Women in PRIs: Assessing Awareness, Involvement and Institutional Gaps in Grassroots Governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25175/jrd/2026/v45/i1/174109Keywords:
Women’s Political Participation, Gendered Political Awareness, Gram Sabha Functioning, Grassroots GovernanceAbstract
This study explores the gendered dimensions of political participation within Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in India, focusing on the comparative awareness and involvement of male and female elected representatives. Drawing on primary data collected from 60 PRIs functionaries across 20 villages in Telangana, the paper investigates disparities in awareness about Gram Sabha meetings, development programmes, and local governance processes. Quantitative analysis, including the Chi-square test, reveals statistically significant associations between gender and levels of awareness, with male representatives demonstrating higher engagement and understanding of institutional functions and vice versa. While Constitutional amendments and affirmative policies such as the 73rd Amendment and the recent 106th Constitutional Amendment Act (Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023) have facilitated greater numerical representation of women, gaps remain in their effective participation and decision-making power. The study highlights structural barriers, including proxy representation and limited knowledge transfer, as key challenges to women’s political empowerment at the grassroots. It underscores the need for sustained capacity-building, gender-sensitive institutional reforms, and local-level innovations such as women-friendly gram panchayats to ensure that descriptive representation leads to substantive democratic participation.
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