Sex & consent | 1st India Today Consent Survey

Every day, in millions of Indian homes, a quiet transaction takes place. A woman wants to say ‘no’—to a demand, a touch, an expectation—and calculates what it will cost her. Will it be heard as a boundary or as an insult? Will she have to explain it, soften it, apologise for it? Or is it simpler to just go along? Consent, at its core, is the answer to a single question: does a woman’s ‘no’ count?

The question matters because consent is the smallest unit of freedom. Before a woman can claim equality in the Constitution, the workplace or the marriage bed, she must be able to refuse without fear, and to change her mind without punishment. India has debated consent loudly in recent years: in courtrooms weighing marital rape, in newsrooms after #MeToo, in films, classrooms and family WhatsApp groups. The word has entered the national vocabulary. What nobody has measured, until now, is whether it has entered the national conversation.

That is what the India Today Group set out to do. Its consent survey, the first of its kind in the country, asked 5,000 adult women across every region, income group, education level, religion, employment category, marital status and social group to map the distance between what they believe about consent and what actually happens when they exercise it.

The survey questions were framed under four heads: consent, choice and the limits of love; the private sphere of family, marriage and control; unsafe worlds spanning public, professional and digital violations; and the building of a consent culture through education, law and accountability. The responses reveal how Indian women negotiate the simple act of saying ‘no’ to partners, elders, bosses, strangers and screens.

The good news first. Nearly four in five women—across class, region and generation—agree that ‘no means no’ under all circumstances, without exception. What they do not have is the social permission to act on it.

Only about 36 per cent of women clearly say that consent given under pressure is not consent. The rest treat pressured agreement as consent in some form. The right to change one’s mind splits the sample down the middle: 45 per cent say it is acceptable to withdraw after saying ‘yes’; 48 per cent say it is not; only 28 per cent say a woman who withdraws consent mid-situation is seen as reasonable. Most say she is viewed as confusing, manipulative or dramatic.

The survey quantifies this distance through a Consent Empowerment Index built from 20 perception and experience inputs (see box). On a 0-100 scale, women’s understanding of consent scores about 59, while their lived experience scores about 44. Awareness runs roughly 15 points ahead of autonomy. The overall index settles around 52.

(NOTE: Respondents in each category are scored on 20 selected consent-related questions. Each response is converted into a binary score: 1 for a consent-empowered or consent-respecting answer, and 0 for a weak, unclear or vulnerable response. ‘Don’t know’, ‘can’t say’ and ‘not applicable’ are also scored zero, as ambiguity is treated as vulnerability. The 20 questions are split equally. Ten assess Perception Empowerment— how clearly respondents understand consent in principle, including ‘no means no’, pressured consent, withdrawal of consent, marital rape and consent education. The other 10 assess Experience Empowerment— how far consent is respected in lived situations involving intimacy, family, the workplace, online behaviour and job-related autonomy. For each demographic group, the average score across the 10 perception questions is converted into a Perception Score out of 100. The same method is applied to the 10 experience questions to generate an Experience Score out of 100. The final Consent Empowerment Index is the simple average of these two scores.)

THE PERFORMANCE OF REFUSAL

The first test is the simplest: can a woman say ‘no’? Around 56 per cent say they directly refuse when they do not want to do something. But 41 per cent either soften refusal with excuses or go along despite wanting to refuse. For a large share of Indian women, refusal is a performance to be staged, justified and managed.

A ‘no’ is rarely treated as complete in itself. It demands a socially acceptable reason, illness, family, timing, fear. When women stay silent, the leading explanation is not agreement. Some 43 per cent cite wanting to keep the peace, followed by the belief that nothing would change.

Assertiveness carries a reputational toll. Three-fourths of respondents say society negatively labels women who refuse advances or set boundaries as difficult, arrogant, ‘too modern’ or characterless. This stigma cuts across education and employment categories.

The contradictions sharpen inside intimate relationships. Only 36 per cent say consent in an intimate situation must be explicitly stated, the rest rely on non-verbal cues, habit or situational understanding. About half say they clearly refuse unwanted sexual activity. And only 36 per cent say that when they change their mind after initially consenting, the change is respected.

Marriage remains the most contested space. About 51 per cent say they can refuse sex in marriage or long-term relationships and have that refusal respected, the rest report questioning, pressure or emotional guilt. A clear majority—66 per cent—believe rape can take place within marriage, and around 75 per cent support its legal recognition in some form. Around 17 per cent report being physically forced into intercourse by a husband or partner, and 16 per cent report being forced into unwanted sexual acts.

THE OFFICE, THE STREET, THE PHONE

Hierarchy complicates consent further. Around 36 per cent of women report uncomfortable pressure or special attention from someone senior, a boss, teacher or mentor. Only 44 per cent say they can comfortably refuse work-related requests that make them unsafe, 36 per cent can refuse but fear job consequences, and 12 per cent cannot refuse at all. Economic dependency makes it fragile. Workplace systems offer little reassurance: just 32 per cent report meaningful training or policies on harassment, while 36 per cent call existing policies formalities.

Public spaces remain a daily battleground. Nearly 48 per cent report unwanted touching, groping or invasive closeness in buses, trains, markets and streets. Around 70 per cent say they change their behaviour, routes, dress or timings at least sometimes to avoid it. The phone is another frontline—28 per cent report repeated messages after saying ‘no’, 28 per cent have received unwanted explicit images, and 24 per cent report online stalking or harassment.

WHAT ACTUALLY EMPOWERS

The survey’s most counterintuitive findings concern who is empowered. Education sharpens the vocabulary of consent—legal rights, coercion, marital rape—but does not guarantee protection. More educated women report more harassment, not less, partly because they are more mobile, more digitally visible and better able to name violations. Employment is the stronger practical variable: women in higher occupational categories show the best lived-experience scores. The survey’s crux fits in one line: a rural woman with little education but high economic independence is more empowered rather than an urban, highly educated woman without it.

Yet the survey ends on consensus. Around 86 per cent support mandatory consent education in schools and colleges, with most wanting it to begin between ages 10 and 14. Some 85 per cent say they will teach younger girls about consent and the right to refuse.

India’s consent debate is no longer confined to whether women understand ‘no means no’. They do. It is about whether families, partners, workplaces, streets, courts and phones respect that ‘no’. The survey shows a country that has learned the phrase but not yet built the ecosystem that makes it liveable. Closing the gap between knowing consent and living it is the next battle.

METHODOLOGY

The India Today Group’s Consent Culture Survey was conducted by social research agency CVoter from May 5-20. Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviewing (CATI) was used to reach 6,379 female respondents aged 18 and above across India. Conducted in all 11 major official languages, the sample spread across major districts of all states.

The data has been weighted to match India’s known demographic profile. The final data file places the socio-economic profile within +/- 5% of the country’s demographic profile, yielding the closest possible trends. The margin of error is +/- 3% at the macro level and +/- 5% for micro-level trend projections, at a 95% confidence interval. Some table figures may not add to 100 due to rounding.

A rigorous random probability sample, statistical weighting of the data in the survey ensures a representative analysis of the local population, benchmarked against the latest census and other available demographic data. CVoter strictly follows the WAPOR (World Association for Public Opinion Research) code of conduct for ethical and transparent scientific practice and has incorporated the Press Council of India (PCI) guidelines as its standard operating procedure.