This book explores the relationship between the state, development policy, and gender (in)equality in India. It discusses the formation of state policy on gender and development in India in the post-1990 period through three key organising concepts of institutions, discourse, and agency. The book pays particular attention to whether the international policy language of gender mainstreaming has been adopted by the Indian state, and if so, to what extent and with what results. The author examines how these issues play out at multiple levels of governance – at both the national and the subnational (state) level in federal India. This comparative aspect is particularly important in the context of increasing autonomy in development policymaking in India in the 1990s, divergent development policy approaches and outcomes among states, and the emerging importance of subnational state development policies and programmes for women in this period. The author argues that the state is not a monolith but a heterogeneous, internally differentiated collection of institutions, which offers complex and varying opportunities and consequences for feminists engaging the state. Demonstrating that the Indian empirical case is illuminating for studies of the gendered politics of development, and international debates on gender mainstreaming, the book highlights the politics of negotiating gender equality strategies in the contemporary context of neo-liberal development and brings together complex issues of modernity, postcolonialism, identity politics, federalism, and equality within the broader context of the world’s largest democracy. This book will be of interest to scholars interested in the politics of gender equality, state feminism, and gender mainstreaming; federalism and multi-level governance; and development studies and gender in South Asia.

The Indian state of Kerala has invoked much attention within development and gender debates, specifically in relation to its female capital- an outcome of interrelated historical, cultural and social practices. On the one hand, Kerala has been romanticised, with its citizenry, particularly women, being free of social divisions and uplifted through educational well-being. On the other hand, its realism is stark, particularly in the light of recent social changes. Using a Bourdieusian frame of analysis, Development and Gender Capital in India explores the forces of globalisation and how they are embedded within power structures. Through narratives of women’s lived experiences in the private and public domains, it highlights the ‘anomie of gender’ through complexities and contradictions vis-à-vis processes of modernity, development and globalisation. By demonstrating the limits placed upon gender capital by structures of patriarchy and domination, it argues that discussions about the empowered Malayalee women should move from a mere ‘politics of rhetoric and representation’ to a more embedded ‘politics of transformation’, meaningfully taking into account women’s changing roles and identities. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Development Studies, Gender Studies, Anthropology and Sociology.

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295748856 Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Mytheli Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic. Across the political spectrum, people insisted that regulating reproduction was necessary and that limiting the population was essential to economic development. This book investigates the often devastating implications of this logic, which demonized some women’s reproduction as the cause of national and planetary catastrophe. To tell this story, Sreenivas explores debates about marriage, family, and contraception. She also demonstrates how concerns about reproduction surfaced within a range of political questions—about poverty and crises of subsistence, migration and claims of national sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for economic development. Locating India at the center of transnational historical change, this book suggests that Indian developments produced the very grounds over which reproduction was called into question in the modern world. The open-access edition of Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India is freely available thanks to the TOME initiative and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries.

Gender inequality holds back not just women but the economic and social development of entire societies. This atlas presents a new measure of gender inequality which examines women’s status according to family situation, physical integrity, son preference, civil liberties and ownership rights.

Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development demytsifies the theory of gender and development and shows how it plays an important role in everyday life. It explores the evolution of gender and development theory, introduces competing theoretical frameworks, and examines new and emerging debates. The focus is on the implications of theory for policy and practice, and the need to theorize gender and development to create a more egalitarian society. This book is intended for classroom and workshop use in the fields ofdevelopment studies, development theory, gender and development, and women's studies. Its clear and straightforward prose will be appreciated by undergraduate and seasoned professional, alike. Classroom exercises, study questions, activities, and case studies are included. It is designed for use in both formal and nonformal educational settings.

This book questions the conventional belief that development brings about greater gender equality and better environmental management. Based on participatory research and in-depth fieldwork, Arora-Jonsson studies struggles for local forest management, the making of women's groups within them and how the women's groups became a threat to mainstream institutions. Engaging seriously with academic debates on gender, environment and development, this volume contributes to a much-needed dialogue among these fields.

Based on research commissioned by the World Bank, this books primary focus is on incorporating men in gender and development interventions at the grass roots level. It draws attention to some of the key problems that have arisen from male exclusion; as well as to the potential benefits of - and obstacles to - men's inclusion.

The pace of socioeconomic transformation in India over the past two and a half decades has been formidable. This volume sheds light on how these transformations have played out at the level of everyday life to influence the lives of Indian women, and gender relations more broadly. Through ethnographically grounded case studies, the authors portray the contradictory and contested co-existence of discrepant gendered norms, values and visions in a society caught up in wider processes of sociopolitical change. ‘Women, Gender and Everyday Social Transformation in India’ moves the debate on gender and social transformation into the domain of everyday life to arrive at locally embedded and detailed, ethnographically informed analyses of gender relations in real-life contexts that foreground both subtle and not-so-subtle negotiations and contestations.

Exploring the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain workspaces? Drawing from observations and interviews with more than 130 elite professionals, Accidental Feminism examines how a range of underlying mechanisms—gendered socialization and essentialism, family structures and dynamics, and firm and regulatory histories—afford certain professionals egalitarian outcomes that are not available to their local and global peers. Juxtaposing findings on the legal profession with those on elite consulting firms, Swethaa Ballakrishnen reveals that parity arises not from a commitment to create feminist organizations, but from structural factors that incidentally come together to do gender differently. Simultaneously, their research offers notes of caution: while conditional convergence may create equality in ways that more targeted endeavors fail to achieve, “accidental” developments are hard to replicate, and are, in this case, buttressed by embedded inequalities. Ballakrishnen examines whether gender parity produced without institutional sanction should still be considered feminist. In offering new ways to think about equality movements and outcomes, Accidental Feminism forces readers to critically consider the work of intention in progress narratives.

As the world's population exceeds an incredible 6 billion people, governmentsâ€"and scientistsâ€"everywhere are concerned about the prospects for sustainable development. The science academies of the three most populous countries have joined forces in an unprecedented effort to understand the linkage between population growth and land-use change, and its implications for the future. By examining six sites ranging from agricultural to intensely urban to areas in transition, the multinational study panel asks how population growth and consumption directly cause land-use change, and explore the general nature of the forces driving the transformations. Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes explains how disparate government policies with unintended consequences and globalization effects that link local land-use changes to consumption patterns and labor policies in distant countries can be far more influential than simple numerical population increases. Recognizing the importance of these linkages can be a significant step toward more effective environmental management.