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Synopsis For almost two decades women's organisations spoke for all Indian women. They demanded the trappings of 'modern life' education, health care, framework of a social feminist ideology that constructed women as socially and psychologically different from men. They acknowledged India's special, problems, especially child marriage, purdah and the oppression of widows, and agreed that these practices made reform doubly hard. Over the next two decades women became active in a variety of social and political movements undermining the hegemonic claims of the major women's organisations. Any assessment of the status of women has to start from the social framework. Social structures, cultural norms, and value systems influence social expectations regarding the behaviour of both men and women and determines women's roles and their position in society to a great extent.