Performing Representation: Gender, Power, and Parliamentary Practice in India by Shirin M. Rai and Carole Spary (Hardcover)

Description

Seven decades after India’s independence women members occupy 1 in 10 seats in the LoC Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. In analysing women’s limited presence in the Indian Parliament, performing representation breaks new ground in scholarship on gender and politics. It explores the possibilities and limits of parliamentary democracy and the participation of women in its institutional performances. This book offers new insights into the gendered nature of the performance, aesthetics and norms of parliamentary life through an examination of electoral data, legislative debates and life stories of women MPs. The authors avoid both the framing of women MPs either simply as challengers of masculinized institutional politics or only as docile actors in a gendered institution. Making a strong case for taking parliamentary politics seriously in these times of populism, the book raises critical questions about the politics of difference, claim-making, representation and intersectionality and addresses these as part of global feminist debates on the importance of the women’s representation in political institutions.

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