Jayshree Mangubhai Knihy

"From the outset, women experienced infection and death at the hands of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Yet when the health crisis of AIDS first emerged in the United States in the early 1980s, scientists, doctors, and public health officials overlooked women in the response to a disease first associated with men. As the acknowledgment that women could contract HIV and die from AIDS grew, women became vulnerable to hostile government policies which threatened their health and rights. But they did not passively accept mistreatment; rather, they mobilized to frame the fight against the disease. Emma Day moves the historical understanding of the impact of HIV/AIDS on women beyond their exclusion from the initial medical response and the role they played as the supporters of gay men. Focusing on the activism of women who protested the co-occurring state neglect of their health care needs and state intervention into their lives, In Her Hands opens a timely new avenue to explore the relationship between the state and women's status in modern America"--

The culmination of research undertaken in the rural panchayats of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, A Foot in the Door brings the voices of Dalit women to the forefront of the ongoing conversation about their political oppression. The authors examine the patriarchal and caste-based barriers to Dalit women’s political participation in Panchayati Raj, explaining clearly that without a more holistic approach, the panchayats will only continue to reinforce existing and undeniably violent hierarchies of caste and gender. Dalit women’s political participation remains a risky endeavor and involves very little actual transfer of power. Getting ‘a foot in the door’ is not enough—the affirmative action that secures a Dalit woman’s right to enter the panchayats often still silences them in the process of seeking active participation. An essential read for feminist and Dalit scholars working on issues of gender, caste, and political participation, A Foot in the Door argues that there is a need for deep, systemic change at every level of governance—only then can equal and meaningful participation be ensured.