The women’s movement in India began as a social reform movement in the nineteenth century. The Western ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity were being imbibed by the educated elite through the study of English. Western liberalism was to extend to the women’s question and translate into awareness on the status of women.

In India, the tradition of women’s struggles and movements against patriarchal insti­tutions of gender injustice, have been weak when compared to the women’s movements in the Western and European societies. In fact, women’s fight against the oppression of patriarchy has been rather slow in emerging.

The nineteenth century women found themselves totally suppressed and subjugated by the male patriarchal ideologies and attitudes of those times, though there was a feminist identity consciousness and awareness of their plight. However, this awareness did not get translated into an open and organized struggle for selfhood and survival.

Though there were feelings of deprivation and anger against the injustices women were facing, these remained mostly latent, and at the most, sometimes mildly open. In today’s world, feminist movements have gained expression due to similar factors.