Routledge research on gender in Asia series; 10

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.