Insuring Women’s Wealth: Gold Jewelry and Financial Instability in Late Colonial India

This paper examines how debt and financial insecurity shaped women’s engagement with their economic rights in women’s magazines of late colonial India. With the expansion of the modern state, print technologies participated in raising legal consciousness in people’s daily lives. By circulating debates on legal reforms and creating spaces that advised women on their rights, women’s magazines played a significant role in bringing legal discussions into everyday reading practices. The Great Depression of the 1930s and increasing indebtedness prompted women to reflect on their economic rights within religious laws and the financial institutions that might address their concerns. Rights to property, inheritance, maintenance and religious notions of women’s wealth (strīdhan or mahr) became contentious topics in magazines. Women contributors sought to defend their personal wealth by linking their everyday realities to the financial crisis. Jewelry, traditionally a form of property owned by women, came to play a crucial role not only in the family economy, shaped by religious laws and practices, but in British currency policies and capital markets. Insurance companies and banks encouraged women to invest in gold jewelry as a means to safeguard their financial assets and generate capital. This, in turn, induced significant changes in women’s roles in economic and religious transactions. By tracing discussions on jewelry, this paper explores the relationship between women’s property and emerging financial institutions, stressing how legal and economic realities contributed to defining the value of women’s wealth.