Mahatma Gandhi was authorized by the Congress Working Committee to determine the time, place and issue on which the Civil Disobedience was to be launched. He took the decision to break the salt law first, on which the British had imposed a duty, affecting the poorest of the poor. Salt Satyagraha began with the Dandi March on March 12, 1930 and was the part of the first phase of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Women’s movement in the Civil Disobedience Movement:

Dandi March:

• Initially Gandhi was reluctant to involve women directly with the main scene of action and it was not worthy that the group of followers who  accompanied  him  to  Dandi  was  an  all-made 
• Not a single woman was part of the hand-picked retinue of 71 that accompanied Gandhi on the 240-mile march over 24 days from the Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, from 12 March-6 April 1930.
• On 6 April 1930, as the Dandi March ended, Indian women joined Gandhi’s salt satyagraha. They were led by figures like Sarojini Naidu and Matangini Hazra.

Post – Dandi March:

• Immediately on  6  April  1930,  Mahatma  Gandhi  was arrested,  at  that  time  he  nominated Sarojini  Naidu  to  head  of  the Movement.
• Mithuben Petit, stood behind Gandhiji when he violated the Salt Law again at Bhimrad on 9 April.
• The attitude  of  women,  many  Indian  ladies  of  good family,  high  intellectual,  middle  and  upper  class  women  were  mobilized  into action   in   their   own   humble   ways was remarkable.
• They assured   truly   sub continental dimensions and witnessed deeply moving and unprecedented scenes in every nook and corner of the country.
• On 15  May  1930,  Sarojini  Naidu  led  the  raid  on  the  Dharsana Salt works. 
• Though she and her comrades were arrested, they were released on the  same  day;  enabling  Sarojini  Naidu  to  lead  another  batch  of  25,000 raiders on the same salt works on 21 May. 
• This was the occasion for one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the spirit of non-violence gathered by Gandhiji Movement, as the volunteers remained absolutely peaceful despite to serve provocation and appalling atrocities inflicted on them by the police.

Impacts of Women’s participation:

• Perception of women in society underwent a sea – change during the Salt Satyagraha Movement.
• Mahatma Gandhi made an appeal to Indian women to come out from their household seclusion and  advised them to  participate  in  the  political  movement  to  end  the  British  rule in 
• Prior to  1930,  only  a  few  women  mostly  from  the families  of  leaders  took  part  in  political      But during the Salt Satyagraha women increasingly enrolled themselves as volunteers.
• A lot of women participated in this movement from different places and provinces.
• Hurshedbehn,  Mirdula  Sanuthai,  Hansa Metha,  Avabtujgavau  Gokhale,  Shantabai  Vengsantan, Durgabai,  Lilavathi Munshi,    Captain    Sisth    Perinbehn,    Goshibehn,    Avantikabai    Gokhale, Jamkidevi, Lukanji, Anajuyabai Kale, were the prominent women leaders who led the Satyagraha in their own provinces.
• The women of South India also took part in the movement. The people  of  all  the  regions such  as  Tamil  Nadu,  Karnataka,  the  Coastal  belt of Andhra  Pradesh  and  Kerala,  which  constituted  the  Madras  Presidency  fully responded to the call of Gandhiji.
• Rukmini Lakshmipathi,  Vice  President  of  Tamil  Nadu  Provincial Congress  Committee,  accompanied    Rajagopalachariar in his march to Vedaranyam to break the Salt Laws in 1930, She was the first lady in Madras to be arrested in connection with Salt Satyagraha and was awarded 1 year imprisonment.
• Hundreds of unlettered rural women also converged on these villages from the surrounding countryside.
• They participated in picketing, selling salt on street corners, leading satyagrahas, and participating in processions
• Women started organizing prabhat pheris, or morning processions, on the streets of Bombay and Ahmedabad, where they sang songs about the bounty of the motherland.
• They helped put together vanar senas, or monkey brigades, consisting of children who supported activists in offering resistance to the British.
• There can be no denying that Gandhi and other Congress leaders, along with many of the women leaders, were invoking the traditional patriarchal notion of women’s role and femininity even as they urged more and more women to step over the threshold of their homes.
• This powerful, symbolic march by Gandhi through the heart of India thus became the catalyst for women to claim public space in such numbers for the first time in Indian history

Constraints:

• The patriarchal nature of Indian Society was evident throughout the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• Middle-class women pouring out on to the streets were at pains to distinguish themselves from “women of the streets”
• Sex workers from Kanpur were not allowed to join the movement even though they wanted to.
• The Devadasi community in Bombay at the time where they contributed financially to the movement but were not allowed to join publicly.
• The Hindu nationalist women’s organization Desh Sevika Sangha in Bombay stressed the importance of recruiting women from the “upper class only” and hesitated to march with even ordinary middle-class or poorer women.
• Married women had to return sooner than unmarried ones, and they could only join processions once their young ones had been fed, or some family member had been recruited to look after them, with the permission of their guardians.

Conclusion:

Women’s participation move was a strategic management coup by Gandhi and other leaders was that the act of stepping out into the streets was legitimized for middle-class women by extending the concept of the nation as “family”. The movements showed that public activities could be perceived as natural extensions of household roles, thus enabling women to step out of their homes.