Just weeks after being re-elected to power on the strength of women’s vote, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s shocking act of forcibly removing a woman’s face exposed deeply embedded misogyny.
The attack – there is no other way to describe it – happened during a government function when the woman was being handed over her appointment letter as a doctor of alternative medicine (AYUSH) in Patna. In the video going viral, you can see Nitish Kumar holding the letter. He signals the Muslim woman to remove her veil, but before she can react, he leans forward and removes the veil. The men around him laugh.
Nothing can be more shocking than an attack. Touching a woman without her consent, let alone removing a piece of her clothing, is a crime under the laws of India. But there were many people who came to the defense of the Chief Minister. They included Nabila Jamal, executive editor of the TV9 network, who tweeted that what she saw was “a father figure, albeit clumsily, trying to tell a young doctor that she doesn’t need to hide her face, she belongs there with respect and equal dignity”.
A day later, Union Minister Giriraj Singh also came to Kumar’s defence, saying he had done nothing wrong and the woman should have shown her face. Apart from displaying his own misogyny, which is hardly a secret, Singh misses the point. The issue is of consent. What is worse, the Chief Minister’s action may become a dangerous signal to the alert crowd running amok on the streets.
Nitish Kumar won power in his fourth election with the overwhelming support of women voters of his state. He took care of collecting only a few weeks before the elections 10,000 into the bank accounts of 14.1 million women. Now, his legacy of two decades of women empowerment schemes, including the famous free bicycles for secondary schoolgirls, is under threat with this question: Scratch beneath the surface, and do you see another misogynist with the knack of using women to win elections?
Misogyny transcends party lines and individuals. In the state elections after September 2023, when the bill to set 33% reservation for women in Parliament and Assemblies was passed almost unanimously, no party has fielded so many women.
This year in Delhi, the number of women elected to the 70-member Assembly dropped to just five or 7%, the lowest in a decade. Bihar saw a marginal increase of 29 women in the 243-seat assembly, which is 12%, still a long way from 33%.
The more things change…
…They remain the same even in 2025. How is it that even 20 years after laws against domestic violence were passed, one in three women remains a victim of it? The National Family Health Survey-5 found that 83% of women who experienced sexual violence had husbands who were the perpetrators.
Despite the evidence, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that the government was opposed to criminalizing marital rape because it feared it would destroy the institution of marriage. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is credited with pushing a private bill seeking to remove the exception to the rape law, which states that non-consensual sexual intercourse between a husband and wife, provided she is above 18 years of age, cannot be termed as rape. The matter is pending in the Supreme Court.
We have normalized violence against women to such an extent that the 6,156 women killed for dowry barely make newspaper headlines. When? nikki bhati She was burnt to death in August in the presence of her son, with her in-laws insisting on their ‘right’ to cremate her as per customs. His father agreed.
If fighting old problems wasn’t hard enough, this year UN Women highlighted new forms of technologically enabled violence during its 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. This includes stalking, deepfakes, doxxing, and revenge porn (or to use its more accurate term, non-consensual intimate image-sharing, or NCII). UN Women says that globally, one in four female journalists and one in three female parliamentarians have reported online violence.
Online violence against women often relies on societal notions of shame to silence victims. But, this year, a young and exceptionally brave lawyer went to court for better protection against NCII. By the end of the year, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had released a comprehensive nine-page document, which included information on where and how to file a complaint, removal of images within 24 hours and use of technology to ensure it is not uploaded again.
(More on MeitY’s SOP on NCII cuts, Here,
Another area stubbornly resistant to change is women’s workforce participation. The Periodic Labor Force Survey data shows an increase of 33.7% for July-September 2025. But, economists say, this is largely due to growth in ‘own accounts’; There has been an increase in small and marginal women-led enterprises (for example, making pickles at home), which generate little or no money.
Udaiti Foundation says that when it comes to formal employment, women’s representation is stuck at 18%. More than half of NSE-listed companies employ less than 10% women. was supported by the data McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace Annual Report for 2025Women employed by the private sector in India hold only 17% of C-suite roles,
I first started writing about women’s workforce participation in 2017. The reason women are held back from paid work is no secret really. This is the burden of unpaid care work at home, including cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the elderly, the sick and those with special needs. Time-use surveys revealed that this year, women spent an average of 289 minutes per day on this work; Men 88 minutes. If you’re already spending about five hours a day working (without pay) at home, where’s the time to work outside of it (for pay)?
But there is hope. Along with policy change, implementation is also important. The McKinsey report found that companies that practice flexibility, mentoring and providing care support have stronger gender outcomes than companies that do not.
and we still rise
No gender, no prejudice, no second class treatment, Indian women are raring to go and nowhere was this more evident than on the field. Under the leadership of Harmanpreet Kaur, the women’s cricket team’s decisive World Cup victory in November showed strength and confidence. Players from diverse backgrounds demonstrated brotherhood that acknowledged the role and sacrifices of the previous generation.
A generation ago, seeing girls playing sports would have been an anomaly. Shafali Verma had to cut her hair and enter the tournament as her brother because girls did not play cricket in Rohtak at that time. But Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues grew up playing bat and ball. If Harmanpreet’s father bought her a boy’s suit with Good Batting printed on it on the day of her birth, Rodrigues’ father formed a girls’ team in her school so they could all play.
There were many challengers. Women lawyers went to the Supreme Court seeking a change in the almost complete male-dominated situation in the Bar Council of India, which has failed to elect a woman to its 20-member executive committee since 1961. In the State Bar Council, out of 441 elected representatives, only six are women.
Supreme Court agrees with women petitioners Yogmaya MG and Shehla Chaudhary directed One-third of the seats, including at least one office-bearer, will be earmarked for women in the Bar Council elections early next year.
As the year ended, an Ernakulam court delivered its disturbing verdict in the 2017 kidnapping and sexual assault case of a leading actress. The crime was later filmed for private viewing, and it was the woman’s case that Malayalam actor Dileep had ordered a hit on her in revenge because she had told his then-wife about his extramarital affair.
The court found six accused guilty of sexual assault, but in the same case found no evidence that the conspiracy was hatched by Dilip. The state government has said it will file an appeal against the decision.
She may not have got full justice yet, but by breaking her silence, giving up her right to anonymity in 2022 and speaking out about her journey from victim to survivor, the woman is already a change-hero.
It was his determination to get justice that led to an unprecedented uproar in a section of the Malayalam film industry. The Women in Cinema Collective was then formed, and it was this collective that pressured the state government to order a commission of inquiry headed by a retired judge. The HEMA Committee report released last year revealed systemic and rampant sexual harassment and dominance of the industry by a mafia of powerful men. None of this would have been possible without the actress’ courage to speak out.
In a difficult year for gender rights globally, from the US to Argentina and from Hungary to Gaza and Sudan, where ongoing struggles continue to exact a disproportionate cost on women and children, every fight counts. Each raised fist became a symbol of hope and resistance. Women and girls will not be left behind. This much was clear.
