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The case against coercion | The private sphere: Family, marriage and control

How families, kinship networks and households become spaces where women's desires, refusals and freedoms are monitored, negotiated or suppressed

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(Illustration by Nilanjan Das / AI)

The family is where every Indian woman first learns whether her ‘no’ counts. This section examines how households, kinship networks and marriages—the spaces meant to protect women—become the spaces where their refusals are most closely monitored, negotiated or overruled. The questions move from everyday family interactions to the most contested territory in Indian law: consent within marriage.