The ‘Kudumbashree Woman’ and the Kerala Model Woman: Women and Politics in Contemporary Kerala

This paper reflects on women’s presence in politics in Kerala where neoliberalised welfare now targets a very large number of women and inducts them into local governance. Offering a brief sketch of the shifts in the region in women’s roles and responsibilities from the pre-liberalisation period to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Indian journal of gender studies 2016-10, Vol.23 (3), p.393-414
Main Author: Devika, J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Female roles
Gender roles
Governance
Institutional change
Politics
Self help
Women
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Summary:This paper reflects on women’s presence in politics in Kerala where neoliberalised welfare now targets a very large number of women and inducts them into local governance. Offering a brief sketch of the shifts in the region in women’s roles and responsibilities from the pre-liberalisation period to the 1990s and after, the paper draws upon two spells of field- work to probe the unintended consequences that neoliberalised welfare has generated, the possibilities thrown up by institutional change in women’s self-help groups. This paper also attempts to view the commonalities and departures between the figure of the ‘Kerala Model Woman’, shaped in the laudatory literature on the ‘Kerala Model’ of development, and the emerging, apparently more troublesome, figure of the ‘Kudumbashree woman’.
ISSN:0971-5215
0973-0672
DOI:10.1177/0971521516656077