Revisiting Women`s Agency in the Pre-Colonial Social Structure of Bengal; A Comparative Study

This research examines women’s agency in pre-colonial Bengal using a structure-agency method, analysing secondary sources using content-based thematic analysis and comparing two major social groupings. It vividly depicts precolonial Bengali Hindu and Muslim attitudes on women and agency webbing. It concluded that women’s agency grew with structural modernization, hence, established practices developed path dependency with the operational paradigm shift where the modernization-induced change in women’s status demonstrates agency. The socio-physical environment, religio-cultural settings, economic status quo, and cultural norms that have been associated with submission to men, such as for Hindu women, who were primarily subject to caste and other scenarios, and Muslim women, who were better off but still in the lower tier of society, led agency transformations. These established practices had shaped a new sort of path dependency, which had to persist until women were empowered and agency webbing except only a few upper-class women could have self-refine.