Gender, Politics, Performance

Abstract

Abstract The chapter introduces the reader to selected frames that are valuable in work on gender and political representation: embodiment, authenticity, and performative labor of (especially symbolic) representation. The chapter illustrates the dominant scripts of political representation and appeals to situated knowledge during claim-making in the Indian national parliament; the policing of gendered and religious behavioral scripts for authentic representation of minority women in Indian politics; salient intersections of caste, gender, and embodiment in the performance of symbolic representation in the election of India’s first female Speaker in Parliament; and more localized scripts of performing gender in party political spaces. It discusses the performances of women legislators in institutional and noninstitutional spaces with the aim of illustrating the intellectual and practical merits of applying a performance-based approach to analyzing gender and politics.