Beyond the Binary: Reframing Agency and Empowerment Among Marginalized Bakarwal Women in Jammu and Kashmir, India

Bakarwal women, from a nomadic Muslim tribal community in Jammu and Kashmir, experience triple marginalization shaped by gender, religious minority status, and tribal identity. Despite substantial economic contributions to pastoral livelihoods, they face restricted decision-making authority, limited education access, and vulnerability to communal violence. Through nine months of ethnographic fieldwork employing narrative inquiry with eighteen Bakarwal women across three Kashmir districts, the study examines how women negotiate agency within patriarchal structures rather than through overt resistance to them. Employing postcolonial and Islamic feminist frameworks that center women’s own cultural and religious contexts, it challenges assumptions that equate agency with autonomy and economic participation with empowerment. Ethnographic evidence reveals complex patterns of intra-community dynamics. Elder women in nuclear families exercise substantially more decision-making authority than younger women in joint families, while women strategically deploy both Islamic and tribal legal frameworks including Mehr rights and Jirga councils to navigate marital practices. These women articulate agency through upholding cultural norms, expressing marital preferences within arranged marriage systems, investing Mehr in family welfare, and leveraging life-cycle seniority, thereby challenging binary categorizations of oppression versus liberation. These findings contribute to deeper understanding of gender dynamics among marginalized indigenous Muslim women globally, particularly within pastoral communities facing sedentarization and Muslim minorities experiencing compounded discrimination. Ultimately, the study contributes to postcolonial and Islamic feminist scholarship by demonstrating how agency within constraint can be understood without romanticizing inequality or imposing external liberation frameworks.