, evolving framework encompassing legal, policy, and social mechanisms designed to address historical and systemic gender inequality. It is a concept and an institution that seeks to ensure the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution, particularly Article 14 (equality before the law) and Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex).
The modern history of this concept is rooted in post-Independence legislative activity, which included the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, and the shift from a 'welfare' approach to a 'development' and then 'empowerment' approach in the Five-Year Plans. A key judicial origin is the landmark judgment in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997), where the Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at the workplace violates fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(g), and 21. This judgment created the Vishaka Guidelines, which functioned as law under Article 141 until the enactment of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
A major mechanism for policy implementation is Gender Budgeting (GB), an institutional scheme introduced in the Union Budget in 2005–06. GB is not a separate budget but a fiscal tool that analyzes how government budgets impact women to bridge gender-based gaps. It works through the Gender Budget Statement (GBS), which tracks allocations in two parts: Part A (100% for women) and Part B (at least 30% for women). The GBS format was recently revised in FY 2024-25 to introduce a new Part C for schemes with less than 30% allocation for women and girls.
This concept connects directly to other major legislation, such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. It has seen significant recent change in property law with the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, which substituted Section 6 of the 1956 Act. This amendment removed gender-discriminatory provisions by making the daughter of a coparcener a coparcener in her own right by birth, granting her the same rights in coparcenary property as a son.