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This book is concerned with the three-way relationship between neoliberalism, women´s education, and the spatialization of the state, and analyses this through an ethnography lens of women´s education programs in India.

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Education for Women´s Equality and Empowerment´: The Mahila Samakhya Program (MS) (1989) ´Getting there, Being there´: Using Ethnography, Investigating Ethnography in Chitrakoot and Delhi ´When I say we, I don´t mean me´: Neoliberal Bureaucracy and Techniques of National Governance ´We have to move from conceptualization to operationalization´: (Un) Easy Relationships between State and Feminism ´Empowerment was never conceptualized as entitlement´: Problems in Operationalizing a ´Feminist´ Program ´Empowerment should be collective´: Four ´Truth-Tales´

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"An important contribution to the debate about the institutionalization of women´s education." - Gendered Perspectives on International Development

"Sharma has written a fascinating book about women´s education and ´empowerment´ in India. Grounded in a decade of reflexive, robust ethnography, her provocative work challenges taken-for-granted ways of doing and writing ´third world´ feminism. In Sharma´s account, empowerment is less about progressive practices for change and much more about the production of subjects within governance structures. She skillfully weaves women´s own stories and experiences into an engaging and informative account of state authority, feminist expertise, and betrayal under neoliberalism. This is anthropology for the twenty-first century." - Monica J. Casper, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University and author of The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery

"Sharma writes a convincing portrait of how education policy operates by entangling bureaucrats and program recipients at multiple levels, often producing contradictory outcomes. By examining program failure as ´betrayal,´ she ushers in a new way of thinking about neoliberal development policy. This book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on bureaucracy, development, and gender studies." - Lamia Karim, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Oregon and author of Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh

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SHUBHRA SHARMA Associate Director and Senior Lecturer in the Women´s and Gender Studies Program and Affiliated Faculty of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, USA.

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