A comparison between women and men

the long version

Interest in the history of women and gender relations in India has intensified greatly in recent years. Historians have explored not only the way in which colonial rule shaped this history, but also the significance of gender itself in helping to construct and maintain colonial hegemony. A problem in this field, however, has been that we have very little direct testimony from women themselves for much of the colonial period, particularly testimony which directly addresses the question of women's changing social circumstances and relations with men. Tarabai Shinde's A Comparison between Women and Men, written in Marathi, and published in 1882, provides us with one example of such a 'woman's voice', speaking directly and passionately on the ways in which she saw men in colonial society as having silenced and disempowered Indian womenfolk.