Tracking gender equity under economic reforms: Continuity and change in south Asia

Gender continues to be a basic criterion that structures most societies around the globe. In South Asia, the region which provides the main context of the research presented in this book, caste divisions combine with class and gender to generate what must be among the most complex and highly structured, and among the most hierarchical of societies in the world today, patriarchy being only one of the major principles of social stratification in them. Yet these are far from being stagnant societies or polities, sheltered and secluded as it were, from economic and political influences from the..