The Changing Position of Indian Women.

Abstract

tion and a corresponding change in the husband-wife relationship. More recently, urban migration, female political participation, education, careers, and the activities of social reformers have all helped the public acceptance of new roles for women. As yet, only a tiny minority of women have benefited from the changes that have occurred. I Anthropologists have long been interested in the study of the position of women in various parts of the world. Such interest has been both 'indirect' and 'direct'I am aware that this distinction is not a clear-cut one but I think that it is helpful to make it. The 'indirect' interest came from armchair anthropologists who wanted to trace the evolution of marriage, family, and kinship by studying kinship terms and usages, from different countries, and in particular, from what are now referred to as the 'Third World' countries. As is well-known, this began in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the efforts of Morgan, McLennan, Maine and Bachofen. The 'direct' interest came from individuals whose work as administrators, missionaries or anthropologists, brought them into contact with non-Western peoples, and who wrote accounts of the division of labour existing between the sexes, the rules of inheritance and succession, the nature and composition of the household etc., among the peoples they studied. Ever since their discipline became established in the universities, anthropologists have regarded the study of the 'position of women' as one of their basic concerns. R. H. Lowie's Primitive society, published in I920-which, incidentally, was the first anthropological book I came into contact with-included a chapter on 'The position of women' (I86-204) which is still worth reading for its erudition, caution, scepticism about accepted ideas, and for certain basic distinctions which Lowie considered essential in order to discuss tangibly so broad and elusive, if not fuzzy, a theme. He made a few generalisations and then cited exceptions to them to show how it is necessary to guard against easy generalisation. Finally, he emphasised the difficulty of establishing causality when the events under consideration were numerous, and the relationship between them extremely complex. When I state that anthropologists have long been interested in the study of the position of women I certainly do not mean that it has been confined to them. For it is well-known that psychologists, demographers and several others have shared * Huxley Memorial Lecture, 1976.