“Women hold up half the sky”, the Chinese saying goes. But we need to recognize that it is not an equal world for women, globally and in India.

While the world's major killer disease, smallpox, that used to claim millions of lives has been eliminated, the planet has been struck with a more dreaded disease, AIDS or Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome.

The drive for a rapid development in the education of women came largely from a perception summed up aptly in .the following statement by Mayhew: "women