Interrogating Women’s Leadership and Empowerment

Looking at gender through multiple lenses, this volume seeks to understand what empowerment really means to women today. It examines the situation of women in, and their contribution to, politics, business, education, social and economic development, the women’s movement, health, law, insurgency and the arts.

The volume analyses certain key issues of contemporary discourse including:

• ownership of one’s body and freedom of choice
• redefinition of empowerment and leadership and how far we have achieved it
• importance of equal access to education, employment and health
• political participation and decision making, and dichotomy between marginalisation of women on grounds of caste, class and religion in a society  with changing laws on women’s rights

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Understanding Leadership
Chapter 2: Revisiting the Theme of Women’s ‘Empowerment’
Chapter 3: Women Leaders in Every Mohalla, Every Village
Chapter 4: Rockets with Fire in Their Tails?
Chapter 5: Labouring Intellectuals: The Conceptual World of Dalit Women
Chapter 6: Czarinas or Girl Fridays?
Chapter 7: Leadership for Women’s Equality and Empowerment in Higher Education
Chapter 8: Anatomy of a Change: Early Women Doctors
Chapter 9: From Dynasty to Legitimacy
Chapter 10: Other Histories
Chapter 11: In Her Own Write
Chapter 12: Catalysing Craft
Chapter 13: Leadership in the Arts
Chapter 14: Recasting Bodies and the Transformation of the Self
Chapter 15: Ascribing Feminist Intent
Chapter 16: The Alpha Songbirds
Chapter 17: Empowering Women through Education
Chapter 18: Gender and Governance
Chapter 19: The Movement for Change
Chapter 20: Caregivers, Caretakers