Chapter 8 demonstrates that such effects can be augmented by stimulating solidarity among women with a focus on gender consciousness-raising, but that such actions generate backlash. It tests the importance of social solidarity in stimulating women’s collective action by exploiting arbitrary variation in the delivery of a gender consciousness-raising program to SHGs. It shows that women are more likely to undertake collective action after identifying shared experiences of deprivation and forming a bond based on their gender identity. This collective action is also more likely to be aimed at women’s strategic interests – their interests rooted in their patriarchal suppression – and therefore garner more resistance from men in the community, including through increased experiences of (public) violence and harassment. It shows that women navigate this resistance through their collective strength and solidarity.

Chapter 7 provides cause for optimism: women’s participation in apolitical women’s groups enhances their political agency and doubles their political participation. Leveraging a natural experiment to identify the impact of access to SHGs, or small women-only credit collectives, it shows that access spaces outside of the household with other women generates solidaristic collective action oriented toward women’s political participation that succeeds in changing women’s political behavior: SHG members were significantly and substantially more likely to participate in politics than nonmembers. Further, this impact is evident in the larger village political network; women are more densely politically connected, and gender emerges as a more salient political cleavage. This positive impact of SHGs occurs despite no change in women’s economic resources.

Until 1919, women were barred from becoming barristers or solicitors. With the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Helena Normanton made legal history on 24 December 1919 (the day after the Act was passed) by becoming the first woman to join an Inn of Court, the Middle Temple. Her milestone entry marked women’s formal entry to the legal profession. But what do we actually know about that history? The stories of Gwyneth Bebb and Helena Normanton have been recorded, but the struggle was wider than just two individuals. They were not lone agents of change. This chapter argues that women’s entry to the Bar was achieved through women’s networks and connections, a history that has not yet been recorded.