Trajectory of Women’s Education in India: A Historical Inquiry

When you educate a man you educate an individual, when you educate a woman, you educate the whole family" 1 (Dadhich, 2022: 198).Women's education holds a key to the overall growth and wellbeing of a society.Only when women are educated, will they be able to make the strategic life choices that were earlier denied to them in the patriarchal world and gain control not only of their own lives but of the larger society as well.They'd be able to make a judicious use of the available socio-economic resources and participate in the decision-making process both within the four walls of the house and outside too.Since women comprise one half of the total population, it is the status that has been accorded to them that determines the strength and robustness of a society.Gender parity, education, economic empowerment eliminates disparity and pave way for a more egalitarian society.Since the wholesomeness of a family largely rests upon the status of women in a particular household, we would try to explore the various social factors that prevented womenfolk from claiming what had been their due in the first section.The second section will trace the gradual change that came over as social reformers and educationists attempted to educate women and the third would focus on the efforts of the British government in this direction.This paper will attempt to trace the development of women's education in India during the colonial period.