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Despite the high percentage of female farmers involved in Indian agriculture, the extension system has traditionally overlooked their specific farming needs. In India, the transformation of agricultural extension has been strongly influenced by the changing international and national economic, political and social climates. The Indian government has initiated moves toward mainstreaming gender concerns into agricultural extension delivery, but this will be hard to achieve unless there is an improved understanding of how gender issues can be identified and effectively incorporated into agricultural extension programmes and projects. This study draws on data from a range of public, private and non-government organisations; this includes such organisations as government departments and rural development agencies involved in extension delivery as well as private sector companies and the NGO sector. It examines the perceptions of terms such as gender within the institutional framework surrounding agricultural extension delivery and also seeks to identify factors which contribute to barriers which constrain the implementation of gender equitable extension. In so doing it aims to make recommendations on how these barriers can be overcome through an analysis of both existing literature and a synthesis of original research findings. The analysis is based on two distinct phases of fieldwork. The first phase of research comprised of a small preliminary study which was carried out in Pudukkottai district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The first phase of fieldwork was based on 18 qualitative Semi Structured Interviews carried out with various stakeholders from within the organisations which make up the institutional framework which surrounds women fanners. This study investigated how the terms gender and gender sensitive were understood by stakeholders from within these organisations, and also examined how these organisations functioned internally as well as in partnerships with other organisations. This preliminary study found that there was little consistent understanding of the meaning of terms such as gender, scant evidence of collaborative working and little flexibility in project implementation. The second phase of research was carried out in Medak district in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The second phase of fieldwork was based on 76 qualitative interviews carried out with stakeholders from four different levels within the organisations which make up the institutional framework, namely state level, district level, community level and the community level project beneficiaries. This phase of research was a unique cross-sector examination of the factors which make up barriers to effective implementation of gender-sensitive projects and programmes. A number of barriers were identified, namely a lack of institutional convergence, a lack of accountability structures, a lack of a formal approach to knowledge management and a lack of a shared understanding of either the problem or the possible solutions. The identification of these barriers helps to set the scene for change through the formulation of recommendations of how to move forwards in overcoming the factors which prevent effective implementation. This process highlighted how the lack of a holistic approach, such as coordinated implementation management, greatly affects the ability of the organisations which make up the institutional framework to tackle implementation barriers and move toward a position of institutional convergence.

The three mains concepts in this research were participation, gender relations and governance, producing the main research question: how was PPP initiatives achieving the objectives of women's partcipation and changing the lives of women? Government of India's neo-liberal strategies included implementation of developmental policies in collaboration with the private sector and/or non-state actors. These institutional linkages, known as Public Private Partnerships (PPP), established collaborative roles and responsibilities for policy initiatives. Originally engaged in policies pertaining to the infrastructure and healthcare sectors, recent PPP initiatives were increasingly utilised for developmental policies in the social sector. Another neo-liberal strategy has been engaging in policy implementation through a gender mainstreaming approach. This approach recognises the differential impact policy implementation has on men and women within the community. Using a case study approach, two PPP initiatives were explored, in Bhilwara District of Rajasthan (North-Western State of India) and Puri District of Orissa (coastal Eastern State). The conceptual framework established a scalar dimension for understanding (1) the interaction between policy implementation and contextual institutions effecting women's participation; (2) the combination of PPP structures with intra-household dynamics was creating opportunities for women; and (3) role of everyday state implementing PPP impacting changes in women's lives. A multi-disciplinary methodological approach applied both quantitative and qualitative participatory data collection tools including Focus Group Discussions and Semi-structured Interviews. Data was collected from men and women participants and non-participants in the activities of the PPP initiatives, and from key actors in the public and private institutions. The study established that women's participation was influenced by formal and informal governance structures determining entitlement to resources, and the relative adaptability of men and women to change. Secondly, there was a gap between policy intentions or rhetoric, and policy implementation in tenns of changes in intra-household gender relations. Thirdly, for PPP initiatives within rural India's traditional patriarchal contexts, policy implementation initiatives must construe contextual detenninants, seeking to effectively combine both women-only and gendered approaches. This would make women active participants in certain activities giving them the confidence to transform their traditional subservient roles as passive participants and become active participants within the patriarchal domain. In conclusion, the patriarchal context required gender main streaming approaches conjoining gender neutral activities with women only initiatives to encourage women to engage in activities related to policy implementation. PPP initiatives as vehicles of policy implementation require being redefined as not merely 'partnerships' between the 'public' and 'private', but as 'partnerships' between 'public'; 'private' and the 'people'. The inclusion of this fourth 'P' would determine the effectiveness of PPPs by engaging both men and women, thereby recognising gender dynamics (interaction and inter-relations) improving women's access and participation in policy initiatives.

The present social, political, legal and economic status of women in India has been the result of many kaleidoscopic changes during the last 150 years. As the pace of enlightenment and progress has been quicker and marked during the present century a more detailed study is made of this period. An attempt is made in this work to trace the various trends, activities, factors, efforts and forces which contributed to the general amelioration in the position of women as individuals, as integral constituents of the family and as members of society. The subject is treated historically in the first three chapters in order to facilitate a clearer perspective for the understanding and evaluation of the progress made. Chapter I deals briefly with the status of women during Vedic times (before 2500 B.C.) when the women enjoyed almost equal status with men in order to show that enlightened attitude was not foreign to Indian society and culture. The second chapter gives briefly the gradual deterioration from the Smriti period (500 B.C. to 500 A.D. ) to the end of the nineteenth century which marked the beginning of an enlightened attitude. Chapter III traces mainly the contribution of social reformers, the growth of women's institution and the immense awakening as a consequence of political struggle during the present century. The next seven chapters deal topically with the relation of women to marriage and family life, the customs of child marriage and enforced widowhood, social evils like purdah (veil) and prostitution, education of women and their legal, political and economic status during the last fifty years. In the last chapter an effort is made to collect the threads and give an overall picture of the status of women with a few suggestions for further progress.

In India, the 1992 Reservation Law and the 2006 Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have formalised women as legitimate actors in rural development. These gender-inclusive policies do not necessarily conform to the traditional domestic role of women, which often precludes them from formally engaging in political processes and labour outside the home. In Northern India, these major policy shifts are illustrated in ancient irrigation management systems. With growing rural outmigration and climatic variability aggravating water resources and food security issues, irrigation management is increasingly dependent on the active participation of women. Yet irrigation management is still widely perceived as a male responsibility. This thesis investigates how women adapt and respond to new institutionally mandated responsibilities and expectations as female leaders and as water users. The research is presented in four complementary papers based on quantitative and qualitative data collected during fieldwork in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh. Three major findings emerged to contribute to theories and evidence of the role of public policies in shaping gendered outcomes for common pool resource management in irrigation system in India. First, gender norms affect women differently depending on their public role in the community. Unlike non-political women, female leaders, as public figures, must secure communal approbation to gain power, credibility, and socio-economic networks. As a result, female leaders shape their political behaviour and policy preferences around local notions of femininity, female morality, and labour-based ideas of expertise. Second, for female water users, gender inclusive policies that legitimise their role as participants in formal political processes and the labour force for irrigation management increase their likelihood to defy gender-based restrictions and engage in formal political processes around irrigation management. Third, providing that formal/legal structures legitimize their actions, women will readily breach gender norms if they are to economically benefit from it. The implication of this research are that policies aimed at providing legal support for women to engage in formal rural development, combined with formalised economic opportunities for women are effective eroding agents of gendered institutions and are catalysts in facilitating the engagement of women in all areas of rural development. Given worldwide concerns over rural development, this study encourages such governmental actions to enable the effective and full engagement of future generations of women in the formal management of common pool resources.

Current debates in the anthropology of the Indian middle classes suggest a preponderant theme of balance - between 'Indian' and 'Western'; 'traditional' and 'modern'; 'global' and 'local'. Scholars like Säävälä (2010) Nisbett (2007, 2009), and Donner (2011) demonstrate a range of practices through which the ideal of middle class life is positioned in a precarious median between the imagined decadence of the upper classes and the perceived immorality and lack of responsibility of the working classes. Sexuality and intimacy, it has been observed, are important sites, where this balancing act is played out and risks to its stability are disciplined. Young women have particularly come under a great deal of pressure to position themselves dually as modern representatives of a global nation, who are, at the same time, epitomes of a nationalised narrative of tradition. In this thesis I examine, through an ethnographic study, the ways in which young women's bodies are implicated in the normative reproduction of everyday middle class life, as well as unpacking the social meanings of youth and adulthood for women in this context. Further, locating my study in the context of women's colleges in Chennai, this thesis comments on the significance of educational spaces as sites where normative ideals of middle class life and femininity are both produced and contested. The chief arguments in this thesis are organised into five chapters that draw primarily on ethnographic material to examine categories of risk, danger and pleasure as mutually constituted in young women's lives through everyday practice, as well as the making of the everyday as a precarious and compositional event.