A Comparison Between Women and Men

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. Originally published in 1882, this text provides an 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. An obscure woman from a small country town in central India, Tarabai's commentary reveals some of the ways in which women of her class and time might have felt as they observed changes in colonial society and their implications for women.
Her text is here translated, and is accompanied by a substantial interpretative essay which sets it in context, linking it with a wider subculture of women's protest, and drawing out some of the more long-term ways in which gender relations in India may have changed with the onset of East India Company rule.