women doctors, women missionaries, and women
lawyers. Hence in 1866 zenana missions were organized by English women
doctors and missionaries. Native women were soon studying medicine in
order to bring an end to the superstitions of the zenana. Dr. Clara Swain
came to India in 1869 as the first woman medical missionary. As early as
1872-1873 the first hospital for women was founded; in 1885, through the
work of Lady Dufferin, there originated the Indian National League for
Giving Medical Aid to Women (_Nationalverband fuer aerztliche Frauenhilfe in
Indien_).

Native women have studied law in order to represent their sex in the
courts. Their chief motive was to secure an opportunity of conferring with
the women in the zenana, a privilege not granted the male lawyer. The
first Indian woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabija, was admitted to the bar in
Poona. Even in England the women have not yet been granted this privilege.
This is easily explained. The Indian women cannot be clients of men
lawyers; what men lawyers cannot take, they generously leave to the women
lawyers.

India has 300,000,000 people; hence these meager beginnings of a woman's
rights movement are infinitesimal when compared with the vast work that
remains undone.[116] The educated Indian woman is participating in the
nationalist movement that is now being directed against English rule.
Brahmanism hinders the Indian woman in making use of the educational
opportunities offered by the English government. Brahmanism and its
priests nourish in woman a feeling of humility and the fear that she will
lose her caste through contact with Europeans and infidels. The Parsee
women and the Mohammedan women do not have this fear. The Parsee women
(Pundita Ramabai, for example) have played a leading part in the
emancipation of their sex in India. But the Mohammedan women of India are
reached by the movement only with difficulty. By the Hindoo of the old
regime, woman is kept in great ignorance and superstition; her education
is limited to a small stock of aphorisms and rules of etiquette; her life
in the zenana is largely one of idleness. "Ennui almost causes them to
lose their minds" is a statement based on the reports of missionaries.

There are modern schools for girls in all large cities (Calcutta, Madras,
Bombay, etc.). The status of the native woman has been Europeanized to the
greatest extent in Bengal. The best educated of the native women of all
classes are the dancin