ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the scope and nuances of gender politics as one of the core areas of federal politics of development as well as transformative politics in contemporary West Bengal. It contextualizes the issue of women's participation in socio-political processes with a debate on their role in the public sphere since the colonial period. It focuses on the ever-expanding scope of women's agency in state politics despite social anxiety about gender roles and limited scope of participatory politics. Women's engagement with social movements played an instrumental role in mobilizing their political leadership since the 1940s. The influence of communist ideology along with a Gandhian influence shaped the dominant space of women's movement in the state in post-independence period. The chapter points out how, despite a rich legacy of women's political activism in the state, their representation in crucial spaces of decision-making processes and legislative affairs shows a wide gender gap and assesses the nature of this skewed representation focussing on electoral politics, party organizations, and legislative bodies. The chapter also focusses on the critical issue of how women's role in the political arena as equals is deeply thwarted by endemic violence in private spaces and state politics, especially electoral violence. The chapter sheds light on the occasional disjunction in networking by independent women's organizations with party-sympathetic women's groups in mobilizing women's participation in public spaces in the state.
