Negotiating Privately for an Effective Role in Public Space: A Case Study of Women in Panchayats of Orissa, India

This book is the outcome of interdisciplinary research investigating female participation in politics in rural India. The participants were all rural and mostly illiterate women who dared to explore the public space by entering into grassroots political institutions as a result of the quota introduced in 1992. This ruling stipulated that 'no less than one third of the seats' in India's rural political units, the Panchayats, were to be filled by women, and created a social revolution in the countryside of India. The book presents an interesting investigation into about how women representatives negotiated their new roles by converting the strong patriarchal set-up in India into a support system for their new endeavour. This is an interesting work on women in local political institutions, and reveals the gradual social and economic empowerment of women through gender quotas in politics.