Abstract
This chapter attempts to examine the extent to which women’s greater presence in local governance makes any difference in policy-making process in India. It also tries to analyze the effectiveness of legislative measures for empowerment of women and highlights the issues and challenges therein. It looks into the dynamism of the process whereby women’s empowerment is achieved through legislation and seeks to analyze whether political participation of women does in fact translate into concrete women empowerment. This paper seeks to go beyond the numbers and to discover the realities of women’s presence in local councils. Case studies find that women’s empowerment is relatively successful in some States in India (Kerala, Bengal) and relatively unsuccessful in others (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh). The paper tries to identify factors that account for the difference.
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Chand, P. (2018). Proxy or Agency? Women in Rural Local Government in India. In: Ahmed, N. (eds) Women in Governing Institutions in South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57475-2_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57475-2_15
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