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Segregation as Efficiency? Group-Specific Institutions in North India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2021

Nirvikar Jassal Open the ORCID record for Nirvikar Jassal [Opens in a new window]
Nirvikar Jassal*
Affiliation:
Nirvikar Jassal (njassal@stanford.edu) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the King Center on Global Development at Stanford University.
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Abstract

A number of nations have instituted group-specific institutions or “enclaves” for women. The assumption underpinning such bodies—physically distinct, autonomous units in which constituent members belong entirely to a particular group—is that the segregation of female administrators will better serve the interests of women by isolating them from patriarchal norms and practices. I scrutinize this assumption by examining India's experience with all-women police stations, and carry out eight months of ethnographic research in and around police stations across the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. I find that while all-women police stations allow complainants to speak freely, they may also diminish capacity for female administrators working in law enforcement, create hurdles for victims of violence, and, in some ways, marginalize gender issues from the mainstream.

Keywords

bureaucracygenderpolicerepresentationsexual violenceSouth Asia
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 631 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2021

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