https://www.poulamiroychowdhury.info/poulami-roychowdhury daily 1.0 2025-10-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f870d17ea5ae1056249d75d/9814dd6f-c0a5-4b1c-a6f7-f58b5e12528c/Unequal+Contagion_Final+Cover+front+only.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f870d17ea5ae1056249d75d/1602686232706-4QAILBI7ZRG63ZKKT355/bear.png About Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f870d17ea5ae1056249d75d/1602691680845-Z0PXLLJFMEWEBCTW5J84/Front_Roychowdhury_CapableWomenIncapableStates.JPG About Me - Books American Sociological Association, Human Rights Section, Gordon Hirabayashi Book Award 2022 American Sociological Association, Distinguished Book Award, Honorable Mention 2022 Eastern Sociological Society, Mirra Komarovsky Book Award 2022 Law and Society Association, Herbert Jacob Book Prize, Honorable Mention 2022 Gender-based violence is a heavily politicized issue in India with diverse organizations supporting women’s legal claims. Meanwhile, Indian law enforcement personnel are sexist and have limited abilities to enforce the law. In Capable Women, Incapable States I ask how women claim rights within these conditions. How do rights negotiations impact gender inequality and reframe the boundaries of legality and state authority? Using two years of ethnographic and interview-based data with survivors, civil society groups, and law enforcement personnel, I develop a framework for understanding how collective action influences law enforcement decision making and women’s access to justice in contexts where state capacity is limited. I found that women did not seek rights by following legal procedure. Instead, they mobilized collective threats and did the work of the state themselves. They behaved this way because organized actors train themed to do so and because law enforcement personnel responded favorably to organized pressure. Women who were threatening and hustled around, those who completed case processing duties, negotiated extra-legal settlements, and deployed violence move ahead with their claims. Capable Women, Incapable States asks readers to consider the limits of existing theories of gender and governance, much of which are based on the histories of post-welfare state. In contexts where enforcement capacity is low and organized pressure high, women do not relate to the state as “good victims” in need of protection. Rather, to be able to interact with the state at all, they must act “capable.” The book considers how women’s “capability” holds the promise of empowerment while simultaneously threatening women’s personal security and undermining state sovereignty. Capable Women, Incapable States is available in hardcopy, paperback, and e-book through Oxford University Press. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f870d17ea5ae1056249d75d/1602689254092-677WN2DCBP9K7TWUNJIS/Book+Cover+1_Roychowdhury+photograph.JPG About Me - Contact Poulami Roychowdhury Watson School of International & Public Affairs Brown University 111 Thayer Street, Providence, RI, 02912 poulami_roychowdhury@brown.edu