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This book depicts one South Indian village during the fifty-year period when women's education became a possibility-and then a reality. Despite illiteracy, religious ritual marking them as inferior, and pre-pubertal marriages, the daughters and granddaughters of the silent, passive women of the 1960s have morphed into assertive, self-confident millennial women. Helen E. Ullrich considers the following questions: can education alter the perception of women as inferior and forever childlike? What happens when women refuse the mantle of socialized passivity? Throughout The Women of Totagadde, Helen Ullrich pushes us to consider how women's lives and society at large have been altered through education.
List of contents
1. The Silent Generation: 1964.- 2. Breaking the Silence: 1978.- 3. Discovering a Voice: 1992.- 4. Individual Voices: 1993-2011.- 5. Education: From illiteracy to College and Profession.- 6. Marriage: From woman as Object to Decision-maker.- 7. Ritual Etiquette: From controlling to complementing life.- 8. Widow: From invisible to valued member of society.- 9. Conclusion: Transition in Totagadde from 1964 to 2011.
About the author
Helen E. Ullrich, M.D., Ph.D., has published in anthropological, linguistic, and psychiatric journals. She has been a distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association since 2000. Currently she is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Tulane University Medical Center, USA.
Summary
This book depicts one South Indian village during the fifty-year period when women’s education became a possibility—and then a reality. Despite illiteracy, religious ritual marking them as inferior, and pre-pubertal marriages, the daughters and granddaughters of the silent, passive women of the 1960s have morphed into assertive, self-confident millennial women. Helen E. Ullrich considers the following questions: can education alter the perception of women as inferior and forever childlike? What happens when women refuse the mantle of socialized passivity? Throughout The Women of Totagadde, Helen Ullrich pushes us to consider how women’s lives and society at large have been altered through education.
