The changing status of women in India

Argues that legal and constitutional rights in themselves do not change social attitudes. In the longer term these attitudes are conditioned by economic pressures, which would ultimately lead to improvement in the status of women. In the Indian context, developmental planning and urbanization did not have a specific focus on the role of women in economic change. As a result, development and urbanization led to very uneven results for different categories of women in India. While the poor women in rural India were left behind, the middle class educated women were able to improve their economic and social status as a result of urbanization and development. Again, Muslim women were unable to make as much social progress as did the Christian and Hindu women.