The formal institutionalization of the discipline received a massive impetus from a landmark document: the Towards Equality report published by the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) in 1974. Termed the "Magna Carta of Indian feminism" by legal scholar Flavia Agnes (2004), the report crucially exposed how state-led development frameworks systematically erased women's labour, particularly their unpaid contributions within the household and their crucial role in subsistence agriculture.
