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Gender Studies & Women’s Empowerment

Gender Studies & Women’s Empowerment

THEME OVERVIEW

Gender operates through institutions — markets, cooperatives, safety systems, public health networks, governance structures, and community norms. This program examines empowerment not as a slogan, but as a structured interaction between agency and constraint.

Students analyze gender systems across rural livelihoods, cooperative economies, public health access, urban safety, and decentralized governance. Through feminist political economy, intersectionality frameworks, ethical interviewing training, participatory mapping, and policy labs, students produce grounded intervention proposals shaped by lived institutional realities.

Each itinerary integrates seminars, workshops, site visits, stakeholder dialogues, and synthesis studios — culminating in faculty-gradeable outputs and partner-ready documentation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will:

  • Apply intersectional gender analysis frameworks to institutions and markets.
  • Conduct ethical, safeguarding-informed interviews in gender-focused contexts.
  • Map empowerment ecosystems including mobility, safety, access to capital, health, and labor markets.
  • Analyze cooperative and institutional governance structures affecting women’s agency.
  • Integrate community-based learning principles into applied field engagement.
  • Produce an evidence-based gender intervention or policy proposal.
  • Connect field engagement to feminist theory and development frameworks through structured reflection.
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IDEAL DISCIPLINES

Gender Studies

Sociology

Development Studies

Public Policy

Public Health

Economics

Social Work

Anthropology

Political Science

Law

Human Rights

International Development

POTENTIAL LOCATIONS

INDIA

India Map
Delhi
Jaipur
Rural Rajasthan
Northeast India
Kochi
Munnar
Rural Kerala

NEPAL

Nepal Map
Kathmandu
Pokhara
Rural Nepal

SAMPLE ITINERARY

Gender, Policy & Rural Agency
Focus
Policy frameworks, women’s self-help groups, rural mobility, cooperative agency.
Core Inquiry
How do national gender policies intersect with rural women’s lived realities?
Delhi → Jaipur → Rural Rajasthan → Jaipur
  • Gender policy-to-practice systems map
  • Women’s livelihood ecosystem brief
  • SHG institutional analysis
  • Evidence-based intervention proposal
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Gender & Development in Northeast India
Focus
Gender, ethnicity, matrilineal systems, livelihood markets, and public services.
Core Inquiry
How do gender norms, ethnicity, and institutional systems intersect in Northeast India?
Guwahati → Rural Northeast Field Contexts

Output Possibilities:

  • Gendered service access audit
  • Market & mobility systems brief
  • Policy memo addressing structural barriers
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Gender, Health & Ecological Economies
Focus
Care economies, plantation labor, public health access, gendered environmental systems.
Core Inquiry
How do ecological economies and health systems shape gendered life outcomes?
Kochi → Munnar → Rural Kerala → Kochi

Output Possibilities:

  • Care economy mapping report
  • Inclusion audit brief
  • Gendered health access audit
  • Social protection intervention proposal
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Women’s Leadership, Cooperatives & Mountain Livelihoods
Focus
Cooperative leadership, decentralized governance, tourism economies, inclusion.
Core Inquiry
How do cooperative institutions and tourism-linked economies mediate women’s agency?
Kathmandu → Pokhara → Rural Cooperative Communities → Kathmandu

Output Possibilities:

  • Cooperative governance map
  • Market access systems brief
  • Empowerment pathway proposal
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