Women in Panchayat of West Bengal Access, Attainment or Empowerment? Dayabati Roy Introduction It seems to be a case of belaboring the obvious, if I begin to argue afresh, that gender is a social construct and this social construction being configured by the existing power relations in a given society. But the question that arises is whether and how this gender as a social construct is being (re)constructed, obscured and/or becoming marked against the backdrop of recent policyreforms in the realm of women's participation in local governance. The research seeks to explore the socio-political processes by which gender inequality is taking new shape and recreating new contestations in consequences of implementation of fifty per cent reservation for women in all tiers of panchayati Raj institution (PR) in West Bengal. In other words, it explores the way in which rural women as a political category are constructing their individual agency in co opting or subverting the welfare processes toward their own ends and thereby trying to even out the underlying gender inequalties, Extending Majundar's argument in context of gir's school attainment to the realm of women in panchayat, I ask, do the woman representatives in panchayat practise a possibility: a possibility to' (2011a: 234) contest the dominant patriarchal practices and subsequently negotiate gender injustices? While I completely agree with Majumdar (bid) who finds a possibility among the girls who stay on in school to pursue gender justice activism, I emphasize the fact that notwithstanding the possibility to