Patriarchy and class: An approach to a study of women's education in Madras Presidency

Abstract

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's education is the condition on which

 Ultimately fundamental the success of· male education depends - basis of any real and

1 permanent 2 regeneration the 0f Indian National Life". Following Kelly, this paper attempts at studying women's education by "putting women at the centre of research" in an effort to bring out the manifest presence of patriarchal attitudes in the processes by which schools, through their location, curriculum and structure, produced the kinds of asymmetrical outcomes that research on women's studies have thus far documented.