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Gender, Governance and Empowerment in India (Routledge Research on Gender in Asia Series) - Hardcover

Book 11 of 23: Routledge Research on Gender in Asia Series

Kalaramadam, Sreevidya

 
9780415842648: Gender, Governance and Empowerment in India (Routledge Research on Gender in Asia Series)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0415842646 ISBN 13: 9780415842648
Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

Since the mid-1980s, the presence of women in governance has become a major marker of successful democracy in global and national discourses on the democratization of society. A diverse set of nation-states have legislatively mandated gender quotas to ensure the presence of elected women representatives (EWRs) in various rungs of governance. Since 1993, the Indian state has legislated a massive program of democratization and decentralization. As a result, more than 1.5 million EWRs have taken office within the lower rungs of governance or the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI).

This book is an ethnography of the Indian state and its policy of legislated entry of women into political life. It argues that political participation of women is necessary to change the political practices in society, to make institutions more gender, class and caste representative, and to empower individual women to negotiate both formal and informal institutions. Its locus is the everyday life contexts of EWRs in the southern Indian state of Karnataka who negotiate their own meanings of politics, state, society, empowerment and political subjectivity. Analysing three factors – structural boundaries, sociocultural divisions and conjunctural limitations imposed on the participation of EWRs by political parties – the book demonstrates that the social embeddedness of PRIs within everyday practices and social relations of identity and power severely constrain and shape the political participation and empowerment of EWRs.

Providing a valuable insight into contemporary state and feminist praxis in India, this book will be of interest to scholars of grass-roots democracy, gender studies and Asian politics.

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About the Author

Sreevidya Kalaramadam is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at William Paterson University, USA.

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Publisher
Routledge
Publication date
2016
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0415842646
ISBN 13 
9780415842648
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
148