Book review: Accidental feminism: gender parity and selective mobility among India’s professional elite by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

In Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility Among India’s Professional Elite, Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen explores the fact that elite law firms in India display unexpected levels of gender parity, showing this to be the result of an ‘accidental feminism’ that has produced seemingly egalitarian outcomes without systematically dismantling oppressive structures. Revealing the infrastructural scaffolding and affective registers through which the accidental works its power, this book is an important contribution to expanding legal and organisational sociology beyond Euro-American contexts in deepening readers’ understanding of professional women’s entry into the workforce in India, writes Hemangini Gupta. Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility Among India’s Professional Elite. Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen. Princeton University Press. 2021.