The document discusses the status of women in different time periods throughout history. It notes that while women had a relatively high status in early Vedic times, their status declined in later periods. During medieval times, practices like sati and child marriage became common. While laws have been enacted to promote women's rights in modern India, many social issues like domestic violence, female feticide, and human trafficking continue to persist. Studies show that violence against women remains a significant global problem, and that existing efforts have not created lasting change in gender equality.

1. If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born
slaves?”

2. 1. Uniqueness of a society
2. Woman status in the ancient period
3. Woman status in the medieval period
4. Woman status in the modern period
5. Social evils prevalent in the present
6. Reforms in law enacted in favour
7. Statistics of crimes against woman
8. Statement.

3.  Society is defined as a social system composed of interrelated
people and the acts of people.
 With the passing of time, the rules thus created
formed into social cultures and traditions of the
respective society.
It is expected that a human should have the
characteristics of equality in all sense i.e. Wisdom in
domestic, social , educational ,political level.
 There should be the acceptance of one’s individuality
irrespective of gender, caste, creed

5.  Societies sometimes is affected with different social evils.
To analyse the status of women in depth , it is required that
any particular society is taken .


6. Many social evils i.e. dowry system, child marriage,
prostitution, mismatched marriage, exploitation,
violence against women are common in Indian
society.

7.  In early Vedic period(2000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.), historical studies
and the scriptures indicate that Indian woman enjoyed a
comparatively high status during the early Vedic period.
Woman also enjoyed religious status like that of men, especially
in Vedic initiation and studies.
The Rig Veda had rendered the highest social status to qualified
woman of those days.
Woman was considered more powerful than man and treated as
Goddess of ‘शक्ती’.
 Yajnavalkya was a Hindu Vedic sage, had imparted divine
knowledge of the most difficult nature to Maitreyi (one of two
wives of the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya) that she had not only
been able to comprehend the high philosophy but had also
actually attained divine knowledge.

8.  The woman were learned, free and highly cultured; conjointly
they offer sacrifices to the gods, listening sweetly to
discourses, and preferring spiritual upliftment to the
pursuit of mere riches.
Woman represented the best example of conjugal love,
offering the supreme sacrifice of their lives as a
demonstration of their feeling for their partners in the brief
journey of life.

10. In later Vedic period, the position enjoyed by woman in
the early Vedic society, was not retained.
 This was simply because their husbands were allowed to
have more than one wives.
 A widow was expected burn herself on the funeral pyre of her
husband. This would make her ‘Sati’.
Arthashastra imposed more stigmas on woman as
Kautilya dismissed woman’s liberation
 They became worse off in the Gupta period. But in Vedic
period position of woman was not as worse as that of today
above all she is a servant of their own family who is the
whole and sole care taker of the family with all responsibly

11.  The condition of women worsened from the 20th century.
At the same time, woman is considered to be under the
protection of father during childhood; under the protection
of husband during youth and under the protection of son
during old age.
the social, cultural and religious backbone of Indian society is
based on patriarchal structure which gives
comprehensively secondary status to woman.
Hence, in this way the derogation of social status of woman.

12. ♣ During the medieval period only, system
were being introduced by Muslim and Rajput community
against woman.
♣ Woman in Mughal Period were not allowed to remarry.
was common among rich society.
♣ The Mughal Kings and their army men kidnapped young girls
and women and them.
♣ At this crucial period of time, the practice of
became the most common and popular practice
was also there in ancient times and families also
aborted the foetus in different ways.
♣History reveals that women were and
slaves in the market

13. ♣In course of time, women were and bound to
household
♣The imperialist patriarchy exploited a whole clan of helpless
and destitute women as and deemed them
public property whose entire generation was compelled
to take up prostitution as their primary profession.
♣ The irony was that Devadasis were highly educated and
multitalented potentialities who excelled in literary
knowledge, writing skills.
♣All the activities of the social order were justified as a life
saving technique for women and they were craftily
endorsed with a crust of superstitious element.
♣ Indisputably, women's exploitation and flourished
as a legal facet of almost all the dynasties in South and
North India bound by a set of prejudiced hierarchical rules

15. In scripture; theoretically it has given higher status to woman .
In reality, if they want some powerful things, they always pray
to goddess in the form of ‘Devi’ but, if the woman who
exist in their life as mother, sister and wife, they do
not treat her like this or treat like a slave in their family,
who works 24 hours for them without expecting
anything.
The position and status of today’s Women in India is
considerably changed in modern Indian Society.
Indian Laws are being made without discrimination against
woman, as a result indian woman started enjoying high
position in our society.

16. ► Woman today occupy high ranking posts like I.A.S., I.P.S., also
in our Defense services, Sports, in politics, science &
Technology.
►The seed of Woman Empowerment has been sowed in early
18th century on an International level. Then there after in
19th century it came to India.
► Following are some legislative enactment enacted by the
legislator for protection and promotion of Woman
Empowerment in India:

17. ♦During East India Company Rural Governor General William
Bentinck issued regulation prohibiting ‘Sati’ that was
enacted on December 4, 1829. However, the practice of
sati continued to be practiced rarely in some Orthodox
families. Hence the Government enacted Sati Prevention
Act
♦Hindu Widows Remarriage Act, 1856
♦Indian Penal Code, 1860
♦Indian Evidence Act, 1872
♦The Hindu Marriage Act 1955.
♦The Special Marriage Act 1954
♦ the Indian Christian marriage and 1872.

18. ♦These enactments made for cases of divorce on the basis of
personal laws like maintenance of Hindu wives and
children under Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956.
The Muslim Woman (Protection of Right on Divorce) Act,
1986, for Christian, The Maintenance of Christian Wives
and Children Act, 1869 and for Parsi, The Parsi Marriage
and Divorce Act, 1936.
♦National Commission for Woman Act, 1990- The Government
has decided to set up a Commission for woman and
enacted the National Commission for Woman Act, 1990
with goal to achieve full Empowerment of woman in India.
♦Prevention of ‘Female Foeticide- The Government enacted ‘Pre-
Conception, Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition
and Misuse) Act, 1994
And Rule 1996 to control this sex determination and
‘Female Foeticide’.

19. ▲ In pursuance of this the Parliament has passed the
prevention Immoral Traffic Prevention Act 1956.
BUT HAS THIS LEAD TO THE END OF REDLIGHT AREAS AND
HUMAN TRAFFICKING, STOPPED ............
Everyone knows that there were red light areas in every city
in India.
▲There are three laws in place in India that deal directly with
domestic violence:
►The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
►The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961
►Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.
BUT HAS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE STOPPED IN AN AVERAGE
EDUCATED MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY???
HAS THE LAWS BROUGHT END IN FEMALE FOETICIDE?

20. ♠ Now the important thing is that, whether this equality really
exists?
♠ Whether these laws really effective to remove the social evils
aganist woman?
♠ If the answer is in affirmative,
then again the question came into mind that, then
why the offences of Sexual Assault, Dowry Death,
Rape, Domestic Violence and most recently
‘Female Foeticide’ and Female gentailation
committed against woman.
REFERENCE

21. ♣

25. ►The Commonwealth’s annual report on gender equality,
shows existing efforts are not effecting significant,
lasting change.
►Just 12 other Commonwealth countries have parliaments
where more than 30% of MPs are women.
► Over 30,000 rape cases; only 1 in 4 convicted.
► In the United States, 70% of rape is committed by someone the
victim knows.
►In Guatemala, the homicide rate for women is more than
three times the global average.
► It is estimated that of the 87,000 women who were
intentionally killed in 2017 globally, more than (58 per cent)
were killed by intimate partners or family members.

26. ►Brazil saw an alarming rise in violence against women
2018.
►In the European Union report , one in 10 having
experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15
The risk is highest among young women between 18
and 29 years of age
►Adult women account for 51 per cent of all human
trafficking victims detected globally
► RESEARCH& SURVEY:
Violence against women: global scope and magnitude
CharlotteWatts,PhD
a
CathyZimmerman MSc
Health Policy Unit, Department of Public Health and Policy, London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, UK
Reporting Sexual Victimization To The Police And Others:
Results From a National-Level Study of College Women
Show all authors
Bonnie S. Fisher, Leah E. Daigle, Francis T. Cullen, ...

28. As the famous Sanskrit sloka says,
that having only
women education will not be the panacea to all the social evils against
women