From Tradition to Modernity: Navigating Gender Roles in India

What is it about?

Abstract The present paper examines how women in India navigated gender roles and attempted to achieve equality from tradition to modernity. However, it is important to mention that here women have not given up tradition completely but in contemporary period we see a mix of tradition and modernity. It is difficulty to summarize the development over a five thousand years of history and for the sake of convenience we divide this into four periods, Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary and examine how society has moved from providing spaces to women through religion to development and empowerment in the present day. Indian society has been patriarchal for most part of the recorded history. However, it is very difficult to talk about women, with all women being categorized as uniform. There has been infinite variation on the status of women depending on the cultural milieu, class, caste, family structure and property rights. The gender role and status of women throughout ancient, medieval and modern period has been far from static ranging from subservience to authority to freedom, to empowerment. Key words: Indian society, negotiating, agency, Gender roles, development, empowerment, social reform Movement, emancipation, resistance.

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