Understanding Women's Empowerment in South Asia, 2024 Perspectives on Entitlements and Violations

1 Introduction.- 2 Before NGOs: Women's Organizations in Colonial India.- 3 Politics of Women's Empowerment and Non-Governmental Organizations.- 4 NGO Activism and Women's Empowerment in India.- 5 Women’s Participation in Rural Local Governance of Bangladesh: Progress and Challenges.- 6 Reproductive Health of Women and Human Development in Nepal.- 7 Role of Microfinance in Empowering Woman Entrepreneurs in Rural Sri Lanka.- 8 Lives in Neglect, Deceit and Violence: Voices and Agencies of Trafficked Women.- 9 Multiplying Insecurity: Disempowerment of Women's Agency in the Logistics of Transnational Trafficking Networks of South Asia.- 10 Equalizing Gender Imbalance in a Globalized World.

Asok Kumar Sarkar is Head, Department of Social Work, Visva-Bharati, India and Chairperson of the International Consortium for Social Development -Asia Pacific Branch (ICSDAP). His publications include NGOs-The New Lexicon of Health Care (2005), NGOs and Globalization (Co- Edited, 2008), Human Development and Sustainability: Challenges and Strategies (Co-Edited, 2017), Welfare of Disadvantaged: Exploring Community Development Approach (Co-Edited, 2018), and Contextualizing Peace - Experiences of Contemporary India and Neighbouring Countries (Co- Edited, 2021). He is the founding editor of ‘Journal of Social Work and Social Development’, a UGC-CARE-listed Indian journal and had served from 2010 to 2017.

Satyajit Das Gupta has been associated with Legal Aid Services – West Bengal, Human Rights Law Network, India and the Calcutta University's Women's Studies Research Centre. He has lectured and published widely on problems of domestic violence, women's access to justice and counselling for women in distress.