Women in Contemporary India: Traditional Images and Changing Roles

“The problem of social change in the largely traditional societies of South Asia has been the focus of wide ranging studies by sociologists, yet the implications of change for the place of women in the social, cultural, economic and political life of these societies in transition is a neglected field of sociological inquiry. The Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India notes the ‘paucity of data’ on important social and economic variables affecting the presonality structure and patterns of social behaviour of Indian women. This landmark book offers a fresh perspective on women and social change through empirical studies of the interaction between the traditional images of women and their new social roles in the family?and?the?wider?society. The first section of the book presents an overview of the actual situation of women in India and outlines a realistic scenario for the integration of women in the process of national development. The second section consists of four empirical studies on women’s issues which cover a wide geographical spread from Uttar Pradesh in the north to Gujarat in the west to Karnataka and Kerala in the south. Another section of five essays examines ‘special case’ of women and religion, women and the law, education and female work participation, Indian and Pakistani female migrants abroad, and the perception of old age and changing life styles of aging women. The concluding section presents an analytic discussion of the methodological problems which appear t”