This paper reports on an ethnographic study of a village near the town of Sangola in the Sholapur district of Maharashtra, India. The paper is influenced by the feminist interpretations of Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, and her plausible enquiry into gender imperialism, colonialism and Western dominations in one hand, and the critique of the quite celebrated development research approach of the 1980s - the participatory rural appraisal (PRA), on the other. Further proposing a new way of looking into ‘participation’ in development practices. Furthermore, it draws out the politics of ‘voice’, empowerment and participation as integral to women’s rights – and also to study men and their changing masculinities with regard to gender inequalities in the village.
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