Women Write About Women
Muslim women like the Begums of Bhopal played an important role in the promotion of education among women and founded a primary school for girls in Aligarh. Another one, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started school for Muslim girls in Calcutta and Patna. She was fearless in the critique of conservative and traditional ideas and argued every religious leader accorded an inferior place to women.
From the 1880s, women began to enter universities and some trained to be doctors, some teachers, and many women began to write and publish critical views on the place of women in society. Tarabai Shinde, published “Stripurushtulna”, criticizing the social difference that existed between men and women.
Pandita Ramabai felt that Hinduism was kind of oppressive towards women and wrote a book about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women and founded a widow’s home at Poona where women were trained to support themselves economically. The orthodox Hindus felt that Hindu women were adopting Western ways and corrupting Hindu culture and eroding family values and the same was felt by orthodox Muslims.
By the end of the 19th century, women were actively working for reforms and wrote books, edited magazines, and set up women’s associations by the early 20th century also formed political pressure groups to push laws for female suffrage and better health care and education and many joined various nationalist as well as socialist movements from the 1920s. Leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose lent support to demands for greater freedom as well as equality for women.
CBSE Class 8 History Chapter 8 – Women, Caste and Reform
Even after independence from British rule, women still hadn’t achieved independence and are struggling for it. But reformers have tried to reform our society and have succeeded to a large extent.
Differences were not only in gendered context but people were also divided along caste lines and certain castes were considered “polluting” and “untouchables”. They weren’t allowed to enter temples, or draw water from wells and were seen as inferior humans. Over the years many of these norms and perceptions have changed slowly.