From Tokenism to Transformation: Reframing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India Through a Feminist Lens

Abstract

This study is inspired by recent events regarding public safety and gender based sexual violence in India and how they impact women´s lives and personal agency. Women´s autonomy is shaped not only by their immediate circumstances but by broader social anxieties and perceptions of safety. The fear of violence – whether real or anticipated – becomes a mechanism of control, dictating where women can go, what they can do, and how they navigate public and private spaces.

In this study I attempt to critically examine Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through a feminist lens – one that challenges how power operates within corporate philanthropy and development.

CSR does not function in isolation; it is embedded within hegemonic processes that shape, reflect, and reinforce existing social hierarchies. Rather than assuming CSR to be inherently progressive, I interrogate whether these initiatives are genuinely gender-transformative or merely adaptive, whether they dismantle structural inequities or subtly reproduce them.

How can CSR move beyond incremental inclusion to actively shift power and agency toward women? This inquiry has driven my efforts to examine how CSR’s relationship with implementing organizations can be reimagined—not just as a funding mechanism, but as a site for meaningful structural change.