Women’s Education And Empowerment In Rural India, as its title suggests, is about understanding women’s empowerment in rural India. In this extremely important book, Jyotsna Jha, Neha Ghatak, Niveditha Menon, Priyanka Dutta, and Shreekanth Mahendiran explore the pathways and roadblocks to women’s empowerment. They do this through an evaluation-centred research on Mahila Samakhya in Bihar, a Government of India-funded scheme of the Education Department, aimed at providing ‘education for women’s equality’. The book evaluates the impact of the scheme and its interventions on the lives of women from the most marginalised communities. It traces the meaning and the process of the various facets of empowerment as well. These include how women’s empowerment effect their mobility; savings; participation in economic activities; self-efficacy; decision-making and political participation. It also measures the intergenerational impact of empowerment, through the choices that women make about their daughters’ education and marriage. It also examines the way women, through the process of empowerment, are able to adjust and negotiate with dominant social institutions such as the family, and policy processes and their outcomes. In doing so, the book raises some important questions about the developmental implications of women’s education and social policy, planning and implementation. This book will be of enormous value to government departments, and all social science departments in universities such as political science, education, sociology, economics and gender studies.
Jyotsna Jha presently heads Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS), located in Bangalore, India. CBPS is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organisation that focuses on research in gender, education, social and economic policies, budgeting, decentralization and governance issues. Trained as an economist, Jyotsna has significant experience of working on development-related issues.
Neha Ghatak is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies where her engagement has primarily been with gender studies and the education sector. She has worked on several projects related to women’s empowerment, agency and related issues.
Niveditha Menon is a feminist sociologist by training. She is a Senior Research Advisor at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. Her primary focus has been in the domain of gender, more specifically, in the areas of domestic and sexual violence, sexuality, and women’s empowerment.
Priyanka Dutta is a qualitative sociologist by training, Priyanka has worked at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS) Bangalore from September 2016 to February 2018 primarily on gender-related issues.
Shreekanth Mahendiran is a Research Advisor at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, Bangalore, India. His research primarily focuses on the applied microeconomics and development economics to examine the questions on access, welfare, and impact assessment. He focuses primarily on the areas related to education, gender, empowerment, and health in the context of the developing world.
