According to Gandhi, both men and women are of equal rank, but they are not identical. They are peerless pair,
being supplementary to one another, each helping the other so that without the one the existence of the other cannot be conceived.
The concept of self is the most important factor affecting the behaviour of women. Self-realization of the potential of women was severely restricted in the pre-
independence period due to various socio-cultural conditions and conditioning. There was an urgent need to make special efforts to enable women to become self-reliant, by positive and active interventions in the direction of confidence building in the cognitive, psychological, economic and political areas.
woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate to the very minutest detail in the activities of man and she has an equal right of freedom and liberty with him. She is entitled to a supreme place in her own sphere of activity as a man is in his. This ought to be a natural condition of things and not as a result only of learning to read and write. Just by the sheer force of a vicious custom, even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying his superiority over women, which they do not deserve and ought not leave.
Men have to be teachers to their wives, and that not merely to make them literate, gradually, it should be possible to introduce women to the subjects of politics and social reform. The men in such a case will have to change their attitude towards their wives.
Thus, Gandhi attempted to increase the recognition of the value of women at home and the primary relationship, apart from that he also stressed the need for the qualitative transformation of the ‘outer’ public which would acknowledges women’s genius and accords the ‘feminine’ an equal status in human evolution. He projected women as symbols of courage,
intelligence, perseverance, robust independence and power and not as stereotypes of submission, subservience, self-effacement, helplessness and patience.