Autobiography of an Unknown Woman

Abstract

In the India of my childhood, the autobiography of a woman was likely to be very different from that of a man. This difference cuts aross the entire hierarchy of that socio-economic system which has fossilized into a part-hereditary system called caste. The liberty which women have enjoyed through the ages varies with social class and follows perhaps a U-shaped distribution. Women have always worked with men as farm labourers, construction workers and the like, but the proportion in the professional groups is a different matter.