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UPSC Optional 2026Question 3SociologySocial Movements in Modern India150 words

In the context of women's movements and laws do you think that matriarchy is the need of the hour? Discuss in detail. (Answer in 150 words)

Model answer & approach

- In the context of women's movements and laws do you think that matriarchy is the need of the hour? Discuss in detail. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Matriarchy means rule by women. Whether the gap left by movements and law requires it is the question.
Body
1. What movements and law have and have not delivered: The law has moved: equal coparcenary rights under the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, and reserved seats in panchayats and the legislatures. Possession has not: few women hold land in their own name or control their earnings.
2. The case that matriarchy is what is needed: Rights on paper have not displaced male authority in the household, so the remedy must be authority itself; matriliny is offered as proof that another arrangement works.
3. The case against it: That evidence defeats the proposal. As Leela Dube and Tiplut Nongbri have shown for the Khasi, descent and property pass through women while the mother's brother governs: matriliny is not matriarchy.
4. Your own stand: Matriarchy is not the need of the hour; enforcement of the rights already won, and women's control of land and earnings, is.
Conclusion
Inverting patriarchy would reproduce its logic; removing the base of male authority would not.
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