Suchergebnisse

This paper assesses feminist constitutional activism in India, i.e. feminist engagements with the Constitution with the aim of broadening women's rights. To this end, the paper looks at several generations of feminist activists. It shows how feminists impacted the process of constitution-making and how they realised women's constitutional rights by holding the legislature accountable to the Constitution and demanding that the judiciary declare laws unconstitutional if they violated women's fundamental rights. The paper places a particular focus on the constitutionally enshrined conflict between religious freedom and women's rights—a conflict that plays out in a specific way in many countries of the Global South and that confronts feminist activists with challenges that their counterparts in the Global North might not face in the same way.

Mutinies for Equality studies recent transformations in the area of law and gender in modern India. It tackles legal and social developments with regard to family life, sexuality, motherhood, surrogacy, erotic labour, sexual harassment in the workplace and violence against women, among others. It analyses reform efforts towards women's rights and LGBTIQ rights and attempts to situate where a reform has taken place, by whom it was brought about, and what impact it has had on society. It engages with protagonists who shape the debate around law and gender and locates their efforts into a socio-political context, thereby showing that the discourses around law and gender are closely connected to broader debates around legal pluralism, secularism and religion, identity, culture, nationalism, and family. The book offers compelling evidence that the drivers of change are emerging from beyond the traditional institutions of courts and parliament, and that to understand the everyday implications of legal reforms, it is important to look beyond these institutional sources