Women's Livelihood Rights: Recasting Citizenship For Development

This interdisciplinary book brings together different dimensions of women's livelihood, citizenship, and development. It unravels the patriarchal structure of natural resource policy in India and argues that the context of citizenship needs to be extended to include the right to recognition of ways of life and livelihood, so that women take their legitimate space as productive human beings, entitled to dignity as a political right, and not merely to protection and welfare. The chapters in the book reflect the interrelatedness of several complex themes: the need to recognize resource rights together with livelihood strategies; the challenges of democratic governance and of restructuring institutional systems; the role of women's collective agency in development and the lessons that emerge from women's struggle for dignity and livelihood.