Contemporary Gender Issues: Identity, Status and Empowerment

Contents: Part One: Literature and the Reconstruction of Gender. 1. Gender, tradition and modernity in Shauna Singh Baldwin s what the body remembers/Tanvir Likhari. 2. Tracing the contours of conflict/Pushpinder Walia. 3. Dalit feminism: a perspective on Bama s Sangati/Tanvir Likhari. Part Two: Work, Employment and Entrepreneurship. 4. Women, work and ideology/Kalpana Shah. 5. Perspective on Indian women s work and status/Vibhuti Patel. 6. Jari industry and women workers/Jayshree Soni. 7. Women in sericulture/E.N. Ashok Kumar. 8. Women Bidi workers and the cooperative movement/Anuradha Ghandy and Geetha Thachil. 9. Political economy of female migrant labour/Suguna Pathy. 10. The new economic policy and women/Gail Omvedt and Chetna Gala. Part Three: Equality, Status and Empowerment. 11. Sociology of gender inequality and discrimination/J.P. Singh. 12. Status of women in Haryana/Neerja Ahlawat. 13. Changing status of women in rural Haryana/Raj Singh and Nishi Batra. 14. Role of nonformal educational schemes in the education and empowerment of women/Raj Mohini Sethi. 15 Impact of government schemes on the status of women in Punjab/Bindu Duggal. 16. Impact of 73rd amendment act on women empowerment/Swinder Singh and Sumita Bakshi. 17. Empowering Women/S. Gohilavani. Understanding gender in the Indian context has always been a daunting task, largely due to the complex social structure characterized by myriad combinations of tradition and modernity. The present volume is an effort to map various issues and challenges confronting the universal task of gender parity. Various strategies to empower women, such as political rights and movements, economic freedom and identity assertion seem to be falling short of achievement of the desired goal. Divided into three sections, various contributions take cognizance of diversity of women issues and their concerns. An attempt is made to present the process of women empowerment in India based on empirical research carried out during the last three decades. The book offers a comprehensive view of the changing status of Indian women.…