Term for
"women's religious duty" (dharma), which refers to a system of
societal roles, regulations, and responsibilities that apply to all women.
Women's suitable roles in dharma literature were often
thought to be daughters, wives, and mothers, and that their lives would be
largely determined by their connections with men—whether fathers, brothers,
husbands, or sons.
Their position seems to have had prestige but little
authority, according to the dharma literature.
A well-known passage from the Manu Smrti warns that a woman
must never be independent, but must always be under the protection of a man;
this is followed by another well-known passage warning that the treatment of
women was a marker of the family's honor, and that a household in which the
women were mistreated would perish.
Women had much more influence in actual life than in this
theoretical paradigm, but this power usually arrived later in life, when a
woman's sons had started their own families and she had thus become the
matriarch of an extended family.
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