"Vibrant, varied and contentious, the women’s movement in India engages itself with a wide range of issues that implicate women in very different and significant ways. This volume presents a view of feminist theory and politics in India in the form of debates within the movement on key issues. The introductory chapter provides an outline of the issues involved and why they are crucial to an understanding of the politics of gender in India. The debates around each issue are contextualized and the range of positions that have emerged are demarcated. The essays focus on different strands in Indian feminism; and significant arguments that mark the field of debate on various issues, such as environment and gender, the effect of structural adjustment policies and the impact of new technologies on women and the engagement of feminism with law, are taken up. The implication of feminist politics in other discourses within mainstream politics, and the feminist critique both of imaginings of ‘community’ as well as of state practices which deny validity to any loyalties other than to the state itself, forms the subject of other chapters. Including diverse voices from within the movement by incorporating complex internal critiques, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of the movement and its underlying concern with gender inequity. It makes stimulating reading for anyone interested in an insight into the dynamics of the women’s movement as it exists in India today."
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