[1][2] She was the founding Director of the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), an autonomous organisation established in 1980, under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR).

[3] Vina Mazumdar was born in a middle-class Bengali household in Kolkata, the youngest of five children, three boys and two girls.

While at the college, she organised a meeting in the support of Rama Rao Committee which recommended expansion of the inheritance rights for daughters through crucial Hindu Law Reform.

[6] The report of the Committee, Towards Equality, highlighted the rise in poverty amongst women in the transition from agrarian to industrial society, as also the decline of sex ratio in India.

[1][9] Mazumdar helped organise a meeting to support the recommendations of the Rama Rao Committee on Hindu Law Reform (to expand the inheritance rights of daughters.

[10] In 1980, she co-founded the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi and remained its founder-Director from 1980 till her retirement in 1991.

CWDS initiated the concept of "action-research" as it organised landless peasant women in Bankura district of West Bengal.