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Synopsis Till about the middle of the seventeenth century, it was the universal assumption that women belonged to the home as wives and mothers. Their entire life was devoted to the home and they remained within its confines. They had no rights over property; no control over inheritance, no control over custody, and no right to bring a civil suit. They did not even have the right to vote. However, with the advent of the industrial revolution, and other historical circumstances, the isolation of women in the domestic sphere began to erode. The rights that they had been deprived of became central issues in the nineteenth century women's rights movement. This book not only delineates those rights but also discusses those issues that became part and parcel of vigorous debates in modern feminist theory. Each issue has been articulated, explained, discussed in detail and then put in the right perspective of the modern woman who stands shoulder to shoulder with her male counterpart and equal in all respects. The in-depth evaluation of each issue and the detail with which logical conclusions have been drawn add a new dimension to the entire concept of feminism. General readers and teachers, students and researchers in Women's Studies and sociology will find this book of great help. They will not only be able to get a better and deeper insight into the various issues that confronted, and still confront in some measure, the status of women in various parts of the world, but will also be able to enlarge their own viewpoints on the subject.