"Women Workers, Liberalization and Social Citizenship in India"

Chapter by Amrita Chhachhi in Handbook of Gender

Amrita Chhachhi has a chapter titled "Women Workers, Liberalization and Social Citizenship in India" in the Oxford University Press Handbook Series.

Handbook of Gender (Edited by Raka Ray, ISBN13: 9780198071471ISBN10: 0198071477,  Oxford University Press, January 2012 ), brings together works that represent the best of feminist scholarship on India in multiple fields ranging from historical to contemporary India.

The contributions from eminent feminist and gender scholars are categorized thematically and cover the following areas:

• law
• sexuality
• masculinity
• caste
• media
• religion
• labor
• environment
• women's movements

In each key area of debate, a classic essay is paired with another that reflects the state of the field today or the vibrant new directions toward which the field is moving. The Introduction provides a unique analytical perspective on the trajectory of gender scholarship in India as well as a comparative approach vis-a-vis western discourse on gender.

Table of Contents

The Politics of Knowledge: The Women's Movement and Gender Scholarship in India, Raka Ray
Section I-Sexuality;
1: The Foundations of Modern Legal Structures in India, Janaki Nair
2: Conjugality, Property, Morality and Maintenance, Flavia Agnes
Section II-Sexuality;
3: Uneven Modernities and Ambivalent Sexualities: Women's Constructions of Puberty in Coastal Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, Kalpana Ram
4: Outing Heteronormativity: Nation, Citizen, Feminist Disruptions, Nivedita Menon
Section III-Masculinity;
5: Potent Protests: The Age of Consent Controversy, 1891, Mrinalini Sinha
6: Style, Lawrence Cohen
Section IV-Caste;
7: Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism, and a Script for the Past, Uma Chakravarti
8: A Cartography of Resistance: The National Federation of Dalit Women, Kalpana Kannabiran
Section V-Media;
9: Dharma and Desire, Freedom and Destiny: Rescripting the Man-woman Relationship in Popular Hindi Cinema, Patricia Uberoi
10: Forbidden Love and Passionate Denials: A Dialogue on Domesticities and Queer Intimacy, Shohini Ghosh
Section VI-Religion;
11: Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses: Family and Organization in Hindutva Politics, Tanika Sarkar
12: Feminist Theory, Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt, Saba Mahmood
Section VII-Labour;
13: Family and Factory: Women in the Bombay Cotton Textile Industry, 1919-1939, Radha Kumar
14: Women Workers, Liberalization and Social Citizenship in India, Amrita Chachhi
Section VIII-Environment;
15: The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India, Bina Agarwal
16: Genderscapes: Deepening Our Understanding of Gender-Environment Linkages, Sumi Krishna
Section IX-Women's Movement;
17: Women's Politics in India, Ilina Sen
18: Feminism, Poverty, and the Emergent Social Order, Mary John

About the author

Amrita Chhachhi is Senior Lecturer in Women, Gender and Development at ISS