1. Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women – Deepa Narayan Through 600 detailed interviews with women and some men across India’s metros, author Deepa breaks the silence about the lives of women in modern middle and upper-class families.

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2. Seeing like a feminist – Nivedita Menon Crucial topics such as the subject of marriage, Hindu Code Bills, and the Pink Chaddi campaign are highlighted in the book along with laws that support women.

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3. Mapping Dalit Feminism: Towards an Intersectional Standpoint – Anandita Pan This path-breaking work criticises mainstream feminism for its ignorance of caste and the Dalit movement for remaining patriarchal. Author Anandita focuses on the need to look at caste through a gendered lens and discuss sexual violence against Dalit women.

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4. Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India – Flavia Agnes In the book, activist and women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes raises questions about why the economic rights and power of women are affected by the personal laws of the various religious communities.Author Anandita focuses on the need to look at caste through a gendered lens and discuss sexual violence against Dalit women.

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5. Me Hijra, Me Laxmi – Laxmi Narayan Tripathi The memoir wonderfully narrates how Tripathi, the eldest son of an orthodox Brahmin family, became Laxmi, a trans person who made history.

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6. Those Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines – Minnie Vaid The book is an interesting account of women who became significant parts of space missions in the country, coping with intrinsic societal biases and family pressures to do this. The narrative is based on a series of interviews with several experienced ISRO women scientists from around the country.

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7. Tohellwithyou Mitro – Krishna Sobti Sahitya Akademi-winning essayist and fiction writer Sobti has penned down this unapologetic portrayal of a married woman who puts no limit on her sexuality. It is a tale of a woman who breaks the non-constructed boundaries inside a household.The narrative is based on a series of interviews with several experienced ISRO women scientists from around the country.

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8. Interrogating Motherhood – Jasodhara Bagchi The book shows motherhood both as an ideology and a practice in the light of Indian society. It chronicles the complexities between motherhood and mothering where the concepts are glorified but the women remain subordinate.

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9. Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism and Feminism in India – Ania Loomba Through the pages, the lives and subjectivities of militant-nationalist and communist women in India from the late 1920s are depicted. It is a deep study into how India’s revolutionary women shaped a new female political subject, in collaboration with Indian nationalist, liberal-feminist, and European left-wing models of womanhood.

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10. Rescued by a Feminist: An Indian tale of equality and other myths – Saloni Chopra The opinion pieces and personal anecdotes featured in the book are in tune with topics such as feminism in modern India, love, language, family, beauty, gender roles and abuse. 

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