ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book emphasizes two perspectives: it utilizes a bottom-up approach to study social transformation and it uses women's lived experiences to capture the fluidity and multiplicity within the experiences of social transformation. It examines how conflict produced intended and unintended structural changes, which had considerable impact on the expanding space available for women's agency, and how this opened up the possibility for widespread social transformation. The book discusses women who came from various educational, cultural, ethnic, regional and political backgrounds and were working together to ensure a woman-friendly constitution. These women were not only contributing to the constitution making process but were also changing their society. The book explores ideas from multiple disciplines and different scholarly works have been used from various fields of study. Within an interpretist framework, feminist standpoint theory has been identified as the primary epistemological position of the researcher.
