Gender, Class, and Caste Schisms in Affirmative Action Policies: The Curious Case of India's Women's Reservation Bill

Sakuntala Narasimhan

Feminist Economics, 2002, vol. 8, issue 2, 183-190

Abstract: Following the introduction of economic liberalization policies in 1991, India has registered steady gains in terms of conventional economic indices such as external trade, investment inflows, and foreign exchange reserves. However, globalization has also caused the feminization of poverty. To counter this trend of marginalization of women, it is necessary to address the gender imbalance in decision-making positions. A Constitutional Amendment Bill seeking 33 percent reservation for women in parliament and state legislatures has, however, been scuttled by three successive governments since 1996, even while each party swears by its commitment to gender equity. The reasons for this curious schism showcase a classic example of gender-class-caste alignments and divisions, under political compulsions. This paper examines this ongoing gender-caste-class imbroglio, in the context of Indian affirmative action policies (economic, social, political), which have generated "backlash" reactions.

Keywords: Affirmative Action; Reservations In Parliament (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545700210161004 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:femeco:v:8:y:2002:i:2:p:183-190

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545700210161004

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().