This book examines women's political and social participation across colonial and postcolonial contexts, showing how gendered activism has both shaped and been shaped by shifting political, cultural, and ideological currents. The volume interrogates how women's political and social labour is rendered invisible or obscured in archives, movements, and media. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from history, politics, anthropology, and gender and subaltern studies, its chapters trace women's roles in anti-colonial, revolutionary, feminist, Dalit, indigenous, and right-wing campaigns.

By exploring continuities and ruptures in the (in)visibilisation of women's agency, the collection offers a critical intervention into debates on representation, power, and historiography in South Asia. It will be of interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, political science, modern history, legal history, social policy, and sociology.