Feminism

Until very recently, Indian magazine advertisements continued to portray women in their stereotypical images. A woman was either shown in the kitchen cooking food, washing a bucketful of clothes, bandaging wounds or feeding her husband and children. Therefore, the picture that emerged was that of a woman who never produced knowledge or wealth but always consumed and remained a sort of hanger-on to her male. The status of women in India has raised many a controversy and headed many a movement. With the passage of time, the Indian woman's role has metamorphosed from a domestic manager to a prime purchaser. She has now emerged as a potential consumer, ready to redefine her status in the worldwide economy, and her contribution to the society is no longer confined to being solely a progenitor. Traditionally, the role of wife and mother has been seen as a woman's destiny and her only career choice.

For years, she remained totally dependent on her husband financially and chose to remain unaware of the world outside her home. It was the man who was the consumer for the whole family and thus a target for marketers. However, in the last 40 years, the rapid strides in education and employment have paved the way for drastic changes in the status of women-the latter have become self-reliant and also share enhanced emotional bonds with their husbands. From the woman confined to the domestic sphere to the liberated woman of the 21st century, from the woman totally dependent on a man to the totally independent career woman of today, women have made their way through and have evolved as individuals in their own right. And as far as the notion of consumers is concerned, women have become the target market for products and services in India.The implicit assumption that the history is a specifically male affair came under attack by feminist historians around 1970. It was fed by the need of the new feminist movement for a historical identity for women and by the professional pride of feminist historians who argued that mainstream history was one-sided, distorted and incomplete. Women appeared to have no historical significance. In most historical narratives they were either absent, of marginal importance or an exception to their gender.

Women’s history has formulated a multifaceted answer to this one-sided story. In the space of twenty-five years it has developed into a specialized field which meant in the words of Joan Kelly-Gadol (1970) – ‘to restore women to history and to restore our history to women’. In the course of time, interest shifted from documenting specific women’s traditions and culture to more theoretical considerations of the role of gender in the construction of the history. In other words, the desire to demonstrate that women were historically as important as men, resulted in curiosity about the ways in which the history of women differed from that of men. Eventually women’s history developed explicit critiques of historical knowledge. This development reflects an analogous shift of focus to other areas of women’s studies.