Ideal girls for Christian internationalism: the YWCA in early twentieth-century South Asia

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in constructing the terms of political engagement for young Christian women in South Asia. It focuses on a periodical called The Young Women of India and Ceylon, published between 1908 and 1916, which typically carried didactic essays and short aphoristic pieces of writing by Western educators and social workers, addressing a predominantly South Asian readership. Through this magazine, as well as through its Bible-study groups, social events, sporting gatherings and social work activities, the YWCA sought both to create opportunities for women’s participation in public life in South Asia and to articulate the boundaries of proper Christian womanhood in this practice. In particular, I argue that the writing in this magazine emphasised ideals of enterprise, positivity and professionalism. The article also examines the effects of this discourse, considering how South Asian Christian women inhabited an ethic of religious womanhood and showing that they engaged in a balancing act that both reiterated and contested the missionary ideal of ‘good’ womanhood.