Author: Prabhati Mukerjee
Publisher: Orient Longman
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 156
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8125016996
Description
This book traces the transition of women from bold, knowledgeable individuals to pliant, submissive beings.
This work seeks to answer the contemporary question of how and why women came to lose their position in society by making an incisive study of the role of women and the position accorded to them in the religious and secular Hindu texts.
It discusses in detail how a specious idealization of meek domesticity, in the Arthashastra down to Manusmriti, though with subtle shifts in perspective, led to women's gradual loss of social position and economic rights. It points out that these centuries-old 'ideals' are upheld and used as tools to subjugate women even today.