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Paper short abstract

Women in Development Bureaucracies in the Global South face informalized and precarious working conditions due to institutionalised forms of volunteerism by the state for the implementation of state policies.

Paper long abstract

The paper examines the state's conception of women's volunteerism and the nature of women's labour in social policy implementation at the grassroots level in the urban slums of Hyderabad, a city in southern India. Based on a feminist qualitative method using textual analysis of government documents, reports and notifications over a span of decade, and interviews with women 'Resource Persons' for poverty eradication schemes based on the Self-Help Group Model, the study maps the evolving relation between the state, social policies and women's 'voluntary labour' in institution building, social mobilisation and development activities. Using the analytical framework of 'New Development Management', which draws on the critique of New Public Management in governance and Post-Development Studies, it is evident that the rise of neoliberal belief in the responsibilization of escaping systemic poverty rests on the shoulders of overburdened and socially marginalised women. This process, the Feminisation of development Bureaucracy, is accompanied by the use of managerial techniques of control via digital self-reporting, maintaining records of demographic data of their neighbourhood, bookkeeping and accounts, and a gradual increase in responsibilities without accompanying improvement in workers’ incentives, such as salary, health care or social benefits.