This article looks at the performance of the Women Component Plan (WCP) introduced at the local level in Kerala to encourage participatory planning by studying the experience of five village panchayats over a 10 year reference period. There has been a marked difference among projects carried out under the WCP and general sector projects and projects meant for Scheduled Castes in expenditure efficiency. The article also looks at the nature of projects implemented, the extent of participation of women members in their design and execution, and the opinion of elected representatives on the usefulness of the WCP.

This Sourcebook was developed to provide readily available and usable gendersensitivematerials and resources to build local government capacity for sustainable, equitable and inclusive human settlements.

This report provides a gender review of a decade and a half of World Bank infrastructure lending for 1,246 projects. The objective of this review is to assess the status of and trends in gender integration in the World Bank infrastructure portfolio, and to establish a baseline for monitoring and enhancing gender integration in line with commitments made for the 2006 Gender Action Plan.

In 1994, women made up 49 per cent of the total registered voters of 8,652,252. Table 6 shows the number of registered voters in 1999. The 1999 election list indicates there has been a slight increase in women voters. Both the National Parliament and State Legislatures, share the common electorate list. Representatives for the Urban Councils are nominated members and women form less than 10 per cent of the total nominated members