Women in Local Governance in India

Event organised as part of the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs Gender Lecture Series.

 

With: Gopa Samanta, Professor of Geography, University of Burdwan, India.

 

Following the autonomous women’s movement in the late 1970s and 1980s, along with many other legal reforms, Indian women gained one-third reservation in local governments in 1992 through the 73^rd and 74^th constitutional amendments. Initially it was claimed that only women from families of already politically powerful people would join politics and governance, and would act on the dictates of male politicians. After more than two decades of this reservation, many empirical studies to prove this suspicion wrong, coupled with a clear increase in the emancipation of women. In light of this background, the lecture analyses the success and challenges of women in governing small cities in India.

 

Gopa Samanta is Professor of Geography in the University of Burdwan, India. Her research and teaching interests are in Urban, Gender and Mobility studies. Her co-authored book Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia has been published from Yale University Press. She also writes on gender issues in popular magazines in Bengali language to reach wider social community outside academia.

 

 

RSVP: maya.judd@sciencespo.fr