Beginning in the 1980s, Chakravarti wrote extensively on Indian history highlighting issues relating to gender, caste, and class, publishing seven books over the course of her career.

Her subsequent writings, the most successful of which are Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (1998) and Gendering Caste through a Feminist Lens (2002), have been well received by both the audience and fellow academicians.

Apart from engaging with feminist issues, she has also worked as a democratic rights activist, participating in several fact-finding committees including the International Tribunal on Justice for Gujarat.

Chakravarti has also directed four documentary films—A Quiet Little Entry, Fragments of a Past, Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya: Lucknow 1920-1949, and Prison Diaries, all of which focus on, among other issues, women's history in India.

[3][5] Jawaharlal Nehru University historian Kumkum Roy has edited a volume of scholarly essays in Chakravarti's honour, stating that she had inspired generations of teachers, students and friends.

In her later work, she built on this research to reformulate the issues of social stratification, labour, renunciation and domesticity in early India, with a firm focus on gender, caste and class.

Scholar Shonaleeka Kaul states that the anthology still retains freshness because it represents a "new take on early Indian history," presenting an understanding of the past beyond the vantage of the elite and the orthodox (the "Kings and Brahmanas").