Conjectural History of Cultural Ideas of Women and Work in Urban South India

Abstract

This article documents the emergent discussion of middle-class women and work outside of the home in India’s pre-Independence period through an analysis of articles in the high-profile Stri Dharma journal. Prominent themes in the journal’s discourse of promoting middle-class working women include the emphasis 

on women’s moral agency and the definition of their work as doing good in a

 public social space that lies between the familial and the national contexts. To

 conclude, the author preliminarily gestures towards a further transformation of

 the discourse of work in the postcolonial era, towards work as both women’s

  rights and personal fulfilment.