Women and Banking: The Politics of Sahukari Pedhis in the Nineteenth Century Western India

Dr. Maitree Vaidya Sabnis

Volume : VI, Issue : IX, September - 2017

Women and Banking: The Politics of Sahukari Pedhis in the Nineteenth Century Western India

Dr. Maitree Vaidya Sabnis

Abstract :

These were the words that were written in 1875, which tells us about the second category of women, i.e. the widows �who ruled their shops�. The widows with inheritance rights for their adopted heirs of the sahukari pedhis or indigenous banking family-firms of the Baroda State emerge as economically strong. The Baroda state was one of the regional state or princely states in western India in the nineteenth century. Historians working in social and economic history and in women�s and gender history usually discuss the economics of women�s lives in terms of poverty, powerlessness and absence of money and of waged and unwaged work. Women�s financial affairs have made little impact on accounting history, business history or financial history