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Societies delineate a person's sphere of social interaction and set socially permissible limits of physical and mental movements for both men and women. Traditionally women in Bengal as in most of India were confined to the private domain of home and denied access to public spaces. This had a negative impact on their social status. The Bengal Renaissance of the nineteenth century, the involvement of women in first the Swadeshi and then the National Movement as well as the Leftist polities, pro-women legislative changes in post-independence India were all aimed, directly or indirectly, to broaden the space accorded to women in Bengal. This paper attempts to examine the changes generated by the above mentioned factors on women's social space and consequently their status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]