The position and role of women in India has varied in different periods and in different classes, religion and ethnic groups. By 19th century there were several evil social practices like Sati (burning of widow on the funeral pyre of her husband), child marriage, ban on widow remarriage, polygamy etc. which were a matter of debate.

During the British rule the spread of English education and Western liberal ideology among Indians and spread of Christianity and missionary activities, resulted in a number of movements for social change and religious reform in the 19th century.

The broad objectives of these movements were caste reform, improvement in the status of women, promoting women’s education and an attack on various social practices whose roots lay in social and legal inequalities and religious traditions of different communities.

In the earlier phase of the social reform movement during 19th century, the initiatives came largely from male reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The issues that were taken up by them were Sati, ill treatment of widows, ban on widow remarriage, polygyny, and child marriage and denial of property rights to women and the need to educate women. Struggle for women’s education initiated by men resulted in setting up of women’s schools, colleges, hostels, protection homes etc. The social reformers ‘ assumptions were that female education would revitalise the family system, which was threatened by the increasing communication gap between educated men and their uneducated wives. The social reform movement saw the emergence of women’s organisations and institutions. However, the movement was led by men and originated in metropolitan cities.

This period has witnessed the proliferation of various organisation. These organisations took the lead to project important issues, which adversely affected the status of women in the society. The most important of these organisations where the Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, Arya Samaj. But these organisations were maily led by male but were organisations for women emancipation apart from other objectives of reforms.

The Brahmo Samaj

It was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1825, and attempted to remove restrictions and prejudices against women, which had their roots in religion. These included child marriage, polygyny, limited right to inherit property and seclusion of women. Education of women was seen as the major instrument to improve women’s position. Keshab Chadra Sen stressed the need for educating women at home and government support was sought for this purpose. A women’s magazine called Bamabodhini Patrika was started. An intercaste marriage was also solemnised under the auspices of the Brahmo Samaj. Opposition to such moves from Hindu orthodoxy resulted in the passing of Civil Marriage Act, 1872. This Act, which permitted inhercaste marriage and divorce, fixed 14 and 18 as he minimum age of marriage for girls and boys respectively.

The influence of the Brahmo Samaj was confined to Bengal and North India.

The Prarthana Samaj

It was founded in 1867 and had more or less similar objectives as Brahmo Samaj. However, it remained confined to western India. M.G. Ranade and Bhandarkar were the leading figures. In 1869 the Bombay Widow Reforms Association was formed which arranged the first widow remarriage in 1869. Two leaders of the Prarthana Samaj - R.G. Bhandarkar and N.G. Chandravarkar - later become Vice-chancellors of the first Women’s University set up by Karve in 1916 in Bombay. This was later named as the SNDT Women’s University.

Both these movements stressed women’s education to bridge the widening gap between males who had the benefit of modern education and women of the family.

The idea was to make them better wives and mothers. The debate on women’s education that raged in 19th and early 20th centuries shows that it did not originate from the influences of Western education only. Other reformers also stressed the need for women’s education.

Both these movements were the outcome of the reaction of urban, western educated men aimed to change women’s position within the family.

The Arya Samaj

The Arya Samaj was founded by Dayanand Sarswati in 1875. Unlike the above two movements the Arya Samaj was a religious revivalist movement. While rejecting Hindu religious orthodoxy, idol workship and the caste society, the slogan of this movement was back to the vedic period. They painted a glorious position of women in ancient India. It advocated reform in the caste system, compulsory education for both men and women, prohibition of child marriage by law, remarriage of child widows. It was totally opposed to divorce and widow remarriage in general, and emphasised separate school for girls and boys. Several Arya Kanya Pathshalas were set up which later become colleges and contributed to the cause of women’s education. Though mainly an urban movement, its influence also extended to semi-urban and rural areas. While they rejected the caste system they never demanded its abolition. Pattern of arranged marriage within the caste group and emphasis on home-making roles of women, limited its contribution to the cause of women’s emancipation.

Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Ray, Ranade and Dayanand, eulogised the position of women in ancient India. However, the radicals like Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Jyotrao Phule and Lokhitvadi Gopal Hari Deshmukh attacked the caste system, which they said was responsible for the subjugation of women. Phule said that Sudras and women had been denied education so that they would not understand the importance of human rights of equality and freedom and would accept the low position accorded to them in law, custom and traditions.

Muslim Women and Social Reform

Similar movements began within the Islamic community in the late 19th century. However, emphasis on Purdah system and slow spread of education among women delayed the development of a progressive movement to improve the opportunities for Muslim women. People like Begum of Bhopal, Syed Ahmad Khan and Sheikh Abdullah in Aligarh and Karmat Hussain in Lucknow, spearheaded a movement to improve women’s education. In 1916 Begum of Bhopal formed the All-India Muslim Women’s Conference. The traditionalists disapproved such activities and were enraged by the resolution passed by the Muslim Women’s Conference in 1917 that polygamy should be abolished. In the later years several Muslim women joined the nationalist struggle and non-cooperation movement against the British.

Similar movements also emerged among other communities in different regions.

A few women leaders like Pandita Ramabai and Vidyagouri Neelkant faced bitter opposition for marrying out of caste or obtaining education.

All these movements had a very limited perspective of changing the position women within the family without challenging the social structure and caste inequalities, which perpetuated women’s lower position. Their appeal was limited to urban middle class. The gender bias of the reform movement was most pronounced in the argument that education would improve women’s efficiency as housewives and mothers. Gender equality was not on their agenda

The movement was not conceived as a radical onslaught on the religious orthodoxy, which subjugated women. Social reformers viewed women’s question as a social problem.

POST INDEPENDENCE PERIOD

In the post Independence period a series of institutional initiative has been introduced for the emancipation of women in the society. The most important of these have been that of the constitutional provisions and social legislation for women and planned economic development. Women’s movement has been widely influenced by these broad socio-economic and political processes of this period. Let us examine briefly a few important aspects of these processes and the way they have affected women’s movement in the independent India.

Constitutional Provisions and Social Legislations

The Constitution of independent India followed the basic principle of women’s equality as accepted in the Fundamental Rights Resolution of the Karachi Congress. The provision of Article 15(3), which empowered the state to make special provisions for women and children, suggests that there was a realisation of women’s disadvantaged position and the need for the state to enact special measures to bring them at par with men.

During freedom movement it was felt that with the nation’s Independence many of the disabilities, and problems of women attributed to colonial rule, would disappear. The national government undertook to remove the legal disabilities suffered by women and initiated major reforms in Hindu family laws. The legal reforms in the 1950s sought to provide greater rights to Hindu women in marriage, inheritance and guardianship. However, they failed to bridge the gap between legal and social realities. Similar change sin the family laws of other communities like Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, could not be taken up due to political resistance despite the Directive Principle of State Policy clearly stating the need for uniform laws for all the communities.

With these legislative measures in the fifties women’s organisation became passive and lost the vigour shown during the pre-Independence period. Several of these organisation received government grants and their activities were shaped by the grants they received for activities like adult education, nutrition programmes for children, tailoring classes under vocational training programmes and family planning programmes. Most of these organisations were urban-based and the leadership come from the educated middle and upper class women.

In the post-Independence period, two important organisations for rural women wee set up i.e. Kasturba Memorial Trust and Bhartiya Grameen Mahila Sangh (Indian Rural Women’s Organisation). Their main objective was to assist rural women in developing leadership potential.

Thrust of Development Policies

The main thrust of development policies for women was provision of education, health and welfare.

Resurgence of Women's Organisation

1970s was marked by a resurgence of women’s struggle and emergence of new women’s groups and organisations. After their participation in nation’s independence struggle women again withdrew from public life and the debate on women’s issues also faded out from the public arena. Several scholars have talked about the absence of a women’s movement in the 50s and 60s in India and the slow erosion of concern for women’s issues. The growth of ‘protest politics’ and breaking out of a limited perspective of legislation and education as the main instrument for improving women’s position, marked the women’s movement in the 70s. Even the older women’s organisations set up during the pre-Independence or during the 50s which were mainly engaged in ‘welfare’ and ‘charity’ work gradually started changing their stand on several issues concerning women.

However, many women activists who were working with political parties, trade unions, peasant and workers movements realised that these were hesitant to take up issues which concerned women as women. The issues women raised were the retrenchment of women from textile mills and other industries due to technological changes and replacing them by men who received training on new machines, lack of maternity benefit to women workers, lack of provision of children at work place, wage discrimination between men and women, inadequate education and training facilities for women workers and discrimination in work places. These led to the emergence of separate women’s organisations in various parts of the country, which seriously attempted to organise poor women for change.

Emergence of New Organisations and Approaches

The growing economic hardships of poor rural and urban women (50 per cent of the households were below poverty level at the end of the VI Five Year Plan) and failure to take up women’s issues by the general agrarian and industrial workers’ movements resulted in women labourers, organising separately.

Some new organisations concerned with the plight of women workers in the unorganised sector such as Self-Employment Women’s Association (Gurajat), Working Women’s Forum (Tamil Nadu), Sramil Mahila Sangathna (Maharashtra), also emerged. Organising women labour and taking up the issues of their wages, working conditions, exploitation and health hazards became an important task for these women’s organisations. Research on women in the unorganised sector helped in developing new strategies for dealing with the problems of poor rural and urban workers.

Anti-price rise movement in 1973-74 was a united front of women’s organisations belonging to several parties.

In the late seventies several women’s organisations emerged which were not affiliated to political parties or to trade unions. They were called ‘autonomous women’s organisations’. They rejected the ‘welfarist’ approach adopted by the previous women’s organisations, many of which were set up during the pre-Independence period, and adopted ‘protest-politics’ for mobilising women on specific issues.

Economic hardships faced by women in the Himalayan region due to cutting down of forests, resulted in spontaneous mobilisation of women. They hugged the trees to prevent the contractors from felling them. This is popularly known as Chipko movement. Since the disappearance of forests meant acute hardships to women who are primarily responsible for the collection of fuel, fodder, fruits, herbs for medicine and other forest produce which give them income and employment, women were in the forefront of these ecological agitations.

The ineffectiveness of social legislation at reform is clearly indicated by several studies in the 70s. The autonomous women’s organisations’ took up issues related to women’s oppression like dowry, violence within he family, alcoholism among men and wife-beating, discrimination at the work place etc. to mobilise women for collective action. For the first time some groups in Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad, Patna etc. raised issues such as sexual exploitation of poor Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe women by upper caste landlords. Issue of rape, dowry murders, crime and violence against women were taken up. All India anti-dowry and anti-rape movements were launched by women’s organisations and Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights Organisations also joined them. They launched important issues based movements.

Anti-Dowry Movements

Dowry murders have witnessed a sustained campaign by several women’s organisations and civil rights groups. Journalist wrote extensively about the dowry problem. In the 80s several women’s and other progressive organisations formed a joint front in Delhi called “Dahej Virodhi Chetna Manch”. Organisations in other major cities also campaigned through protest, demonstrations, discussions, street theatre, posters etc., against the ghasity murders of young brides for dowry. The Law Commission and the Parliamentary Committee also looked into the problem. After a sustained campaign, finally a Bill was introduced in the Parliament in 1984, which made certain changes in the Dowry Prohibition (Amendment) Act of 1961. The Dowry Prohibition (Amendment) Act 1984 was passed. The Act sets a limit to the amount given in dowry but does not ban dory. While cruelty by the husband and his relatives leading to suicide or death has become an offense, punishable with imprisonment, still dowry deaths continue. In 1986 alone, 1,285 dowry deaths were reported but there have been few convictions.

Anti-Sati Movement

In 1829 the practice of Sati was abolished through a legislation, which marked the culmination of a debate initiated by the British.

The burning of a young widow Roop Kanwar in 1988 on the funeral pyre of her husband in Deorala, Rajasthan, sparked off strong protests by women’s organisations. The delayed response of the government came in the wake of mounting agitation in the shape of Commission of Sati (Prevention) Bill, which was hurriedly passed in the Parliament. The Act assumes that it is a practice sanctioned by the custom. It does not seek to punish those who profit by raising money by selling photographs and raising donations in the name of so-called ‘sati’. There is nothing on preventive action. The pre-sati feeling within the community mounted a counter agitation against the so-called attack on their religious custom. It is strange that the barbaric practice, against which social reformers raised their voices, still persists in a country, which reveres mother goddesses.

Anti-rape Movement

An anti-rape movement was launched in the last decade demanding review of the Supreme Court judgment in a rape case, which acquitted the culprit. Women activists forced the government to review Rape Laws. Several women’s organisations and legal and social activists held discussions with the Law Commission to amend the law and in 1983 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act was passed.

The Emerging Trends

• One should not get the impression that women’s organisation in India is largely urban based and have involved middle class educated women. There are several active grassroot organisations of poor rural and urban working class women, tribal, self-employed women who are fighting against all forms of oppression, injustice and exploitation. Various National and Regional political parties and trade unions have also set-up women’s wings.
• As a response to women’s movement in the last decade and a half the government has set up women’s cells within a few ministries (Rural Development, Labour and Human Resource Development).
• In government’s programme for rural poor 30 per cent women beneficiaries are to be selected for training and income generation programmes. Recently a National Perspective Plan for Women (1988-2000 A.D.) was prepared by the government, which has made several recommendations related to legal, economic, social and political status of women.
• The government also appointed a National Commission on self-employed women and women in the Informal Sector to look into the specific problems of unorganised women labour who constitute 87 per cent of women workers but do not get any protection from Labour Laws like equal wages, maternity benefits, childcare facilities and better working condition. Recently, the Government has announced 50 per cent reservation of seats for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions.
• The shift an issues and agenda for action within the women’s movement and response for the government is also due to the fact that research on women’s problems, particularly on women in the working class and other weaker sections during the last decade and a half, has thrown several challenges for the women’s movement as well as the government.
• The new knowledge being generated by scholars to understand the subordination and oppression of women and their points of strength is broadly termed as ‘women’s studies’. It is gradually finding a place in universities, colleges and schools as teaching material. ‘Women’s Studies’ scholars and Women’s organisations see a strong link between ‘Women’s Students’ and action for change. The last decade and a half while being effective in bringing women’s issues back into the arena of public debate, is really the beginning of the long struggle ahead for equality, justice and dignity to all women which is the constitutional goal.
• The girl-child has a lower status in India and enjoys fewer rights, opportunities and benefits of childhood as compared to the boy-child. The boy-child has first right on family and community resources. The girl-child is also neglected in matters of feeding and health care.
• The dietary consumption data of the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) suggests that the girl in the age group 13-15 years consumes less than two-thirds of the recommended calorie intake. She remains intellectually underdeveloped, being denied the opportunity to attend school. Most tragically, the girl-child in India is unwanted and considered a liability by her own family. Marriage is considered a priority as soon as she attains puberty.

Social Empowerment

• Social empowerment means removal of all the existing socially induced inequalities,disparities and other persisting problems besides providing easy access to basic minimumservices. It implies creating opportunities which facilitates the participation of different sections of population in the society. In this context it has to be seen in the light of participatory development.
• For example, when we talk of women’s empowerment the emphasis is not just on empowering women per se, but mainstreaming them to participate in the Socio-economic political activities and contribute to development.
• Various aspects/ strategies of social empowerment can be studied as under :-
• Economic Empowermentimplies the provision of training and employment-cum-income generation activitieswith both “forward” and “backward” linkages with the ultimate objective of makingcommunity economically independent and self reliant. It would also mean conferring,through policies, onto the economically deprived sections the strength that wouldalleviate their poverty, improve their living standards and help in generating assets.
• Political empowerment means conferring the rights to decide the priorities ofdevelopment best suited to the individuals, groups of people or to the society and tothe people themselves. Power in such an event would flow “bottom-to-top” withweaker sections having equal say in decision making. This involves opportunities of political participation to all sections.
• Cultural Empowerment is a complex area that revolves around the beliefs, values, language, art andcustoms which characterizes the society. The cultural mores take more time tochange and the “cultural lag” tends to slow down the empowerment process.