"Women's Autonomy, Agency and the Two Child Policy in India: Dilemma of Political Representation"

Workshop with Prof. Tulsi Patel, Professor of Sociology at the University of Delhi

5-8pm. Monday 14 December 2015.
CeMIS Board Room.

The workshop will deal with the grand effort to reserve for women 33% seats in local level governance and disqualify them if they have had more than two children. It explores, on the basis of law suits filed against them, the experiences of women representatives in trying to circumvent the limiting condition of eligibility and ethical problems in the state?s claim to empower women at the grass roots. Record keeping and evidence issues are brought forth in the process.

The workshop has been organized in cooperation with the Goettingen Centre for Gender Studies and the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine at Göttingen University.


Biography

Tulsi Patel is professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. A scholar in the field of family, kinship and marriage, she is also known for her research in the field of gender and anthropology of reproduction. Her books include an ethnographic account of a village from a life cycle perspective on gender relations and fertility, titled, Fertility Behaviour: Population and Society in a Rajasthan Village (1994 [2006]). She has edited The Family in India: Structure and Practice (2005) and Sex selective Abortion in India (2007). She also co-edited with B S Baviskar, Understanding Indian Society: Past and Present (2010). Her articles are published in edited books, national and international journals on indigenous fertility regulation, recent trends in marriage, women and children?s health, social networks and female feticide, reservation in education and jobs, and surrogacy and public health. She is presently working on cultures of childbirth and on the sociology of surrogacy.

Tulsi Patel has been the treasurer and recently the secretary of Indian Sociological Society and was rotating chair of India Studies at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2005-06. She has been a commonwealth fellow at London School of Economics, and had visiting assignments in various universities in UK, France, Germany, Canada and the US. Presently, with Prof Silke Schicktanz, she is doing the DAAD-UGC program and visiting the University of Gottingen in Germany.

Click here for the full programme