Not part of the plan? Women, state feminism and Indian socialism in the Nehru years

Taylor C. Sherman

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The 1950s are often derided in the scholarship as a period of welfarist policies which reinforced women’s role in the family and entrenched women’s economic dependence. This paper examines the Central Social Welfare Board, and in particular its Welfare Extension Projects, to provide a new characterisation of the approach to women’s issues during the period. It argues that the Central Social Welfare Board, with its unique administrative structure, its preference for voluntary activity, and its adherence to persuasion as a mode of action reflected many of the characteristics of Indian socialism of the time. It also sketches, from this angle, a partial picture of state feminism in India. In the Central Social Welfare Board, state feminism was concerned with the gradual transformation of women and a radical, if short-lived, makeover of the state.

Keywords: state feminism; socialism; self-help; welfare-state; everyday state; community development; decentralisation; postcolonial nationalism; Durgabai Deshmukh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B14 B24 P2 P3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme and nep-hpe
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Published in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021, 44(2), pp. 298 - 312. ISSN: 0085-6401

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:107460

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