Managed inclusion and the politics of erasure: Gender governance in higher education under neoliberal authoritarianism

Abstract

This article conceptualizes managed inclusion as a form of gender governance in higher education that absorbs feminist and anti-caste critique into frameworks of visibility, moral regulation, and procedural compliance. Drawing on interviews across ten Indian universities, it develops a typology of symbolic, technocratic, and transformative inclusion and argues that equity is mobilized less as a commitment to justice than as a strategy of reputational management and epistemic containment. Visibility is granted without authority, equity is proceduralized without redistribution, and dissent is domesticated through institutional decorum. The analysis is situated within what Giroux theorizes as neoliberal fascism, a conjuncture sustained by three interlocking fundamentalisms: market fundamentalism, religious moralism, and manufactured ignorance, which together enable authoritarian rule and suppress critical thought. The article suggests that India’s National Education Policy 2020 exemplifies a broader global shift in which inclusion is reconfigured as a technology of erasure rather than a vehicle for justice. Gender equity is recast through performance metrics and nationalist virtue, while subaltern knowledges are rendered illegible. It concludes by reclaiming inclusion as political praxis grounded in epistemic dissent, collective struggle, and the dismantling of caste-patriarchal power.