Educating Women

Paper Summary:

Although the first wave of feminism is thought to have been a cohesive political ideology at a specific time and place, it really affected the entire world, at different times. This paper discusses how India experienced its the first wave (suffrage for women) around the same time Western women were already reaping the rewards of suffrage movements. Some do not believe that feminism in India, in keeping with Hindi beliefs, actually "counts" as feminism. This paper shows it does, and is a fantastic example of it.

From the Paper:

"Feminism manifests itself very differently dependent upon the area of the world. The First Wave brought about suffrage in the West, and legal equality in India. Both happened about the same time, but were not dependent on each other, or in reaction to each other. In what way, or to what extent did Western feminism affect women in India in the early 20th Century? The suffrage movement in the West fought for education, social equality, and the right to vote. It grew out of a counter-response to the Victorian era of the 19th Century and also subsequent to the abolitionist movement. India, while under British rule, actually used Victorian-era woman models as an ideal for their "new woman" ideology, yet managed to give women more freedom at the same time. This contradiction follows to the causes of the women's movements: in response to both the British pressure for the equal treatment of women, and the rising nationalist movement which required full participation of women in their campaign against British rule. Early Western feminist theory did affect Indian women in the way that they achieved freedoms, namely through equal education and a role in the public sphere, but not caused by the same issues."

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