The mandate of the Committee was massive, to assess the status of women in India in all aspects of their lives, keeping in mind the diversities (class, caste, religion, ethnicity, region, abilities, age groups etc.), complexities and paradoxes that prevail in our society.

WOMEN's status, it has often been argued, is an indicator of the level of development of particular societies. Women's workforce participation rates, on the other hand, are also related to women's status.

Demographic literature is replete with observations of an inverse relation between certain attributes of modernity and family size (Thompson 1929; Notestein 1945; Coale and Hoover 1958; Leiberman 1980, Srinivasan 1986).