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EDUCATION, EQUALITY AND DEVELOPMENT
Persistent Paradoxes in Indian
Women's Hisoty
Edited and introduced by Vina Mazumdar
General Editor: Vina Mazumdar
[available
with PEARSON]
Women, Equality and the Republic:
Landmarks in the Indian Story is a series dedicated
to tracing the history of the women’s movement in
India vis-à-vis Indian democracy and the building of
a modern nation. This series recognizes the need to
archive women’s voices, roles and contributions in a
largely male dominated national history. The
 volumes
in the series not only document but also analyse the
evolution of ideas and strategies and the concrete
measures that were taken to shape policies and
programmes for women in India.
Scholars of gender studies have
always struggled with the politics of language and
memory that control the very construct of gender in
social terms. In the absence of a feminine voice and
vocabulary to counter this, large sectors of women’s
social experience have been left unrecorded and,
hence, invisible.
Education, Equality and Development:
Persistent Paradoxes in India Women’s History
goes beyond the confines of
quantitative data collection to gather these
unrecorded voices. Bringing perspectives from
several developing countries, the volume discusses
the continued gender inequality despite improvements
on issues of child marriage, female mortality,
literacy and labour force participation.
The complex relationship between
education, women’s equality and their participation
in development – national, regional and global – is
articulated with great clarity in this volume. The
debates focus on the issues of women’s access to
different levels of education, the content of such
education, and its medium, purpose or value. The
volume also critically examines the dynamics of
historical, socio-cultural, linguistic, caste, class
and regional variations that have governed the
shaping of policies for women’s development.
The result is an analysis that
recognizes the paradoxes within the movements for
women’s development, and presents a more holistic
and valuable guide to policymakers. The fascinating
discussions with women from diverse sections on
Indian society will also provde a detailed,
qualitative appraisal of the ground realities in
India for students and scholars of sociology and
cultural studies.
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