India

Citation:

Stotsky, Janet G., and Asad Zaman. 2016. “The Influence of Gender Budgeting in Indian States on Gender Inequality and Fiscal Spending.” IMF Working Paper. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund. 

Authors: Janet G. Stotsky, Asad Zaman

Abstract:

This study investigates the effect of gender budgeting in India on gender inequality and fiscal spending. Gender budgeting is an approach to budgeting in which governments use fiscal policies and administration to address gender inequality and women’s advancement. There is little quantitative study of its impact. Indian states offer a relatively unique framework for assessing the effect of gender budgeting. States with gender budgeting efforts have made more progress on gender equality in primary school enrollment than those without, though economic growth appears insufficient to generate equality on its own. The implications of gender budgeting for fiscal spending were more ambiguous.

Keywords: fiscal policy, gender budgeting, gender inequality, Indian states

Topics: Economies, Education, Gender Budgeting, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2016

Citation:

Krishnaraj, Maithreyi. 1997. “Gender Issues in Disaster Management: The Latur Earthquake.” Gender, Technology and Development 1 (3): 395–411.

Author: Maithreyi Krishnaraj

Abstract:

This study maintains that the impact of disasters depends on the nature and intensity of the event, but in all cases the impact varies according to the degree of vulnerability of the social groups that constitute the affected population. Women, being more socially and economically vulnerable than men in most societies, are more severely affected than men. This article highlights the gendered impact of the earthquake and the bias against women in the management of the earthquake in Latur, India.

Topics: Class, Economies, Economic Inequality, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1997

Citation:

Marshall, Katherine, and Susan Hayward, eds. 2015. Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Authors: Katherine Marshall, Susan Hayward

Abstract:

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Religious Women’s Invisibility: Obstacles and opportunities
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

2. Part I: Women Peacebuilders: Distinctive Approaches of Different Religious Traditions
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

3. Catholic Women Building Peace: Invisibility, Ideas and Institutions Expand Ideas
Maryann Casimano Love

4. Muslim Women’s Peacebuilding Initiatives
S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana

5. Creating Peaceful and Sustainable Communities through the Spiritual Empowerment of Buddhism and Hinduism
Dena Merriam

6. Jewish Women in Peacebuilding: Embracing Disagreement in the Pursuit of “Shalom”
Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen

7. Part II Women and Faith in Action: Regional Case Studies
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

8. An All-Women Peacekeeping Group: Lessons From the Mindanao People’s Caucus
Margaret Jenkins

9. Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding in Kaduna State, Nigeria
Bilkisu Yusuf and Sr. Kathleen McGarvey

10. The Politics of Resistance: Muslim Women Negotiating Peace in Aceh, Indonesia
Etin Anwar

11. Women Reborn: A Case Study of the Intersection of Women, Religion, and Peacebuilding in a Palestinian Village in Israel
Andrea K. Blanch, with coauthors Esther Hertzog and Ibtisam Mahameed

12. Women Citizens and Believers as Agents of Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zilka Spahic Šiljak

13. Women Peacebuilders in Post-Coup Honduras: Their Spiritual Struggle to Transform Multiple Forms of Violence
Mónica A. Maher

14. Women, Religion and Trauma Healing: A Case in India
Anjana Dayal Prewitt

15. Strengthening Religious Women’s Work for Peace
Jacqueline Ogega and Katherine Marshall

16. Conclusion: Seeking Common Ground
Susan Hayward and Katherine Marshall

17. Appendix: Scholars and Practitioners Engaged with Women, Religion, and Peace

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Religion Regions: Africa, MENA, West Africa, Americas, Central America, Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories, Philippines

Year: 2015

Citation:

Kazi, Reshmi. 2014. "Women and Weapons: Redressing the Gender Gap: An Indian Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70 (5): 8-11.

Author: Reshmi Kazi

Abstract:

In nuclear war, women would suffer at least as much as men. But women tend to be underrepresented in fields—such as high-level politics, diplomacy, military affairs, and science and technology—that bear on nuclear policy. Authors from four countries—Salma Malik of Pakistan (2014), Polina Sinovets of Ukraine (2014), Reshmi Kazi of India, and Jenny Nielsen of Denmark (2014)—discuss how women might gain greater influence on nuclear weapons policy and how their empowerment might affect disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Keywords: conflict, disarmament, India, nuclear policy, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, peace, stereotypes, women

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Political Participation, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Pakistan

Year: 2015

Citation:

Mitra-Sarkar, Sheila, and P. Partheeban. 2009. “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here: Understanding the Problem of ‘Eve Teasing’ in Chennai, India.” In Women’s Issues in Transportation - Summary of the 4th International Conference. Vol. 2. Irvine, California: Transportation Research Board.

Authors: Sheila Mitra-Sarkar, P. Partheeban

Abstract:

Fear of victimization and crime are important concerns for women in cities around the world, and this fear is provoked through encounters with men in public space because they are “unpredictable, potentially uncontrollable and hence threatening.” The South Asian literature has focused more on the subordinate role of women in Indian society and the workplace than on gender-based crime (referred to as “Eve teasing”) in the public spaces and transportation systems in South Asia. The objective of this paper is to elicit information on sexual harassment faced by women commuters in Chennai, India. The study found 66% of the surveyed respondents had been sexually harassed while commuting. Many of the respondents first encountered sexual harassment during their adolescent years. Very few (5% or less) found any of the modal choices to be best. The largest number of women (more than 40%) rated their worst harassment experiences to be in buses and trains with no separate sections for women. The paper offers other findings on the nature and frequency of sexual harassment and suggestions to address these incidents. (Abstract from original source)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Infrastructure, Transportation, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2009

Citation:

Robinson, Rowena. 2010. “Boundary Battles: Muslim Women and Community Identity in the Aftermath of Violence.” Women’s Studies International Forum 33 (4): 365–73. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2010.02.010.

Author: Rowena Robinson

Abstract:

In ethnic conflicts in South Asia, women's bodies become sites for contestations of honour. Fundamentalist movements to ‘purify’ a community typically try to control women's movements, behaviour, dress and deportment. Muslim women in India have suffered increasing pressures in the escalating ethnic violence of recent decades.

The increasing divide between communities and consequent ghettoization of Muslims has profound effects on women's everyday lives. Ghettoization protects and confines: as women attempt to escape from targeting by the Hindus, they come under surveillance of the men of their own community. Their struggles for reform and gender equality are viewed with increasing displeasure by Muslim men and religious leaders. Women are seen as betraying the community in its hour of distress by raising such issues. Thus, women get further confined by community boundaries even if there are some who seek to dissolve them by focusing on issues of gender, class or citizenship rights.

Topics: Gender, Women, Post-Conflict, Religion, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Pakistan

Year: 2010

Citation:

Wilson, Kalpana. 2015. “Towards a Radical Re-Appropriation: Gender, Development and Neoliberal Feminism.” Development and Change 46 (4): 803–32. doi:10.1111/dech.12176.

Author: Kalpana Wilson

Abstract:

Tracing a complex trajectory from ‘liberal’ to ‘neoliberal’ feminism in development, this article argues that approaches to gender which are currently being promoted within neoliberal development frameworks, while often characterized as ‘instrumentalizing’ gender equality, in fact rely upon, extend and deepen gendered inequalities in order to sustain and strengthen processes of global capital accumulation in several ways. This is explored through development discourses and practices relating to microfinance, reproductive rights and adolescent girls. Drawing on examples from India, the article goes on to reflect on experiences of collective movements in which the assumptions underpinning this ‘Gender Equality as Smart Economics’ approach are challenged. Finally, it highlights several concepts associated with Marxist, Black, Post-colonial and Queer feminisms and underlines their importance to projects seeking to critically redefine development, arguing for a radical re-appropriation of gender in this context.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2015

Citation:

Roy, Srila. 2016. “Women’s Movements in the Global South: Towards a Scalar Analysis.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 29 (3): 289–306. doi:10.1007/s10767-016-9226-6.

Author: Srila Roy

Abstract:

This article explores the politics and ethics of scale in reading women’s movements in the Global South—how they have always been simultaneously regional, national and transnational in scale (materially if not imaginatively) and read through the twin lens of the global and the local. The first part of the essay underscores the constitutive internationalism in the history of feminism. From the ‘second wave’ of the women’s liberation movement, attempts at recognizing the internationalism in ‘global feminism’ have poorly served feminists in the ‘third world’. In more recent times, transnationalization has become the dominant signifier of women’s movements with renewed attempts at capturing the shifting scales of feminist politics in ‘transnational feminism’. Recent processes of transnationalization and NGOization bespeak an ontology of relatedness and a scalar epistemology as has been mobilized in recent writings in postcolonial sociology. The second part of the essay uses the mass protests around the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in 2012 as a way of thinking through the changing scales and sites of contemporary feminist protest in the Global South. I use the spatial concept of the assemblage to emphasize the multi-scalar dimensions of this protest especially through the determining influence of the media. Such a ‘protest assemblage’ produced endless possibilities of mobilization in the name of women but not always in clearly recognizable ‘feminist’ ways.

Keywords: feminism, Gender, women's movement, India, Scalar epistemology, assemblage

Topics: Civil Society, Feminisms, Gender, Women, NGOs Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2016

Citation:

Drew, Georgina. 2014. “Mountain Women, Dams, and the Gendered Dimensions of Environmental Protest in the Garhwal Himalaya.” Mountain Research and Development 34 (3): 235–42. 

Author: Georgina Drew

Abstract:

Mountain women's resistance to inequitable development practice manifests itself in several ways; one of the most visible ways is their campaigning with social movements. The efforts to save the Ganges (Ganga) River from hydroelectric dams in the Garhwal Himalaya of Uttarakhand, India, are a case in point. Within these movements, men often take leadership roles, while women from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds form the base of participation at meetings, assemblies, and rallies. Based on ethnographic research from 2007–2010, this article explores the particularities of women's engagements with dam opposition efforts, their motivations for activism, and the degree to which their concerns for environment and development receive attention. Although women make extensive contributions, movement leaders often do not adequately represent the specifics of their development concerns, and this impacts the ability of policy-makers to respond to women's demands. This article shows mountain women's locations on multiple social and geographic peripheries and argues for more gender sensitivity and critical reflection in social movement campaigns and decision-making processes as a prerequisite for expanding the possibilities of gender-inclusive sustainable development.

Keywords: mountain women, dams, development, resistance, social movements, Garhwal Himalaya

Topics: Development, Environment, Gender, Women, Infrastructure Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2014

Citation:

Agarwal, Bina. 2010. Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women’s Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Author: Bina Agarwal

Abstract:

Economists studying environmental collective action and green governance have paid little attention to gender. Research on gender and green governance in other disciplines has focused mainly on women's near absence from forestry institutions. This interdisciplinary book turns that focus on its head to ask: what if women were present in these institutions? What difference would that make? Would women's inclusion in forest governance - undeniably important for equity - also affect decisions on forest use and outcomes for conservation and subsistence? Are women's interests in forests different from men's? Would women's presence lead to better forests and more equitable access? Does it matter which class of women governs? And how large a presence of women would make an impact? Answers to these questions can prove foundational for effective environmental governance. Yet they have hardly been empirically investigated. In an analysis that is conceptually sophisticated and statistically rigorous, using primary data on community forestry institutions in India and Nepal, this book is the first major study to comprehensively address these wide-ranging issues. It traces women's history of exclusion from public institutions, the factors which constrain their effective participation, and how those constraints can be overcome. It outlines how strategic partnerships between forestry and other civil society institutions could strengthen rural women's bargaining power with community and government. And it examines the complexities of eliciting government accountability in addressing poor rural women's needs, such as for clean domestic fuel and access to the commons. Located in the interface of environmental studies, political economy and gender analysis, the volume makes significant original contributions to current debates on gender and governance, forest conservation, clean energy policy, critical mass and social inclusion. Traversing uncharted territory with rare analytical rigor, this lucidly written book will be of interest to scholars and students as well as policy makers and practitioners. 

Annotation: Table of Contents: Part 1: The Potential of Presence 1. Presence and Representation 2. Gendered Interests and the Environment 3. From Absence to Negotiated Presence Part 2: The Impact of Presence 4. Fieldsites and Field Profile 5. From Exclusion to Empowered Engagement 6. Rules and Rulemakers 7. Violations and Penalties 8. Conservation and Regeneration 9. Shortages Amidst Growing Plenty Part 3: Beyond Presence 10. Connecting with Civil Society: Weaving a Web of Strategic Alliances 11. Engaging with Government: Extending the Web

Topics: Civil Society, Environment, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Governance, Political Participation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Nepal

Year: 2010