Includes bibliographical references and index.

Family matters, gender matters : courts on the rule against restraints on alienation / Krithika Ashok -- Missing women in the Indian judiciary : the inadequacies of the judicial appointment process / Siddharth Peter de Souza and Medha Srivastava-Kehrer -- Is the Supreme Court cherry-picking its gender battles? / Jayna Kothari -- Juxtaposing equality? : Muslim women's rights in the normative realm of secularism and personal law in India / Katharina Wommelsdorff -- Is sexuality anti-Indian? : reflections on obscenity in contemporary Indian popular discourse / Fritzi-Marie Titzmann -- Armed with the constitution : feminist litigation on Indian family law / Tanja Herklotz -- Nikah Halala : the petition, the promise, and the politics of personal law / Saumya Saxena -- The politics of erotic labour : a case study of Mumbai bar dancers / Sameena Dalwai -- Reactionary executive versus deliberative legislature : the case of how the legislature championed compensation for reproductive labour while regulating surrogacy / Mandira Kala -- Interrogating the freedoms of queer liberation in India / Jason Keith Fernandes -- The politics of regulating adult sexuality through the institution of marriage : reflections on queer experiences from India / Sourav Mandal -- Conditions of possibility : law, patriarchy, and single motherhood in India / Saptarshi Mandal -- Turning to the state : between processing disputes and protecting autonomy / Kalindi Kokal -- Towards an egalitarian workplace : developments in anti-sexual harassment law / Poornima Hatti and Aparna Ravi.

"The developments in India since the new millennium have shown that gender equality is a topic in constant flux and dynamic change. In recent years, the Indian parliament passed key legislation on maternity benefits, surrogacy, HIV/Aids prevention, sexual harassment in the workplace, and amendments to the criminal law with respect to violence against women. While many of the reforms of recent years have been the result of long-standing legal battles, spokespersons for gender-equality have pointed to more deep-rooted issues with the system that cannot be resolved and reformed with the law alone. This book analyses reform efforts in the area of gender and the law and attempts to situate where a reform has taken place, by whom it was brought about and what impact it has had on the society. The papers in this volume engage with the protagonists who shape the debate around law and gender and locate their effort into a socio-political context, thereby showing that the discourses around law and gender are closely connected to broader debates around secularism and religion, identity, culture, nationalism and family. The book offers compelling evidence that the drivers of change are emerging from beyond the traditional institutions of courts and parliament, and that to understand the everyday implications of gender based reform, it is important to look beyond these narrow institutional sources"-- Provided by publisher.