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Based on a study of five women's studies degree programmes, this article attempts to discuss pedagogical issues that are surfacing in higher education on account of the changing social composition of students since the implementation of reservations for Other Backward Classes in higher education. Critical pedagogy has not found much space in discussions on higher education in the Indian context. The exception has been reflections on feminist pedagogy that primarily draw on Freirian thought and the scholarship of bell hooks. Against this background, the article brings out how the epistemic principles of critical disciplines like women's studies generate ethical expectations of the feminist teacher, particularly in relation to caste in this case. It goes on to discuss the limits imposed on these ideas of feminist pedagogy by the institutional and structural inequalities in higher education and how the dominant social composition of teachers necessarily limits possibilities of feminist pedagogy.

Women missionaries who came to India with a superior Protestant religious imaginary were keen on critiquing Hindu cultural practices that created divergences and transfigurations. They blatantly proclaimed that the deep-rooted custom of women's "seclusion" was a stumbling block to education, evangelisation and modernisation. This study demonstrates how missionary construction of "secluded" women's femininity through civilisational, religious and pedagogical pretentions created conflicting emotions among a section of the orthodox Hindu and converted Christian women who defied the controversial missionary narratives that depicted women's seclusion in a rather poor light. Nonetheless, the continued missionary encounters through education impelled a section of the secluded Hindu women to be critical of what is conveniently referred to by missionaries as orthodox femininity. This article takes a close look at and critiques how missionaries negotiated with both the conflicting emotions and orthodox femininity by constructing an alternative narrative -- Christian femininity that sought to confront gender stereotypes in a more nuanced manner. It argues that the changing femininity in colonial India needs to be understood largely through missionary education, character-building zenana pedagogy and normative construction of femininity.

The past few decades have been marked by growing awareness about the need to move beyond Anglocentric/Eurocentric epistemes, to instead engage in intellectual projects that effectively (re)present the voices and consciousness of marginalized populations (Manion & Shah, 2019). The term decolonizing research methodologies has thus come to acquire a central place within feminist research in the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE), with rallying calls to foreground the complexities and uniqueness of the lived realities of women through non-hierarchical and non-dichotomous modes of meaning-making (Lugones, 2010). However, methodological literature on decolonizing feminist research is largely linked to the data collection phase, with limited engagement with how to effectively analyze data once it is collected. This study demonstrates the use of positioning theory, a form of discourse analysis, as a decolonial analytical framework to investigate the micro details of a female school teacher's experiences with care work during COVID-19 in India. The analysis revealed the shifting, often contextual nature of the identities that the participant claimed for herself throughout the narrative, such as a pampered daughter, critical observer, adjusting daughter-in-law, guilty mother, and strategic choice maker. The study ends by making a case for the potential use of positioning theory towards decolonizing feminist research because of its ability to draw attention to the multiple and/or contradictory identities that participants claim for themselves throughout the discursive interaction.

This article explores contestations around ideas of India, citizenship, and nation from the perspective of Indian Muslim female university students in Delhi. In December 2019, the Hindu majoritarian government introduced new citizenship legislation. It caused widespread distress over its adverse implications for Muslims and a large section of socio-economically deprived populations. In response, millions of people, mainly from Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan backgrounds, took to the streets to protest. Unprecedentedly, young Muslim female students and women emerged at the forefront of the significant public debate. This situation disrupted the mainstream perception of oppressed Muslim women lacking public voice and agency. Drawing on the narratives of the Indian Muslim female students who participated in these protests, this article highlights their conceptions of, and negotiations with, the idea of India. In doing so, this article reflects on the significance of critical feminist protest as a form of "public pedagogy" for citizenship education as a powerful antidote to a supremacist, hypermasculine, and vigilante idea of India.

Women make significant decisions during desperate situations and even choose to do odd jobs to care for their families. Particularly Indian women put an end to their true identity to care for their children. India is known for its varied language and cultural practices. Different languages are spoken across the country, their culture differs from state to state, and their customs play a vital role with regard to religion. They worship different Gods, yet they remain united which is why it is called the country of 'Unity in Diversity. Despite the differences, all Indian women have certain common featured in them. Chastity is blended in the blood of every Indian woman. They tend to protect it throughout their lifetime. But unfortunately, some women are pushed to the position where they have to sell their chastity to provide for the family's sake. Even though the husband or the father is regarded as the primary breadwinner, today in so many Indian families women take up the family responsibility. They even choose to take up odd jobs such as surrogates and sex workers. This paper deals with the bottled-up emotions of one such woman and the consequences of the choice she made to take care of her family. The paper also argues the interconnection between the feminist concepts that are taken up for analysis.

India presents a heterogeneous socio-economic ethos, rooted within structures of patriarchy and caste, rendering any transformation of traditional gender roles, increasingly challenging. Gender socialisation begins in childhood and is assimilated through schools. Students imbibe gender concepts through textbooks and classroom experiences, which either reinforce their social perceptions or influence them to critique inequalities and bias. Adopting a multi-pronged approach through feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) and content analysis, this research evaluates the images used in Indian school social science textbooks, for constructs of gender representation, structures, and stereotyping. The research reveals that gender structures depicted in textbooks foster patriarchy and gender bias. There is minimal effort to depict feminist activism and little scope to foster gender reflexivity and social debate, which only sustains stereotypical perceptions of gender roles within Indian society.

Indian students in Britain before the Second World War were a sizeable social group who exerted noticeable influence on Indian nationalism and on British institutions and society. The politics of race and empire were mediated through British schools and universities in this period with consequences for Indian students, and their peers. This article discusses the ways in which Indian students were socially segregated in Britain, including facing a colour ban in some parts of the country, and the consequences of this racial prejudice. It argues that the mobility of colonial students during the time of empire not only had a personal effect on their lives, but encouraged them to become politically engaged in the politics of metropole and empire, engaging in nationalism, socialism and the female suffrage movement in both Britain and India.

In this article, I examine the lived experiences of two young women from urban slums in India who participated in an after-school program focusing on issues of gender inequality within their homes, communities, and schools. Through unstructured and semi-structured interviews and observations, this paper argues that young women from marginalized spaces resist patriarchal structures of society through everyday acts of resistance. Using narrative inquiry, the data reveal that young women use different yet interconnected means to resist oppression in their daily lives. The article makes a case for expanding feminist resistance scholarship to be inclusive of young women at the periphery and their everyday resistance for finding a voice.

The Fourth Conference on Women at Beijing (1995) underlined the importance of gender mainstreaming; spurring India to provide for separate Gender Budgeting in 2005-06. The Constitution tries to make fine balance between right to equality and positive discrimination for promoting gender justice in India. Yet high levels of Gender Inequality Index (GII), coexist with high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, after India opted for economic liberalization in the 1990s. This paper brings out these trends and how the Supreme Court, as the watchdog of fundamental rights, has played a stellar role in ensuring gender justice. The paper does a trend analysis of gender budgeting and the inept implementation of flagship programmes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Nirbhaya, due to the lack of coordinated approach. Making comparison with developed and Emerging Market Economies (EME), the paper underscores the importance of earmarking handsome allocation to education and health care. The issue of gender justice is not merely an issue of adequate allocation or effective judicial redressal, but embraces a larger concern viz. the "culture of silence" that pervades our patriarchal society. The Oslo summit underscored the importance of value based education to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The articles in this themed issue explore global educational experiences that embrace various cultures, traditions, religions and identities. Collectively this work offers valuable insights into unexplored areas of research, illuminating issues that intersect across race, ethnicity and gender. The significance of these studies lies in the solutions, centred on social justice, that reflect resistance, activism and innovation harnessed in response to the problems discussed. This collection helps to bridge the divide between north and south in the academic world, demonstrating that answers to educational inequalities can be found in models for transformation both within and beyond the western hemisphere.

In India, sexual violence today is a routine form of violence directed against Dalit women--those from the most subordinated castes of India. Dalit is a socio-political identity affirmed by India's ex-untouchable communities, historically considered "service castes" and exploited based on their birth. While all Dalits are exploited for their physical labor and given brutal punishments for challenging or not abiding by the caste hierarchy, Dalit women particularly face gendered violence like sexual violence by upper-caste men. The author emphasizes that researching the phenomenon of caste-based sexual violence becomes essential. In this paper, the author argues that along with researching, even discussing and teaching about this violence through various social sciences like sociology, history, and women's studies becomes crucial. A teacher can transform the classroom as a space to discuss this violence, acknowledge this violence, and even initiate some healing.

Drawing on data from an ethnography of the school-based Student Police Cadet (SPC) program in Kerala, India, this paper examines the ways in which female high school student-cadets mobilized SPC's uniform in their performance of citizenship education. Unlike their gendered school uniforms, SPC's gender-neutral 'khaki' uniform signified a program that treats girls and boys 'equally.' Further, SPC uniform's resemblance to the Kerala police uniform enabled female cadets to momentarily disrupt gender regimes and lay claim to specific forms of aspirational, spatial, and sartorial freedoms. These freedoms, however, are premised on the masculine authority of the police uniform and its associated protections. Thus, while the promise of female empowerment is pivotal to SPC curriculum, the conditional nature of freedom in khaki underscores the ambivalent nature of those curricular promises. The paper concludes by examining the implications of freedom bequeathed through masculine forms of protection for girls' participation in society.

This paper is going to argue that the selected poems of renowned Indian poet Kamala Das are inclined to relocate both feminine and masculine identity through the politicized representation of body. Kamala Das' representation of body in her poems has always been viewed as a medium of re-historicizing the pain, sufferings, and psychological trauma that a woman goes through in a patriarchal society. Though apparently female body seems to be submissive under patriarchal dominance but this paper reveals how female body in Das' poems acts as a powerful agent over the male body. The objective of this paper is to analyze and evaluate Kamala Das' representation of body to understand the gender reality in a patriarchal society, to question the existing discourse of sexed/gendered identity, to find a new way of viewing to both female and male body. Echoing Beauvoir, Judith Butler and Hall, this paper is going to analyze how Kamala Das represents body as an important factor in her poems to fight back the normative concept of identity based on patriarchal sex and/or gender stereotypes.

This paper employs an autobiographical approach to reflect on some limitations of conventional academic conferences in creating community and supporting deep learning. By and large conventional large conferences tend to be premised on what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire calls the banking model of education and therefore frequently reproduce prevalent academic hierarchies. Examining some feminist ways of conferencing, I argue that while they offer valuable opportunities for dialogue and reflection, they do not radically alter the canonised conferencing model of keynotes, plenaries and parallel presentations. I then reflect on my experience of attending a national conference of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioners in Bangalore, India, in 2014, framing it through the lens of feminist and critical pedagogy. I conclude that TO with its commitment to equity offers inspiration for re-imagining academic conferences to make them more inclusive of marginalised groups and to support professional and personal growth.

Life skills have become the foci of many girls' education initiatives because they are assumed to empower girls to negotiate oppressive gender norms constraining their lives. Often these programmes give a singular attention to gender norms, despite other interlocking oppressive structures and norms. Although postcolonial feminist perspectives in education have often stressed on intersectional analyses, little attention has been given to caste in such scholarship in India. In this paper, we draw on data from a three-year qualitative study of a girls' life skills programme in Rajasthan, India, employing a postcolonial feminist framework. We engage with Dalitbahujan feminist perspectives in education (Paik, S. 2014. "Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination." London: Routledge.) to decolonize our frameworks and illustrate how the life skills programme produced contradictory outcomes to address gender oppression, such as ensuring girls' bodily integrity, while re-inscribing caste norms. This intersectional analysis of caste, gender, and modernity expands on a postcolonial feminist critique of life skills.

Gallagher and Sahni elaborate on their decade-long collaboration, focussing here on their latest multi-sited ethnographic study, Youth, Theatre, Radical Hope and the Ethical Imaginary: an intercultural investigation of drama pedagogy, performance and civic engagement (2014-2019) and the pedagogy and theatre work carried out at Prerna School for girls in Lucknow, India. In particular, they elaborate on Prerna's feminist and performance pedagogy and the central role of care both in the classroom and embedded within the larger organizational framework and culture of the school. Using two illustrations of performance pedagogy, the authors detail how the young women are rehearsing a form of 'misfit citizenship', resisting gender oppression and using collective theatre-making to transform the culture-as-given.

Though many teachers have adopted collaborative models for teaching writing and literature, much of classroom discussion, in small or large groups, is driven by the assumption that arguing ideas is a competitive exercise. Generally, essays written in this context are "counter-positional" and "agonistic," supporting points by eliminating/discrediting others and shaped by either/or extremes. Such extreme views create false dichotomies rather than thought-out perspectives, a reflection of the often counter-productive argument students see most in the media. Such argumentation actually polarizes people and shuts down dialogue. To adopt other models, it is important to look across the borders of argumentative discussion. This essay offers two alternative models of collaboration and essay construction, one from India, based in an approach to argument known as "Nyaya," the other based on feminist perspectives based in the ideas of Sonja Foss and Cynthia Griffin.

The 'liberal' feminist perspective on science problematises the presence of fewer women than men in science and believes that increasing their number would qualify as social change. On the other hand, 'radical' critics of modern science argue that science has been deeply involved in the creation, strengthening and subversion of gender inequalities. The liberal strand is much more amenable to direct interventions and aligns well with current educational reforms. But the fundamental questions about science and science education that are raised by the radical strand not just evade agreement, but they also do not lead easily to direct educational implications. In this article, I show that an engagement with these perspectives offers us a chance to reflect on our society, on the place of science in it, and on the role of science education in mediating between science and society. This reflection further encourages us to rethink and reorganise science and science education so that they are more mindful of the gender and other kinds of power dynamics in our society.

Existing scholarship on knowledge mobilities tends to focus on the largest metropolitan centres as loci of education and employment and as desirable destinations for knowledge migrants. This paper draws attention to the ways in which the spaces of learning in non-metropolitan locations intersect with circulations of disciplinary knowledge and aspiration to generate opportunities for social and spatial mobility. It is premised on the idea that the experiences and situated knowledge of those engaged in women's studies in Tier II cities are apposite starting points for a critical reflection on non-metropolitan locations as brokers of student mobilities. Focusing on two government-funded Women's Studies Centres in universities in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, I explore the transformations catalysed by these mobilities and discuss the politics of the personal -- by rethinking the notions of home and alienation, and reflecting on the re-imagination of futures that Women's Studies (WS) has permitted.

The ecofeminist perspective of the matrilineal society of Meghalaya, India, is intriguing in that it has descent through mother, is matrilocal and daughters inherit parental property, but the different genders possibly do not agree about the relationship between women and nature. Ecofeminism has not yet been studied in a matrilineal society. The purpose of the study was to investigate qualitatively the students' ecofeminist perspectives among the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo tribes of Meghalaya, through students who were studying in North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. The sample consisted of 33 students purposefully selected to complete an open questionnaire and unstructured interviews. The responses showed that the women of this matrilineal society seem to be more ecofeminist compared with the men. However only a minority of both male and female expressed an ecofeminist worldview with respect to nature and development indicating that this concept is at early stage of development.

In this article, we analyze our experiences engaging in a collaborative ethnographic project. This project brings together two ethnographic studies undertaken independently from the other in Gujarat, India and Punjab, Pakistan. We integrate the narratives of young, rural Hindu women in India with those of young, rural Muslim women in Pakistan to depict globalization as a simultaneously interconnected and disjointed project. Our effort is to disrupt the linear telling of the production of global and universal modernity through education, which is often seen through rejecting local culture. We take a critical, feminist, postcolonial approach to challenge traditional hierarchies of knowledge and incorporate the scholarship and perspectives of non-Western scholars, problematizing the traditional self-other distinction. This article outlines the methodological process and journey that we undertook to create a dialog between our independent ethnographic work focusing on India and Pakistan.

Based on a qualitative, comparative, multiple case study of the contributions and status of 21st century women's colleges and universities, this article analyzes the topic of women's access to postsecondary education in ten nations. Despite decreasing numbers of women-only institutions in some regions (e.g., North America), the sector is growing in others (e.g., South Asia). In all regions, they provide access for women who would not be able to attend postsecondary education, a phenomenon mediated by cultural, religious, and economic factors. I describe three main mechanisms through which women's institutions provide access: legal, practical (financial and academic), and cultural.

In this article, the author examines how a pedagogical and creative practice in one school for lowest-caste girls in Lucknow, India, is harnessing the imaginative affordances of theater--in particular, its ensemble-building and its capacity to hold the present open for investigation--to leverage these practices for understanding the political economy and deconstructing the structural forces of gender oppression in times of growing social and economic inequality. The concept of social innovation has, over recent years, provoked much academic and policy debate across a range of disciplines, yet it has been relatively under-studied in the field of education. This article makes a case for theater specifically, and education more broadly, as a critical driver of social innovation and change, and uses an empirical example from ethnographic research in Lucknow, India where the ongoing gendered oppression of young women urgently calls for radical societal reform.

Distance education's mandate to expand outreach to those with limited access to higher education makes it a particularly welcome mode for non-traditional women learners. Feminist pedagogy, which has tended to privilege the classroom space in the learning experience, has stopped short of a wholehearted acceptance of distance education which relies heavily on self-study and has become increasingly defined by technology aided learning in recent years. Despite this conflicted relationship, their shared democratising mandate and learner-centric approaches have made it possible to envision a rapprochement between the two. This has been aided by a revised understanding of "distance," a dislodging of real/virtual dichotomies and an exploration of "hybrid" spaces in the interest of feminist goals. After mapping these developments on an international canvas, I explore a similar reconciliation in the context of developing countries, specifically India. Here, I argue that despite the significance of democratisation, challenges posed by consumerist trends in mass-based open education call for suitable strategies, including a re-adaptation of the "hybrid." Using the example of a "blended approach" programme, I attempt to show how contextualised innovations may help to sustain the partnership between feminist pedagogy and Open & Distance Learning. It is hoped that such an illustration, despite its limitations and specificity, may provoke other experimentations in diverse socio-cultural contexts.

The Constitution of India ensures equal treatment to all its citizens without any discrimination. On the contrary, the patriarchal roots of the Indian society have subjected women to experience severe inequalities. This has resulted in a wide gender gap, which has been perceived to affect all the facets of a woman's life. The field of entrepreneurship is also witnessing an intensified gender gap due to the lack of adequate education/appropriate training among budding women entrepreneurs. To bring out more successful entrepreneurs, an empowering learning system is an indispensable need. Hence, the present experimental study aims to build and analyse the effectiveness of an innovative learning environment incorporating feminist pedagogy and the social web. Feminist pedagogy--a democratic system that facilitates active, collaborative and communal learning--was adopted for offering entrepreneurial training. For reaching the socially oppressed and geographically diverse Indian women, Facebook was used as a virtual learning system.

The article examines women's studies as a moment that mediates the conflict between the women's movement and the university on the question of knowledge and knowledge-production. The starting point is the assertion made by historical-materialist feminists that knowledge is produced in and through political struggle. The article argues that social movements, as much as the science practised in institutional settings, may be studied in terms of practices of knowledge-production. It is with the concept of "knowledge-practice" that the article traces the influence of social movements on the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre (KSP-WSC), University of Pune, Maharashtra. The article traces the links between such practices at the Centre and various social movements, so as to understand how the Centre negotiates with the university while also engaging with social movements and activism. This particular women's studies centre, the article shows, attempts to import the knowledge-practices of movements. This is most distinctively visible in the Centre's critical research methodologies and critical pedagogies derived from Phule-Ambedkarite-Feminist (PAF) perspectives.

This paper is based on the findings of a research study which traced 56 rural women learners 15 years after they had participated in an empowerment and education programme in North India. It attempts to understand, from the perspectives of women from marginalised communities, the ways in which participating in the programme had been empowering for them, or not. While most of the women were indeed able to transform several areas in their lives, this study illustrates that empowering outcomes cannot be assumed or articulated in categorical terms and that bringing about change requires the negotiation of power at various levels. The women's narratives stand in contrast to the prevalent discourses around women's literacy and empowerment, which highlight the importance of literacy only in terms of its positive impact on attaining development goals. Despite the vigorously discussed de-politicisation of the concept of empowerment, the authors show in this paper that empowerment, when informed by a critical feminist understanding, continues to provide a useful framework to analyse women's experiences related to education, as a process enabling women to understand and negotiate structures of power--which are neither static nor wholly dominating--and to find spaces to exercise agency. There are few longitudinal studies which trace the long-term impact of educational programmes on adult women, and most studies are in the nature of impact assessments of programmes. Through this paper the authors argue for the need to analyse the complexities around the relationship between women's education and empowerment.

Constructions of femininity and attendant notions of feminism are being produced in different ways in different places around the world. This is a complicated global process that cannot be reduced to analyses that take place in nation states. This paper seeks to respond to and enhance Angela McRobbie's compelling argument about understandings of contemporary girlhood, primarily in the UK context, by drawing into the fold Aihwa Ong's powerful thinking around theories of transnationality. Rather than repeating arguments about constructions of femininity that are invariably articulated within national confines, the discussion demonstrates the transnational nature of these subjective constructions by referring to recent ethnographic research undertaken in two elite schools in England and India, and focusing particularly on in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted with some of the young women who attend these schools.

Previous migration discourse views educational migration through narrowly defined push-pull forces, which ignores overseas graduate education as a path for maneuvering through restrictive gendered and cultural experiences. The purpose of this exploratory research is to expand migration research and view women's migration decisions as employing active, personal agency. The women's narratives express the underlying influences of family, class, and environment combined with a personal rejection of societal biases and discrimination (gender, age, and political) for a pursuit of freedom via higher education. Based on in-depth interviews and a feminist framework, this study presents and compares the migration influences for thirteen Chinese and Indian women. These women migrated to the United States for graduate education and later transitioned into faculty positions in science and engineering. This research has implications for expanding migration theory and scholarship.

In any sociocultural context, efforts to promote inclusive education may evoke trajectories of change that are as unpredictable as they are inexhaustible, stimulating the production of a range of disability subjectivities, performances, and constructions. This article unearths such local constructions by focusing on the experiences of nongovernmental organization educators and families of students with disabilities in Chennai, India, as they collectively engaged in inclusive education activity. Using the framework of "differential consciousness" (Sandoval, 2000) I explore the oppositional agency of participants in securing equitable opportunities for students with disabilities in mainstream settings. My aim in doing thus is to animate the links between local practices and global concepts of inclusive education. Even though the narratives of participants index "place" as the predominant signifier of inclusion, their decision making within hugely inaccessible contexts discloses their compulsory movement through multiple, sometimes contradictory, positions to achieve equitable schooling. I subsequently draw on these narratives and more broadly on U.S. third world feminist scholarship to suggest a few lines of inquiry that can serve a transnational theory of inclusive education. (Contains 5 notes.)

Our feminist cross-national comparative study explored the informal and nonformal education and learning of women politicians in Canada and India. Using individual interviews, focus groups, surveys and observations of training sessions we compared and contrasted socio-cultural contexts, challenges, education and learning philosophies, and diverse practices. The findings show that training programmes and the women themselves placed an emphasis on practical skill and knowledge, although this often did little to prevent tactical uses of power by men. In India, where literacy training is provided there exists a practical, tactical and emancipatory emphasis. In both countries, issues of identity as politicians are complex and hetero and other culturally normative practices pervade the educational process. Although the Indian educators apply a feminist lens, much of the training in Canada is non-gender-specific or tends towards "nonpartisanship", thereby de-politicising the process. Important differences also exist in terms of how the educational programmes understand and make the links between women politicians and the community.

This paper analyses the work of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), urban Bengali Muslim educator and writer, placing her in the wider context of women organising themselves in associations to create social change through education for women, in the province of undivided Bengal in colonial India, from "c." 1900 to "c." 1932. A subject of the British Indian Empire, Rokeya, and many of her colleagues, wrote back to the empire against both colonialism and patriarchy, and created innovative educational discourses and practices. The history of education is inscribed not merely in the formal school that Rokeya founded, but in her larger career as writer and builder of women's associations. An analysis of the enmeshing of women's writing and women's networks thus yields a creative, nuanced history of women's education. This paper also connects micro-histories and macro-histories of women's education, correlating macro-level data about Indian non-governmental agency in advancing female education with the work of individual figures such as Rokeya. The paper analyses Rokeya's novella "Padmarag" ("The Ruby"), showing that the integrated paradigm of women's educational and welfarist work found here has many similarities with the actual educational-welfares work done by women such as Rambo, Sara la Ray, or Ab ala Bose. Through her activities and writing, often made in alliance with other educating women such as Sara la, Rockey gave voice to ideologies and views widely at variance with conservative Indian nationalists and hegemonic British colonial officialdom. The paper also shows that women of different races and religions formed networks and alliances, in the transnational British Empire, to further women's emancipation and education, in bodies such as All India Women's Conference and Bengal Women's Education League. The paper recognizes how much women such as Rockey were able to actually be and actually do in achieving social change in education. (Contains 40 footnotes.)

This article presents two different ways of understanding silence, through a discussion of women's narratives of violence from Lahaul, India. Here I illustrate how feminist ethnography works its way into re-conceptualizing silence as a tool women use to resist existing patriarchal discourses of honor, tribe and nation. (Contains 1 note.)

In this article, I trace appropriations of the Bengali bandit Devi Chaudhurani as she is transfigured within the Indian nationalist novel "Devi Chaudhurani" and the contemporary feminist street play "Meye Dile Sajiye" or "Giving Away the Girl." These representations are characterized by an eclecticism and a hybridity that treat "the bandit" as a hermeneutical resource for rhetorical invention. Each representation draws its force from the tensions and incongruities it strategically manifests, playing with indigenous Indian and colonial notions of criminality in order to advance ideologically complex arguments about the social conditions for women and their roles in colonial and postcolonial society. (Contains 72 notes.)

Examines how the contemporary women's movement in India (1975-present) has addressed the issue of women's education. Highlights contributions of the 19th-century social-reformist movement and the nationalist movement. Details the role of the contemporary women's movement in redefining knowledge and the curriculum. Concludes with challenges facing the women's movement. Contains 39 references. (VWC)

Interest in women's issues in India has grown since 1975, when a report on the status of women raised concern about women's equality. Women's studies entered India's university curriculum only in 1986 but with little encouragement from the emerging women's movement. In India, women's studies looks to the West for research methods and ideas and is striving for intellectual identity. (MSE)

Discusses problems women academic scientists in India face because of gender. Women scientists are aware of how their position in the academy is different from that of men but have not made efforts to address their problems collectively. States that these women have a feminist perspective of a kind but have been disassociated from the women's movement in India. Contains 27 references. (Author/PVD)

Narayan, in his novels, has exhibited a preference for a stable social order both as a structural device and as a reverential representation of community life. The effect of this predilection on his portrayal of Indian women, who are beginning to enjoy greater autonomy and social mobility, is examined. (JL)