The essentials
Gender inequality is not natural or biological; it is socially produced. Men and women are assigned different roles, rights and resources, and in most societies women have had less access to property, education, public life and decision-making. Studies of societies where women are powerful, such as some matrilineal communities, show that gender roles vary with culture.
In nineteenth-century India, social reformers raised the "woman question". Raja Ram Mohan Roy campaigned against sati; Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar worked for widow remarriage; Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule opened schools for girls and lower castes; and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan worked for modern education among Muslims. Women themselves also wrote and organised. Tarabai Shinde's Stri Purush Tulana (1882) criticised men's double standards, and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Sultana's Dream (1905) imagined a world where gender roles were reversed.
In the twentieth century, women joined the national movement in large numbers. The Fundamental Rights resolution of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress (1931) promised equality regardless of sex. After independence, the report Towards Equality (1974), prepared by the Committee on the Status of Women in India, showed that women's condition had in many ways not improved, and helped to revive the women's movement.
Key points
- Gender is a social construct; sex refers to biological difference.
- Reform movements combined liberal ideas with reinterpretation of religious texts.
- Issues of the later women's movement: violence, dowry, unequal wages, property rights, political representation.
- The declining child sex ratio reflects continuing bias against daughters.
Common mistakes
Do not say that women's issues were raised only by men reformers; women writers and organisations played a key role.