Tracing the ways in which women from diverse backgrounds have engaged with nationalism, this book argues that gender is crucial to an understanding of nationalism and vice versa. By discussing how women from various professional, class, caste, religious, ideological, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds have engaged with nationalism the author attempts to foreground a relationship between gender and nationalism and how feminism engages with the ideology of the nation. Through assessments by a range of writers, activists, political figures and movements this publication explores the development of nationalism in Sri Lanka during the past century, particularly within the dominant Sinhala Buddhist and militant Tamil movements. Marking the production of important events, temporal moments and selected strands of nationalism in Sri Lanka, the main focus of this book lies in the way gender has been, and continues to be, a central troupe within these events.