Wonderful Women

Cornelia Sorabji is the first Indian woman graduate from Bombay University, the first woman to study law at Oxford University, the first female advocate in India and the first woman to practice law in India and Britain. Sorabji was one of nine children of Reverend Sorabji Karsedji and his wife Francina Ford, who had been adopted and raised by a British couple. She was born on 15 November 1866 in Devlali. Sorabji had five surviving sisters and a brother, and two more brothers that died in infancy. She spent her childhood initially in Belgaum and later in Pune. She received her education both at home and at mission schools. Cornelia Sorabji was denied a scholarship to study in England, allegedly because of her gender. She had to petition to the National Indian Association to help her complete her studies. Life at Oxford too was not easy for Sorabji as she was the first woman to study law, she was not allowed to write her exam by her London examiner and She was bullied by the

Anasuya Sarabhai was a founder of the Women’s Labour Movement in India. She founded the India's oldest union of textile workers, in 1920 in Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association. Anasuya Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad on 11 November 1885 into the Sarabhai family, a religious family of pharmaceutical industrialists and business people. However, Anasuya lost both her parents when she was only nine years old and was married to her uncle at a tender age of 13. She divorced her husband and returned to her own family. With the help of her brother, she went to England in 1912 to continue her studies. She returned back to India in 1913 and started working for betterment of women and the poor. She began by opening a school for poor students of all castes and toilets for women. She decided to get involved in the labour movement after witnessing exhausted female mill workers returning home after a 36-hour shift. She helped organise textile workers in a 1914 strike in Ahmedaba