and opportunities available to women. The point about the negative influence of
patriarchal ideology and its attendant socio-religious customs on female education is
made by virtually every writer in this collection of essays. Unlike many books on
gender and education in India, it does not unquestioningly accept education of women
as the panacea to the ills that beset Indian society. Rather than challenging the
traditional socialisation of young women by family and community, education has often
served to reinforce the status quo. There are, however, two noticeable omissions in the
book. The observations on the socialisation of girls and young women would have been
strengthened by some information on that of boys and young men. Secondly, more
concrete micro-level data would have strengthened the arguments about the nature of
socialisation of Indian women and the role of education in reinforcing traditional
stereotypes. As it stands, many of the articles owe more to historical records and
personal experience, and less to empirical research and case studies. The book,
however, highlights the problematic nature of female education in India which makes it
a valuable addition to the existing literature in this area.
MUKHOPADHYAY, C.C. and SEYMOUR, Susan (eds) (1994) Women, Education
and Family Structure in India, Westview, Colorado.
This collection explores the linkages between women's participation in formal
education and the fundamental institutions of family, kinship and marriage. They
comment that there is in India an ongoing tension between pressures that increase the
desirability of education for women and traditional structures that constrain women's
education in order to preserve a set of social institutions that they term patrifocal family
structure and ideology. This collection of essays reveals that male-oriented structures
and beliefs profoundly affect women's lives and, hence, their access to education and
educational achievement. They examine the reciprocal relationship between patrifocal
family system and ideology, and women's educational participation and achievement.
Steve Derme's essay, "Arranging Marriages: how fathers' concerns limit women's
educational achievements" explores how Indian fathers' concerns with their daughters'
marriageability effectively limit their daughters' educational aspirations. Carol
Mukhopadhyay's article, "Family Structure and Indian Women's Participation in
Science and Engineering", finds that the different obligations of sons versus daughters
towards their natal families leads to differences in how families view educational
achievements, especially in scientific fields, for girls and boys. In "Schooling for What?
The Cultural and Social Context of Women's Education in a South Indian Muslim
Family", by Sylvia Vatuk shows that women played a pivotal role in accessing
education for other females in the family. In this family, cross-age and inter-
generational female support networks promoted schooling for girls, whether
supplementing the efforts of those males who also favoured education for women or
providing opposition to those who resisted. The essay by Susan Seymour, "Women,
Marriage and Educational Change in Bhubaneshwar, India: a twenty-five year
perspective", shows that middle and upper status residents of Bhubaneshwar responded