Accomplishing the Goals of Gender Equality

This book is part of a series of publications with an ambitious goal: to influence public thinking and political action that would “reconstruct...the India reflected in the constitutional preamble that we all surely want to be a part of.” Its focus is on gender equality. With this goal, the volumes aim to provide “navigable road maps”: a particularly difficult proposition for gender equality, given the multiple dimensions along which it could be measured. In her introduction to the book, Nisha Agrawal points out at the outset that an assessment by the high-level committee on the status of women appointed by the Government of India in 2013 suggests that India continues to be a country that is male-dominated with the persistence of discriminatory practices. Patriarchal social norms prevent women from acquiring individual or collective agency to bring about changes towards greater gender equality. The book focuses on equality in three areas: (i) within households, (ii) in the economic space, and (iii) in politics. Contributors include scholars, practitioners, and politicians. Change can happen in a slow and evolutionary way, or it can be sudden. Agrawal concludes her introduction to the book with the hope that “disruptive change will shatter patriarchal social norms and bring progress much faster than the trajectory seen in the last seventy years.”

Equality in Households