Hinduism, like other world religions that developed in patriarchal
cultures, reflects assumptions about male gender supremacy that have
been oppressive to Hindu women. Gender injustice manifests itself
in the fact that a disproportionate percentage of the illiterate in India
are women, in the practice of abortion of female fetuses because of a
preference for male offspring, in the stigmatization of widows, and in
the custom of dowry that depletes the economic resources of families
into which girls are born and that makes them feel guilty for being
women. The practice of dowry demeans women by signifying that the
value of a woman is so low that she becomes acceptable to another
only when her family is able to satisfy his greed for the latest gadgets
of materialistic fancy (Rambachan, 2000:17–40). Gender liberation
and justice require the overcoming of these oppressive structures of
Hindu society. As in the case of caste oppression, however, voices