Women write about women

•From the early 20th century, Muslim women like the Begums of Bhopal played a notable role promoting education among women.An remarkable woman, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started school for muslim girls in Patna & Calcutta. She was a fearless critic of conservative ideas.

​Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain

All about 1900s

••By the 1880s, Indian women began entering universities. Tarabai Shinde, a woman educated at home at Poona, published a book Stripurushtulna (a comparision between Women & Men), criticizing the social differences between men & women

​Tarabai Shinde

•Pandita Ramabai, a great scholar of Sanskrit , felt that Hinduism was oppressive towards women, and wrote a book about miserable lives of Hindu women. She founded a widows’ home at Poona to provide shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands’ relatives. 

Pandita Ramabai

With the growth of women’s organisations and writings on this issue, the momentum for reform gained strength.People challenged another established custom – that of child marriage. Their were a number of Indian legislators who faught against child marriage. Finally in 1929 the child marriage restraint act was passed. According to the act no man below the age of 18 and woman below 16 could marry. Subsequently these limits were raised to 21 for both men and women.

In the early 20th century, leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose lent their support to demands for greater equality and freedom for women.