Engendering Local Governance in Progress: Panchayati Raj and Women's Political Participation in Kerala

In this paper the author attempts to clarify how far political and economic gender-mainstreaming has been achieved and what remain as problems after the inception of Kerala’s decentralization policy of 1996 along with reservation of 33.3% of elected seats for women. This argument is based on my field research concerning the elected women’s representatives of S Panchayat as well as the participants in the state gender-budgeting and income-generating projects, Kudumbashree. Their participation holds significance for the fulfillment of basic needs as well as the improvement of the wellbeing of the weaker section of society, but their triple burden of home, community and panchayat work, as well as patriarchal party structures obstruct their further commitment. In a preliminarily attempt to show the inter-state similarities and differences on this subject, the author delineates the Women’s Tribunal in Gujarat to indicate the possibilities as well as problems in women’s representatives’ political participation at gram panchayats. Finally the author suggests that the expected acceleration of housewives’ participation in local governance as well as in income-generating activities may lead to a reconstruction of the division between the public sphere and the intimate sphere, where gender division of labor is prescribed.