Srilatha Batliwala is Civil Society Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University, where her work focuses on transnational civil society, transnational grassroots movements, and practice-research engagement. She is also Chair of the Board of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), New York.

Formerly, Srilatha worked as Program Officer in the Governance and Civil Society Program of the Ford Foundation, New York, and as head of the Women's Policy Research and Advocacy Unit (now, the Gender Studies Unit) of the National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India.

Over the past 30 years, Srilatha has combined grassroots activism, policy advocacy, research and teaching, with experience that spans mobilizing and organizing poor urban and rural women in India, empirical research, theory building from grassroots practice, participation in major national and international policy processes, and research and publishing on key issues related to gender and development. Her most well known publications include the book Status of Rural Women in Karnataka, and Women's Empowerment in South Asia - Concepts and Practices.

Recent articles

The political claim advanced by women in India via the idea of "empowerment" has been appropriated by their adversaries and false friends. It needs to be rewon for a fresh vision grounded in the experiences of poor women, says Srilatha Batliwala.

History will undoubtedly reveal that the quest for gender equality and justice was one of the defining events of the twentieth century. Beginning with struggles for women’s suffrage in the early decades, the women’s movement for equality generated sufficient impact that by the end of the century, the majority of the world’s nations had pledged to eradicate gender discrimination through instruments such as the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action and the UN’s Security Council Resolution 1325.