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Written by the Remaking Britain team. First published December 2025.

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Across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, South Asian women have made their mark on British history. From struggles for political and economic equality, to breaking barriers in education, to groundbreaking cultural outputs, South Asian women from diverse backgrounds have been actively connected to major historical events and had an influence on considerable social change.

South Asian women in 19th and early 20th-century Britain

South Asian nannies, known as ayahs, would offer care to children and families who travelled from South Asia to Britain across the 19th and early 20th century. Before the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, the ship journey from South Asia to Britain could take six to seven months and ayahs would travel with families on these long journeys. After it opened the voyage was much quicker and the number of journeys by ayahs increased. Once in Britain, some would continue to care for children and families, while others were abandoned because they were no longer needed as domestic servants. The Ayahs’ Home in London, which may have been founded as early as 1825, was a place of respite for ayahs and amahs (nursemaids from China). Supported by the London City Mission from 1900, the Ayahs’ Home helped travelling ayahs return to the Indian subcontinent. Some, however, stayed in Britain for longer and others returned multiple times working for different families.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: PP.1041.c. Public Domain

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Photograph of the exterior of the Ayahs' Home in Hackney, 1921

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Photograph of the exterior of the Ayahs' Home in Hackney, 1921

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While there are few written records of ayahs, surviving passports from the 20th century give us a glimpse into the range of ages and backgrounds of these vital carers.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: IOR/L/PJ/11/3/1314.

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Crown Copyright: This material has been published under a Open Government Licence.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: 10349.H.12. Public Domain

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Photograph of the interior of the Ayahs' Home in Hackney, 1904

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Photograph of the interior of the Ayahs' Home in Hackney, 1904

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Education

South Asian women enrolled in schools and universities in Britain in the 19th century, despite barriers to education for women at this time. Some were pioneers in education. Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954) was the first woman, of any nationality or ethnicity, to study law at Oxford University (in 1889) and Mithan Lam (née Tata) (1898– 1981) was one of the first women, of any nationality or ethnicity, to be called to the Bar (in 1923).

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Held by Somerville College Archive. Copyright: Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford.

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Photograph of Somerville Hall, Class of 1891

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Photograph of Somerville Hall, Class of 1891

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Other notable examples include Rukhmabai (1864–1955), who enrolled in the London School of Medicine and qualified as a doctor in 1894 (having also studied at the Royal Free Hospital), and Susila (Susie) Bonnerjee (c.1872–1920) who attended the Croydon High School for Girls, then Newnham College, Cambridge in 1891. She also joined the London School of Medicine for Women and was attached to the Royal Free Hospital. Susila gained her MB degree in 1899.

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Held by the British Library. Copyright: Content provided by THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Article about Rukhmabai Raut from The Woman's Signal, 25 October 1894

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Article about Rukhmabai Raut from The Woman's Signal, 25 October 1894

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In the late 20th century, women of South Asian heritage have become prominent educators. For example, in 1976 the educator and activist Dina Abbott (born 1951) founded the newspaper Samaj in’a Babylon, alongside South Asian and Caribbean activists. She later obtained her PhD and became a university lecturer in development geography.

Campaigns for political rights

As more South Asian women were afforded educational opportunities and entered the world of work, they began to challenge the inequalities they faced. By the early 20th century, South Asian women were involved in campaigns for political equality, including campaigns around equal citizenship and the vote. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876– 1948) and her sister Catherine (1871–1942), who were the daughters of the exiled Maharaja of Punjab, Duleep Singh (1838–1893), were both involved in the British suffrage movement. Sophia campaigned nationally and locally in Kingston and Richmond, and was often seen selling The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace. She was a prominent member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, whose slogan was ‘No Vote, No Tax’. Mithan Tata (1898–1981) and Susie Bonnerjee (c. 1872–1920), who were pioneers in education, were also heavily involved in suffrage campaigns in the 1910s.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: L/PS/11/51. Public Domain

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Photograph of Sophia Duleep Singh selling The Suffragette outside Hampton Court Palace, 1913

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Photograph of Sophia Duleep Singh selling The Suffragette outside Hampton Court Palace, 1913

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There were other South Asian women involved in political campaigns. In 1911, Indian women, including Lolita Roy (1865–?), Bhagwati Bhola Nauth (c. 1882–?) and Leilavati Mukerjea, were part of the Women’s Coronation Suffrage Procession in London organised by the Women’s Social and Political Union. Held a week before the coronation of King George V, over 40,000 people marched to draw the attention of the king and the public to the female suffrage cause. Bhagwati Bhola Nauth and Lolita Roy were members of the Indian Women’s Education Association, which raised funds for scholarships for Indian women students in the UK, and were members of the Eastern League which raised money to help Indian soldiers in the First World War.

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Campaigns for female suffrage were connected to other political rights such as Indian nationalism. Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949), a well-known poet who had studied at Cambridge University from 1895, was a close ally of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), a vocal supporter of female suffrage, and a strong advocate of anti-colonialism and Indian independence. While Indira Gandhi (1917–1984; also known as Indira Nehru) was appointed Prime Minister of India in 1966, in the 1983 UK General Election, Pramila le Hunte (born 1938) and Zerbanoo Gifford (born 1950) stood as candidates for the Conservative Party and Liberal Party respectively. They were both unsuccessful.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: V 10326. Public Domain

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Portrait of Sarojini Naidu, from the first edition of The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring, 1912

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Portrait of Sarojini Naidu, from the first edition of The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring, 1912

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Women’s employment and trade unionism

While some of the early South Asian women in Britain were employed in domestic service as ayahs, by the mid-20th century women were increasingly employed by the state. In the 1950s, the British Government actively recruited nurses and midwives from other countries to work for the National Health Service (NHS), which had been founded in 1948. Many nurses and midwives were recruited from across the British Empire and former empire, including from India, Pakistan, Uganda and Guyana. Alongside members of the Windrush generation, these healthcare professionals have been the backbone of the NHS.  For example, Gulzar Waljee (born 1940) was recruited in 1959 from the port town of Tanga in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) at the age of 19 to train at Royal Surrey County Hospital and had a 30-year career in midwifery and nursing in Cambridge.

From the mid-20th century onwards, South Asian women also worked in factories while, in turn, working to resist discriminatory employment practices. For example, in 1972 500 South Asian men and women went on strike at Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough over discrimination. In August 1976, workers at the Grunwick photographic film-processing factory in Willesden, north London went on strike over pay and dignity. The strikers were mainly South Asian women and led by Jayaben Desai (1933–2010). They started a hunger strike in 1977 and the strike was called off in 1978. In October 1979 workers at the Chix confectionery factory in Slough, who were mainly South Asian women, went on strike to gain recognition of their trade union.

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South Asian women have continued to demand economic equality in the 21st century in new industries and with expanded opportunities for work. In 2005, workers at Gate Gourmet, an airline catering company, who were mainly South Asian women, went on strike over redundancies and discriminatory conditions. Although they were unsuccessful, their fight was indicative of the ways South Asian women have stood up for their rights.

Social justice

In addition to trade union activism, or earlier anti-colonial and suffrage activism, by the 1970s, South Asian women were involved in other social justice and anti-racist campaigns. Established in 1979, the Southall Black Sisters supported notable campaigns against racism, sexism, domestic violence and immigration legislation. They worked alongside other feminist groups such as the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the political campaigning group the British Black Panthers. Their work continues today with their Director and founding member Pragna Patel. More recently, the Belfast Asian Women's Academy (BAWA) was founded in 2019 to support and empower South Asian women in Northern Ireland.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: C2047. © Remaking Britain. Image credit: With permission from Rahila Gupta.

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Rahila Gupta talking about a Southall Black Sisters march (recorded 2024)

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Rahila Gupta talking about a Southall Black Sisters march (recorded 2024)

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Women’s writing and culture

From the earlier examples of Cornelia Sorabji and Sarojini Naidu, to more contemporary writers such as Monica Ali (born 1967) or Kamila Shamsie (born 1973), women of South Asian heritage have been actively involved in writing and publishing their work and gaining attention in Britain. Attia Hosain (1913–1998), for example, moved to Britain in 1947 and presented a women's programme for the Indian Section of the Eastern Service of the BBC from 1949. Her novel Sunlight on a Broken Column was published in 1961.

South Asian women also began to establish new magazines and wrote for periodicals with increasing urgency in the 1980s. Mukti was a magazine started in 1983 by a collective of South Asian women in London and was published in six languages: English, Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali and Punjabi.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: ZD.9.b.124​. Amina Patel © Mukti Collective

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Mukti magazine, Issue 1, June-August 1983

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Mukti magazine, Issue 1, June-August 1983

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: ZD.9.b.124​. Amina Patel © Mukti Collective

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Mukti magazine, Issue 1, June-August 1983

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Mukti magazine, Issue 1, June-August 1983

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Poems, articles, stories and novels by South Asian women across history have given voice to their diverse experiences. They have also created pioneering work in other cultural forms whether it be art, sculpture music, television or theatre, with well-known practitioners such as the Singh Twins, playwright Tanika Gupta (born 1963) or Kali Theatre who were founded in 1991 to present new plays by women of South Asian descent. In the 21st century, women and girls of South Asian heritage have worked with new digital media and social media to share ideas and engage in activism. For example, in 2012 Seetal Kaur and Aaminah Patel co-founded the TWO-BROWNGIRLS blog and social initiative ‘dedicated to the evolving identity of the artistic, intelligent and ever-curious browngirl’.

Conclusion

South Asian women have made their mark on British history and culture from the 19th century to the present day. From ayahs (nannies) in the 19th century, to suffrage campaigning and university study in the early 20th century, to social justice campaigns, trade unionism and activism in the late 20th century. In the 21st century, women of South Asian heritage are now prominent politicians, broadcasters, writers and thinkers, among many other roles.

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The text in this article is available under a Creative Commons License.

Credit: Remaking Britain team (Rehana Ahmed, Aleena Din, Sumita Mukherjee, Susheila Nasta, Maya Parmar, Florian Stadtler, Rozina Visram).

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