Women Missionaries and the Marginalization of <i>Dais</i> in India, 1872–1932

The traditional birth attendants called Dais occupied a significant role in the birthing space of India since antiquity. This article examines the influence of women missionaries on the social roles of Dais in the colonial era. The thesis argues that women missionaries played a significant role in the marginalization of Dais from the late-19th to early 20th-century India. The study discovered that missionaries deploy the rhetoric of poor hygiene to castigate their social roles. Focusing on women missionaries and Dais affords us a rare privilege to gauge the intricate interplay between medicine and gender in colonial medicine.