I came across this short story while doing my PhD and thought it was fascinating to read a SF story about a society that flips patriarchy on its head, making women dominant while the men are locked up in purdah, and even more fascinating still since it’s like a less eugenicist version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland but came out in 1905, ten years earlier. And the amazing women in this story invent solar power and helicopters. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was a Muslim feminist and social reformer.

First published in English in The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, 1905, and available here