Locating the Processes of Policy Change in the Context of Anti-Rape and Domestic Worker Mobilisations in India

The report argues that state responses to women’s claims making provide a complex and variegated picture of a non-linear, slow, sporadic and contingent process of policy change, with iterations and reiterations by women’s groups met over a period of time by non-responses, intermittent gains, reversals and wars of attrition by the state. Domestic worker mobilisations have not had as long and consolidated a history as anti-rape mobilisations, which is reflected in the nature of state responses—with policy change and law reform in domestic work remaining sporadic and scattered, whereas there have been widespread reforms in anti-rape laws, albeit with as many reversals as gains.