Question

“We demanded changes that would make the law more sensitive to the cultural and economic contexts of women’s lives. Women’s groups investigating ‘dowry deaths’ demonstrated how the designation of the family as the private domain restricted women’s access to protection against domestic violence. They exposed the collusion of the law, police, medical system, and the family in classifying these deaths as suicides. Feminist scholars worked to salvage gender and women’s issues from being subsumed by class analysis, sought to extend the Marxist understanding of labour to include domestic production, and pointed out the marginality and vulnerability of women in the workforce.”
(Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana (1996), Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender)
Which among the following statements can be asserted from the above excerpt?

• A. Women’s lives have contexts that are peculiar/unique.
• B. The division of domains into public and private allows women’s specific concerns to be foregrounded.
• C. Marxist understanding of labour is not gender-sensitive.
• D. The classification of dowry deaths as suicide lowers the institutional and social protection of women against violence.

Hint:

When answering passage-based questions, focus on what the text explicitly critiques or supports, and eliminate options that contradict the author’s central argument.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A, C, D

Step 1: Understanding the core argument of the passage.
The passage highlights feminist critiques of law, state institutions, and classical Marxist theory for failing to adequately account for women’s lived realities. It emphasizes the cultural, economic, and social specificity of women’s experiences and exposes how institutional practices marginalize women.
Step 2: Evaluating Option (A).
The excerpt explicitly argues that women’s lives are shaped by distinct cultural and economic contexts. This clearly supports the assertion that women’s lives have peculiar or unique contexts. Hence, (A) can be asserted.
Step 3: Evaluating Option (B).
The passage criticizes the division of public and private domains, showing that treating the family as a private sphere restricts women’s access to legal and social protection. Therefore, this division does not foreground women’s concerns; instead, it marginalizes them. Hence, (B) cannot be asserted.
Step 4: Evaluating Option (C).
The text states that feminist scholars sought to extend the Marxist understanding of labour to include domestic production. This implies that traditional Marxist theory ignored or undervalued women’s domestic labour and was therefore not gender-sensitive. Thus, (C) is correct.
Step 5: Evaluating Option (D).
By exposing how dowry deaths are classified as suicides through institutional collusion, the passage shows that such classification weakens legal and social protection for women facing violence. Hence, (D) is also supported by the excerpt.
Step 6: Final conclusion.
The statements that can be asserted from the excerpt are (A), (C), and (D).