1. THE POLITICIZED INDIAN WOMAN:
INDIA’S AGENDAS ON WOMEN’S
EDUCATION
Candidate: Sabeena Mathayas
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Kathleen M. Boyle Ph.D
University of St.Thomas | Department of Leadership, Policy and Administration
Minneapolis, Minnesota
August 2016

2. • Research Questions
• Theoretical Framework
• Methodology
• Narrative Overview
• Weaving Destinies:Women’s Education Pre-Independence
• Trysts with Destiny:The Nehru Administration (1947 – 1964)
• Indira Gandhi and the Indian National Congress (1966 – 1984)
• The National Policy on Education (1984 – 2000)
• Right to Education (2000 – 2010)
• Discussion
• Gender as Context
• Gender as Identity
• Gender as Agency
• Scope for Further Research

3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• How has India’s National Policy(ies) on Education articulated and defined women’s educational
opportunities in post Independent India (post -1947)?
• Through what means are “foundational” notions of the female subject of history, a female claimant
before the law, and a female citizen, qualified in educational policies?
• How is the Category of “Woman” foreclosed in the ontological politics of articulation and agency?
• What are the political operations that constrain and constitute the FIELD (in this case, the political field
would be educational policies and ideologies) within which women’s positions emerge?
• What EXCLUSIONS effectively constitute and naturalize that FIELD?
• How is the female experience in education constructed, valued/normalized, and described? What
have been the instances of deconstruction and re-description?

4. RESEARCH PARADIGMS
FeministTheory
Gendered Feminism and Intersectionality
Gender as an ordering system that
 valorizes or privileges what is deemed masculine
and
 devalorizes or subordinates what is deemed
feminine
 to naturalize inequalities and power relations not
only between men and women, but also between
and among states, cultures, institutions,
organizations, policies, practices, and even ideas and
perspectives.
Public Policy
Democratic Policy Design: Social Construction of
Target Populations
Problem structuring that
 reflects the institutional hegemony’s superstructure,
 where assumptions, stereotypes, and powerful
signifiers for target groups influence benefits and
burdens in policy agendas
 Spectrum of emotional, value-laden attributes used
in political rhetoric

5. METHODOLOGY
Historical Method and Document Analysis
Dimensions Variables Themes
Linguistic / Semantic
• Phraseology, Information
levels, Meaning formation
• Primary Sources
A theme will be identified based on
the analysis of the variables in the
process of discourse articulation.
Themes will be explored interactively
to analyze how actors and
organizations employ these variables
to construct discourse (in this case,
policy)
Social / Interactive
• Structures, Organizations,
Stakeholders, and
Dispersion of Information
• Secondary Sources
Cognitive / Narrative
• Knowledge Categories,
Ideologies, Mythologies
and Rituals
• Popular and Media
Sources

6. METHODOLOGY
Purposeful Sampling Strategy
Fulfilled the following conditions:
 Public documents
 Articulated by policy actors in central leadership
positions,
 Which have materially contributed to India’s
education policy.
 All policy documents were freely accessible and
available in the public domain.
Verification
Internal validity:Through other scholars and
informal reviewers
ExternalValidity: Rich narration avoiding
anachronism
Design Pitfalls
No primary data collected
No quantitative or mixed method analysis
Only Central leadership and narratives
considered. State initiatives were not analyzed.

7. NARRATIVE OVERVIEW

8. CHOLI KE PICHHE
BEHIND THE BODICE
Chapter 1 – The British Raj and the Indian
Independence Movement.
Nationalism and fundamentalisms
Chapter 2 – The administration of
Jawaharlal Nehru.
Partition, Post Colonialism, Institution Building,
and Socialism
Chapter 3 – Indira Gandhi
Patrimonialism, Bureaucratization, and the
Formation of an Indian Political Logic
Chapter 4 – Coalitions
Central Instability, Communalism, and Populist
Politics
Chapter 5 – A Global India
Globalization, Capitalism, Development, and
Socio-Economic Inequalities

9. DISCUSSION

10. INDIA’S SHADOW
POPULATIONS
Gender as Context
Legacy, Authority, and a Cavalier Historicism
Gender as Identity
Essentialisms, Mother and Non-Mother, and a
Structured Subjectivity
Gender as Agency
Central Agency and Peripheral Agency

11. SCOPE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

12. GENDER AS PROCESS
Our vocabulary restricts our thought which
restricts our dialogue, which restricts our
vocabulary – and so goes the vicious circle.
The test of legitimacy for any given practice should
be embedded in the capacity to respond to the
needs for whom the practice exists.
Unless policy design mimics the diversity within its
target populations and is punctured by the inclusion
of more data points – narratives, oral histories,
interviews, surveys, case studies, cross-cultural and
action research and various mixed methodology
designs that are inclusive of women’s productive
activity – policy making for education will remain an
exercise in abstraction, a solipsism bound by socio-
political singularities.

13. THANK YOU