This valuable reference work, the first volume in the SAGE series History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, offers insights into the lives of Indian women by taking into account the complex interlinking of class, caste, ethnicity, religion, nation, state policy and gender. The themes taken up in the various essays in this volume are crucial to the understanding and experience of gender in India. They revolve around a number of important central issues:

- That the `woman question' was the chosen site for cultural confrontation between the colonial British and the colonized Indians;

- That the freedom movement gave women the opportunity to break the monopoly of men over the political arena;

- That despite legal and constitutional guarantees concerning the equality of the sexes, women in post-colonial India are struggling to be treated as equals.

The essays are divided into six interrelated sections: Family/Law; Body/Sexuality; Knowledge System; Work; Creativity/Voices; and Politics. Within these broad frameworks, the 30 contributors to this volume explore the operation of power and women's resistance to it, and how they continue to play a role in modern-day India.

Drawing on themes across disciplines and across India to raise our awareness of overt and covert discriminations against women, the book reminds us of the multiple ways in which women manage to survive and thrive despite familial, community and state neglect.