What is the Status of Women Education in India?

The Sanskrit Shaloka, “Yatra Poojyante Nariastu Ramante Tatra Devah”, means that in the ancient past there was great respect for the women. The women were very high in morals and in performance of duties. No yajna could be completed without the presence of wife. It is said, historically in early times women in India enjoyed equal opportunities like that of men.

Women in the Vedic ages not only received their due recognition in society but also got equal treatment in the matter of educational training. Many women were composers of Rig Vedic hymns.

Gargi and Maitreyi, for instance were looked upon as the leading philosophers of the time. At the end of the Rig Vedic period the social status and position of women came to be degraded. This is clearly evident from most of the slokas in Manusmriti. According to the injunctions of the Smriti literature a woman was reduced to a dependent role in relation to men.

Menfolk were now callous about women’s education; what they deemed to be important in women was their capacity to bear and rear children. Only among the women of Vaishnava community academic pursuits were still considered to be of great significance.

Due of the changed political, social and economic situation in the medieval India, the status of women received a great setback and consequently the opportunity for the education. Education of women remained somewhat neglected during the British period.

With the dawn of independence there ushered a new era with regard to the status of the women. Today the Indian woman has equal rights with man to individual and social status, right to education, right to work with adequate wages and security of tenure, right of freedom of association, right to property and right to health and leisure. The Article 39 of the Constitution lies down.

1. The citizen’s men and women have the right to an adequate means of livelihood.

2. There is equal pay for equal work for both men and women.

According to a report, “After independence social and economic justice has progressed in this country and so has education of women. The Muslim women are now participating in ever large numbers.

The reform movement like Aryar Samaj and Brahmo Samaj, and the Congress movement had created a situation in which education of women received a lot of attention ever from before independence.

As a result of this private and governmental effort, education among women has registered distinct progress. Thus while the percent of literacy among women was only 7% when the British left as against 15% among men, it has advanced to about 15% now among them against 35% among men.

This, however, indicates that progress of education among them is still backward compared to men. There are still only about 17 women along with 31 men in primary schools one woman along with three men in secondary schools and about three female against eight males in university and higher education.

As the population of men and women in about equal in this country, sexes should be about equal in all stages of education, to give a comparative idea of the place of women education in total education the following figures are significant”.