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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility Among India's Professional Elite

Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility Among India's Professional Elite

Ballakrishnen, Swethaa S.

Paperback

General Gender StudiesGeneral LawWomen's Studies

ISBN10: 0691182531
ISBN13: 9780691182537
Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
Published: Jan 12 2021
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.20
Language: English

Exploring the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes

In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country's lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain workspaces?

Drawing from observations and interviews with more than 130 elite professionals, Accidental Feminism examines how a range of underlying mechanisms--gendered socialization and essentialism, family structures and dynamics, and firm and regulatory histories--afford certain professionals egalitarian outcomes that are not available to their local and global peers. Juxtaposing findings on the legal profession with those on elite consulting firms, Swethaa Ballakrishnen reveals that parity arises not from a commitment to create feminist organizations, but from structural factors that incidentally come together to do gender differently. Simultaneously, their research offers notes of caution: while conditional convergence may create equality in ways that more targeted endeavors fail to achieve, accidental developments are hard to replicate, and are, in this case, buttressed by embedded inequalities. Ballakrishnen examines whether gender parity produced without institutional sanction should still be considered feminist.

In offering new ways to think about equality movements and outcomes, Accidental Feminism forces readers to critically consider the work of intention in progress narratives.

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