Gender and Public Sphere: Participation of Women Heads of Local Government As Decision-Makers in the Coal Districts of India

Historically, decision-making in Indian society was regulated by men till the 73rd Amendment Act of the Indian constitution was legislated. This Act reserves seats for women in the local governments. The past three decades have witnessed the impact of this constitutional provision varying widely across regions. In this research, we explored a few coal regions where the situation gets amplified because of the national net-zero agenda of the government of India.

Against this backdrop, the paper investigates the participatory parity of women heads of local governments in decision-making processes in environmental, economic and social sectors. To analyse the sociological implications, the paper uses the Habermasian framework of the public sphere to unravel the executive authority among the women-elected heads of the local governments. In addition, it engages with the discourse of parity of participation by Nancy Fraser.

The result shows that authority becomes the point of contestation in conjunction with gender and the public sphere. Aligned with Fraser’s model which recognises how historically institutional mechanisms have systematically denied resources to excluded groups leading to violation of justice, local governments in the coal districts of India become sites which devalue the authority of women heads.

Drawing from interviews of women heads of local governments this paper foregrounds how historically sanctioned authority of men in the public sphere acts as a hindrance at two levels, one is the lack of real participation of women in the decision-making processes of the local governments and the second, the institutional structures holding on to age-old exclusionary practices even after adoption of inclusive regulatory frameworks.