Locating the WOMAN in the context of

Global History

A Post-Graduate Dissertation Paper by

MOULINDRA SUNDAR DIRGHANGI

Roll No.76, PG-I, Department of HISTORY, Presidency University
 “Not God alone has created you O maiden,
Man has completed your being by giving you
Beauty and grace (of his heart’s desire)”1

If this has always been a Man’s world, none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in
explanation of this fact has seemed adequate. Although it is generally believed that when two
human categories are together, each one aspires to impose sovereignty on the other. This
creates a reciprocal relationship of sometimes enmity, sometimes amity and always in a state
of tension. This has been a long tale continuing from the pre-historic ages.

The Woman in her maternity remained closely bound to her body like an animal. Whereas man
ventured to shape his own destiny, just as humanity calls itself in question in the matter of
living above mere life. The Primitive Man too, chose not to repeat himself in time, but took
control of the instant and moulded the future. The woman even while keenly following or
assisting him, remained silent as passive as nature. In any case the “woman’s activities” of
procreation and nursing were regarded, not as activities but as natural functions whereas the
hunter of the day was no butcher.

The woman, however driven by the urge to transcend to a different future, had in her heart a
confirmation of the masculine pretensions. She celebrated the successes and achievements of
her male heroes. This situation got perpetuated as well as evolved in the ages to come. The
humanity always made a precarious position for this “other” within itself.

II

The nineteenth and the twentieth century brought the advent of a feminist consciousness. A
wave of feminist writings came up. Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” published in 1929
demanded literal as well as figural space for women writers within a literary tradition
dominated by patriarchy. Feminist notions were also depicted in the writings of Emily Bronte
and Katherine Mansfield. Two books of more academic nature that came in the same year 2 are
Female Eunuchs by Germaine Greer and Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. Erica Jong’s bold
writings on the women’s individuality too may receive a special mention. However, one book
that perhaps single-handedly started a discourse on Gender Studies was Simone De Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex, 1949. It sought to explore the woman in her various stages of life, social
hierarchy and emotional and intellectual state in the light of existentialist philosophy. ‘Existence
precedes essence’; and henceforth she argued: “one is not born, but rather becomes a

1
Translation from Rabindranath Thakur: from Ashapurna Devi, Indian Women: Myth and Reality, in
JasodharaBagchi (ed.), Indian Women: Myth and Reality (Sangram Books (India) Limited 1995)
2
c1970

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woman”3. The womanliness of the woman is externally imposed on her, by how she is socially
and psychologically observed and the mystification of her person by the male and also the
female.

Women’s history too, developed at this time in the light of the maturation of social history and
growth of active women’s movement. As far as the Women’s Studies in India was concerned, a
publication named Towards Equality in 1974, that drew comparisons between the de jure
equality guaranteed by the Constitution and its translation into reality could be regarded the
pioneer.

It has to be noted, women have received little or no attention in traditional history writing.
Traditional history has, in fact, tended to focus on areas of human activity in which men were
dominant- politics, wars or diplomacy. A brief glance at the Indian history, and women we can
think of are Mumtaz Mahal, Noor Jahan or Rani Laxmibai. Thereby it seems, the only women
whom traditional history chose to remember are either who successfully performed male roles
or whom great men loved.

Women’s history in India and elsewhere has been an act of reclamation. Since woman had been
“hidden from history’, the aim was to have Clio’s consciousness raised to refer to a particular
book on women’s history, and aid women in history in ‘becoming visible’. Women’s history is in
itself an assertion that women have a history, even though distorted and erased by biases of
our culture and scholarship. As Aparna Basu points out, there was a sharp increase in research
on women after 1921 in India4 and this can be traced to the impact of the participation of
women in the freedom movement. Indeed, when the woman is seen as a force in politics
searching for an identity in their nation, their class and in themselves and as producers does
she become ‘visible’.

Still, even to this day, women’s studies in India have suffered for the want of research
materials, even though there has not been any lack of serious thinking on any on this. 5 There
has also been little theoretical work. There is also a paucity of research on women’s role in
economy, art and culture.

Moreover in spite of the high visibility of women’s subordination, historical work on the origin
and development of patriarchal society does not exist. At the same time it is doubted whether
agreeing to a single theory of patriarchy is possible. The theory of patriarchy may lead us to
produce a narrative, exclusively focusing on women’s oppression or maybe the resistance to it.
Important as this theme is, it could lead to a theoretical framework that would make it difficult
to express all the richness and cultural variations in women’s history, and to add to it the region
specific study as well.

3
Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex ( first published 1949, Picador 1988)
4
AparnaBasu, “Women’s History in India: A Historiographical Survey” in Karen M Offen ed Writing Women’s
History: International Perspectives (Indiana University Press 1991) pp 181-182
5
Kalpana Das Gupta, ‘Searching Research Materials on Women’s Studies’ in JasodharaBagchied Indian Women:
Myth and Reality (Sangram Books (India) Limited 1995)

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Then, there are obvious arguments that, while gender continues to be viewed as an important
tool, there are categories as important like ethnicity, class and caste as well for some parts of
the world which cut across the gender divisions. We also have the Poststructuralist theory,
which of course, proposes the dissolution of the concept of gender by deconstructing the
binary oppositions of female/male, woman and man and thereby introducing a variety of
gender and gender identities. All this fades the notion of a common history for women
worldwide even though there is remarkable resemblance in the overall conditions of women in
various societies. These just make women’s history all the more cross-cultural treating
individuals of different classes and ethnicities even when limited to the nation state or local
histories.

Grethe Jacobsen has introduced the concept of ‘gender parallels’. It speaks of the existence of
two different but equally important sectors of equal power, one for men, and the other for
women were prevalent in the Latin American society before European invasion. This shows
while women were barred from contributing in certain fields, they certainly had their own
spheres of influence. Similarly, Bolanle Awe’s articles on Nigerian women reflect the need for
other theories on gender difference for Asian, African and South American women outside the
Euro-American historical tradition.

There has indeed, been traits of Euro-centricism in women’s history. Maybe it was because of
the establishment of capitalist industrial economy affecting the women’s lives first in Europe
and later in other parts of the world. It could also be because of the European-North American
economic and military expansion during the period of imperialism. However, it should be
considered that history of the women’s lives outside the Euro-American world was driven not
only by the influence of western ideas and imperialist expansion but also by the working out of
national historical traditions and developments. For example, it is easy to believe that changes
in Indian women’s legal position and their and growing opportunities for education was due to
British influence, taking note of the three Woman-centric acts6 of the nineteenth century and
seeding of various educational institution for women by philanthropic European individuals. But
then, some Indian researchers7 maintain that this new found access to education and jobs was
not a result of the transition from caste system with group mobility to a class system with
individual mobility. Here the British and the Indian channels of innovation run parallel;
sometimes in conflict and sometimes supporting each other.

While the 1960s have proved to be path-breaking for the western women, end of colonial rule
in the Third World countries in the same period have directly affected the women there.
Though, whether the change has led to the altering of the fundamentally gendered economic,
social and political conditions has to be considered. As it is, the colonial woman has often
complained of a two-way exploitation, -both as a colonial subject and as a female. Where as in
Euro-American history, gaining national independence is generally regarded as an important
event for both women and men - though some degree in different ways.

6
Abolition of Sati, 1829; Widow Remarriage Act, 1856; Age of Consent for Cohabitation Act, 1891
7
IdaBlom, ‘Global Women’s History: Organizing Principles and Cross-Cultural Understandings’ in Karen M Offen ed
Writing Women’s History: International Perspectives (Indiana University Press 1991)

4
We also find conflicts within the sphere of North American women’s history writing as there
has been outspoken criticism on the part of Afro-American women that pointed that white
historians of women have tended to ignore black women’s history. Similarly, Western European
and North American researchers have stressed perhaps correctly on the double burden of work
and family, while describing the post-war history of women of socialist eastern Europe. But
they have grossly overlooked the importance of women’s paid work for changing women’s self-
perception, for making them aware of their capabilities and providing them self-reliance.

III

Now, it might well have been expected that the French Revolution would change the lot of
women. The Enlightenment had promised just that, reorganizing gender relations for Europe
and the United States. Ida Blom emphasizes, the ideas assumed importance for aspects of Asian
and Middle-Eastern women’s resistance to imperialism. However, the middle class revolution
remained respectful to middle class institutions. It was the working classes who as a sex
enjoyed most independence. She had the right to manage a business and shared in production.
Her material independence permitted her a great freedom of behavior, it was on the economic,
rather the sexual plane, that she was oppressed. The peasant woman worked like a slave in
farm labour. In the factories, she received half a man’s wages. The Cahiers of the estates-
general had contained but few feminine claims.

Still, there were some feminist agitations, in 1789, a ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman’ was
proposed equivalent to ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’. Short lived journals appeared and
some women made fruitless efforts to undertake political activities. Infact the discourse on
Gender history of nineteenth and twentieth century was based mainly on the Job and the Vote-
that is getting professional and political rights.

But the Middle class women remained outside these and were too well integrated in the family
to feel any definite solidarity as a sex.8 Economically, she lived a parasitic life. Auguste Comte
saw in femininity, a kind of ‘prolonged infancy’ and he foresaw the total abolition of female
labour outside the home. The eighteenth century saw the withdrawal of English middle women
from gainful employment to unpaid work in the domestic circle. This resulted in the formation
of the English middle class and was the reason behind the creation of middle classes in other
countries too, as distinct from the working class. The class hierarchy was often determined by
how women functioned in different classes.

While the wife was denied all education and culture to keep her in firm rein she was given the
compensation of being held in high honour and treated with exquisite politeness. She had less
responsibility as well. Florence Nightingale observed that this lack of responsibility created an
‘accumulation of nervous energy from having done nothing all day’9! ‘The married woman is a

8
Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex ( first published 1949, Picador 1988) pp 140-141
9
Asa Briggs and Patricia Clavin, Modern Europe 1789-Present (Pearson 2009) p 186

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slave whom one must be able to set on a throne’, Balzac had said even then, she had some
active compensations too, and she often got to control the family budget and the children.

This stately inactivity of the imperial woman was used in the imperialist discourse to notify the
supremacy of their own race compared to their subjects. Thomas Metcalfe reflects that, even
though women had no formal place rulers in the Victorian colonial order , the pure and virtuous
English woman was meant to uphold Britain’s moral superiority. 10 In so doing her true
femininity showed for. Often she was thought to bear the responsibility of what one may call-
“white woman’s burden”. The Englishwoman was veiled in modesty and delicacy, embodying
the ideal of Victorian womanhood- she was the ‘Angel of the house’. She had two roles to play-
one that of decorative seclusion and the other of vigorous activities of the Victorian feminist,
who without challenging the ideologies of empire or domesticity blurred the gender roles by
acting as lady missionary or lady doctor. In contrast to her, the Indian woman was thought to
have the central topic of her life confined to twelve square feet of room, as Flora AnnieSteel
describes.11Yet the British woman too, ran the risk of being implicated as ‘indelicate’ or
‘improperly’ by the virtue of her independent movement.

Women’s mobility was thus impaired or the spaces she occupied narrowed. Quite literally in
the case of Chinese women whose feet were either bound or placed in iron shoes or the
Muslim women who were confined in Purdah or the harem. The restriction was less physical
and more psychological and ideological in case of western women who could not appear
unescorted in certain places; or if she did, she was to become more or less the ‘legitimate
victim of male violence’. The class factor has to be noted, since rising socio-economic status
carried with it a changing style of dress among women- all designed to restrict free movement
as external manifestations of a growing distance from manual labour. Therefore, naturally the
feet-binding of the Chinese women moved from the Manchu court to the ambitious peasant
families of China.12

The march of history brought the coming of the machine, destroying landed property and
emancipating the working class and the woman. ‘Woman and the Worker have this in common:
that they are both oppressed’ said Babel. Plato had envisioned a communal regime and
promised woman autonomy. Simone De Beauvoir had said that all forms of socialism favour the
woman’s liberation. The Utopian socialisms of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Cabet gave birth to the
‘free –woman’. Cabet, however restricted women’s share in politics while Fourier linked the
woman too much to her flesh undermining the person in her. Engels, in his theory of ‘the world
historical defeat of the female sex’ showed that the original matriarchal order had been turned
into patriarchy by the emergence of the concept of private property in order to protect
inheritance. Proudhon was a remarkable exception who broke the alliance between feminism
and socialism,” relegating the honest woman to the home and to the dependence of the male”.

10
Thomas Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Chapter-3, The Creation of
Difference, pp 106-112.
11
Same as above
12
TanikaSarkar, ‘Politics and Women in Bengal-the conditions and meaning of participation’ in J Krishnamurtyed
Women in Colonial India (OUP 1999) p 235

6
These theoretical debates did not affect the course of events. The woman regained the
economic importance she had lost in the pre-historic times. The machine contributed by
annulling the difference in physical strength of the male and female workers. However, as G.
Derville said ‘Pet or beast of burden’, the woman had to be supported by man when she does
not work, she was still supported by man when she does not work, she was still dependent
when she worked herself to death. The conditions for working were lamentably unhygienic.
Some of the male employees took advantage of the young working girls; using the most
shocking means of want and hunger. The docile married woman was made to overwork.

Although at a later date, such conditions prevailed in India as well. Caste prejudice and
complete lack of privacy prevailed in accommodations coupled with blatant prostitution.13
There were also no paid maternity leave and benefits. There were some agitations too, like the
scavenger’s strikes of Calcutta and Howrah municipal strikes of 1928 and 1929 as well as
number of jute mill strikes.

What affected the working woman was that she did not know how to unionize. Nevertheless,
the first women’s associations were that of industrial workers dated from 1848. The first
charter for feminine labour came up in France in 1892 and other concessions gradually
followed. India saw a number of jute mill and scavenger strikes.

Regarding the political rights, the speech that John Stuart Mill made before the English
Parliament was the first ever officially presented in favour of votes for women. The
Englishwomen organized under Mrs. Fawcett’s leadership; the French under Maria Deraismes.
When Leon Richier produced ‘The Rights of Woman’ in 1869, the question of the right to vote
was not yet raised with the women limiting themselves to claiming civil rights. It was in the
Chamber of Deputies that Viviani brought up the question of women’s vote in 1901. This
‘Suffragette’ movement was existent in most other countries at this time. The Women’s Social
and Political Union was founded in London. The French Union for Woman Suffrage came up in
1909.

Apart from the ideas that the ‘true woman’ may not lose her charm in voting or that politics
would disrupt families, there were more serious questions asked about whether the prostitutes
should have the vote or whether relatively less educated women would indeed be able to freely
choose their candidates not being influenced by their husbands. Another point that caused
some concerns to the radicals and liberals was that the religious minded women might
naturally go for electing a more conservative government. In fact, son the church introduced its
own brand of feminism- the Christian feminism when Pope Benedict XV announced in favour of
votes for women.

The First World War suddenly changed the situation for the lot of women. The jobs vacated by
men at war were taken up by women and they found they could secure employment and
command wages at levels never dreamt of before the war. But they were still regarded as
supplementary to their men-folk. Only a few women joined the war. Maria Bochareva’s

13
Tanika Sarkar, ‘Politics and Women in Bengal-the conditions and meaning of participation’ in J Krishnamurtyed
Women in Colonial India (OUP 1999) p 234

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Battalion of Death being a famous exception. There was a wave of independence and an
outburst of feminist activities. The young working woman could now be seen rejoicing in a pub,
she dressed in a different way wearing trousers and uniform. But this new found freedom of
movements and pockets by no means emancipated them from their central responsibility of
raising a family. It was a common case in both the world wars that the women drew back to
their homes after it was over. Especially after the end of the first the feminist issue was
hindered by more prominent divisions and crises. A war-time poster in Glasgow befittingly
reads:

“Your king and Country Need You,

Ye hardy ‘sons’ of toil,

But will your King and Country need you

When they’re sharing out the spoil?”14

The most obvious spoil of the War was the Vote. The contribution of women to the war effort
helped to reinforce changes in attitudes to female suffrage. Britain’s liberal Prime Minister
prepared his line of retreat into democratized women’s suffrage. The German woman unified in
this cause with 12,000 members under the aegis of AllgemeinerDeutscherFraauenverein. A new
morality in the new state of Soviet Union voiced itself in favour of women. The country saw
Europe’s first female government minister and first female ambassador in Alexandra Kollontai.
She, however later fell out with Lenin on how women can be best attracted to the Communist
Party. In Italy, Fascism had systematically hindered the progress of feminism while seeking an
alliance with the church and leaving the family untouched. But here, too in 1923, Mussolini
granted woman the vote in local elections to outmaneuver his political opponents. The same
year, a meeting of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage was held in Rome.

New Zealand was the first country to give full voting rights to its women in 1893. Australia
followed in 1908. Finland (1906) and Norway (1907) were the first European countries to do the
same. Victory was slower in Victorian England. Here, the women were for the first time in
history seen taking action as women that are not as workers or nationalists or other social
groups. From 1912, violent tactics were adopted- burning of houses, slashing pictures,
interrupting public speeches. Englishwoman got the vote, first with restrictions in 1918 and
then unrestricted from 1928. In France, a woman-suffrage bill passed the Chamber in 1919 but
failed in the Senate in 1922. The situation remained complicated and it was not until the end of
the Second World War in 1945 that French women got the right to vote.

From the first, the American woman had been more emancipated than her European sister. But
here too, the rot of the old world was setting in… and social control remained firmly in male
hands. Towards 1830s women began to lay claim to political rights. Lucretia Mott founded an
American feminist association and in 1840 issued a manifesto that set the tone for American
feminism. “Man has made a civic corpse of the married woman”, she had reflected. The women

14
Asa Briggs and Patricia Clavin, Modern Europe 1789-Present (Pearson 2009) p 188

8
here shared a common space of oppression with the blacks. Just like in many other countries
the Woman identified her low position with the workers or the colonial natives. After the Civil
War the women demanded in vain that they should also be given the vote alongside the blacks.
The National Association for Woman came up in 1869, the very year Wyoming gave woman the
right to vote. Some other states did the same in the following years. Progress was slow
thereafter but economically the Woman here did better than her European counterpart, 5
million women worked in USA including business and learned professions. Finally, in 1920,
woman suffrage became a law of the land.

The way, the Woman traversed through the momentous and long nineteenth century to enter
into the threshold of the turbulent twentieth was intricate indeed. She had had come a long
way, from the time when she could be killed by her husband for adultery or from the time
when scientists proclaimed her as ‘a sub-species destined only for reproduction’. From there
the woman moved to the point of participating in those daring debates on sexuality- those
forbidden words like homosexuality, premarital sex, contraceptives or abortion that illuminated
the politico-cultural life of the 1920s and then once again more vibrantly from the 60s. While
the West used the rigour of the laws, it was the severity of the customs in the case of Latin
America or the oriental countries that was used to subjugate the woman. But there too, the
woman has silently moved towards attaining her rights.

______________________________

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:-

 Karen M Offen(edited) : Writing Women’s History : International Perspectives

 Simone De Beauvoir : The Second Sex
 JKrishnamurty(edited): Women in Colonial India
 JasodharaBagchi(edited): Indian Women : Myth and Reality
 Asa Briggs, Patricia Clavin : Modern Europe
 Thomas Metcalfe: Ideologies of the Raj

__________________________

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:-

For all advices, guidance and suggestions with sources… as well as pep-talks and
inspirations, indebtedness is towards and utmost thanks would go to
Prof.UttaraChakrabarty (our UC ma’am!).

Also thanks to the ‘co-operative’ staff at the Presidency Arts Library and RKMIC Library.

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