The Women’s Movement in India: A Hundred Year History

Abstract

The women’s movement in India goes back to more than a hundred years but its composition, its agenda, its form and style, its outreach, its inclusiveness have been changing over the years. The social reform movement before independence first addressed the woman’s condition within Hindu society but this was restricted to the women in the upper castes and exposed illiberal traditions such as that of treatment of widows and child marriage and was largely sponsored by men who saw threats to Hindu society by colonial powers’ criticisms and hence wished to safeguard their cultural edifices by reforming what they thought were mere aberrations but left the patriarchal social structure un touched. Subsequent events were induction of women in the nationalist movement, the Constitution’s promise of gender equality; 1974’s Towards Equality Report prepared by the Committee on the Status of Women; international women’s movements and The Convention on the Abolition of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Have these instruments been successful in liberating Indian women from patriarchy?