omen's Lib Movement has rocked the western society and has shaken its very foundations. Women have not only proclaimed that they are equal to men in many respects but also that they are superior to them in their capacity to love and care. With the invention of labour saving machines, robots and electronic gadgets, man's superiority ovear women in sheerazaa muscular strength has become meaningless as it is of some consequence only in the gymnasium and sports-stadium. Although there too, women excel men in many athletic fields requiring flexibility and delicacy of movements.
Women have launched organised efforts to prevent all discrimination against them in a male dominated society on grounds of sex and in the field of social, political and economic rights. Since the cause of women's subservience has been mainly the institution of family under the tyrannical domination of man who controls the purse strings, many advocates of women's lib have questioned the continuation of family in the traditional sense. Indeed, Women's lib is not going to be content with equal pay for equal work and voting rights, it seeks fundamental and thorough-going changes in the treatment of women in homes, offices, workplace and at all levels of society.
Although the movement is western in origin, it has made waves in the Third World like India too which for the last 100 years has been getting ideas and inspiration from the philosophers and social scientists of the western world. The painstaking research and field work of anthropologists like Lewis H. Morgan on the ancient society and primitive people, led to certain startling disclosures in the ast 19th century.
It has discovered that in most primitive tribes woman was the head Of the family and the lineage was determined from the mother. Woman was engaged in economic activity of earning a livelihood as much as man. Besides being a loving and caring mother of children, she provided stability and protection to man. It was much later that man through inter-trial war and exchange of goods acquired and COncentrated both physical and financial power in his hands. Many of the conquered people were converted into slaves who would perform hard physical labour and relieve their owner.
