Conclusion

Abstract

While policies relating to inequalities within minorities rely on actor-led change, there seems to be very little attempt to examine the heterogeneity of power practices within communities. Existing critiques of actor-led change highlight the shortcomings of using internal actors to implement external policies and treat the reliance on the disadvantaged to help themselves as misguided (Shachar, 2008) and as failing to account for power relations (Madhok and Rai, 2012). But these critiques are based on particular interventions where the agent/actor is tasked to transplant externally inspired notions of self within their communities. Ayelet Shachar’s (2008) study of how the state should support minority ethnic women subordinated through customs and practices within their communities in multicultural societies finds fault with policies that rely on vulnerable women to make claims for gender equality. She advocates greater regulation of minority communities by the state to change practices. Sumi Madhok and Shirin Rai’s study of illiterate women volunteers trained to introduce gender equality policies into rural India warns that agency puts women at risk of retaliation. These studies provide important caveats to the practice of state-sponsored change through internal actors but takes for granted that the solution must come from outside the communities and actors themselves.