There are indeed significant feminist and alternative readings of the Upanishads, even though the texts themselves emerged in a strongly patriarchal milieu and are not feminist in origin. Feminist interpreters often begin by recovering and re-centering the women who appear in these texts, especially figures such as Gargi Vachaknavi and Maitreyi in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Gargi is portrayed as a rigorous philosophical interlocutor who publicly debates Yajnavalkya on the nature of brahman and the ultimate ground of the cosmos, while Maitreyi questions him about whether wealth can grant immortality, prompting a subtle exploration of the Self. These women are read as brahmavādinīs—knowers and seekers of brahman—whose presence complicates the notion that Vedic philosophy was exclusively male-driven. Feminist scholarship also notes how later tradition tended to marginalize such figures, even though they appear at crucial philosophical junctures.

Another major strand of interpretation focuses on the gendered language and social assumptions embedded in the texts. The Upanishads frequently employ metaphors of husband and wife, mother and father, son and lineage, as well as terms like puruṣa, which are often rendered in masculine form. Gender-critical readings question translations that default to male pronouns for what is, in principle, a universal Self, and they show how these familial images can encode hierarchy and patriarchy as much as spirituality. At the same time, interpreters draw attention to passages where brahman or ātman is described via the via negativa—“not this, not that”—and is said to be beyond all attributes, including male, female, and neuter. These sections are taken as resources for envisioning a spiritual core that undercuts rigid gender identities and opens space for more egalitarian understandings of the Absolute.

Feminist and other critical perspectives also interrogate the social order presupposed by the Upanishads, especially the varṇa-āśrama framework of caste and life-stages. The ideal of the renouncer, for instance, is seen as presuming a male subject who has already fulfilled householder duties, reflecting how access to Vedic learning and formal renunciation was historically restricted by gender and caste. Dalit-Bahujan and postcolonial readings therefore ask how far the promise of universal liberation was, in practice, mediated by structures of privilege. Yet these same readers highlight verses where realization is not tied to ritual eligibility or birth, but to inner insight, and they use such passages to articulate more inclusive, socially aware interpretations of non-dualism. In this way, the Upanishadic teaching that the same ātman pervades all beings is re-read as a powerful critique of gender and caste discrimination.

Alongside explicitly feminist work, a range of alternative interpretations has emerged that nonetheless intersect with questions of gender and power. Some ecological and psychological readings treat statements such as “all this is indeed brahman” as pointing to radical interconnectedness, which can be aligned with ethical visions of compassion and responsibility. Postcolonial scholars, for their part, challenge both traditional Brahmanical commentaries and earlier Western Orientalist readings, arguing that each has selectively emphasized certain themes while downplaying others, including the roles of women and marginalized groups. Neo-Vedāntic and modern spiritual movements sometimes draw on these re-readings to affirm that women possess equal capacity for realization and religious authority. Through all of this, the Upanishads become not a closed canon but a living field of interpretation, where ancient insights into Self and reality are continually brought into dialogue with concerns about gender, justice, and human dignity.