Srilatha Batliwala, co-discussant of the World Bank study, is an India-based Civil Society Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University. Srilatha has over 25 years’ experience as a grassroots activist, gender equality advocate, and women’s studies teacher and researcher in India and internationally. She is Chair of the Board of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and a member of the Board of PLAN International and Gender at Work. She is well-known in South Asia for her leadership of large-scale empowerment movements of the poorest women and communities in India, such as SPARC and Mahila Samakhya. Her publications include the widely translated and used Women’s Empowerment in South Asia – Concepts and Practices and (with co-editor L. David Brown) Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction (Kumarian Press, 2006) which helps lay readers understand the role and history of the major transnational social movements – labour, environment, women’s, human rights, economic justice and peace movements. She is now working on her second book, Grassroots Movements as Global Actors, analyzing six grassroots movements that have linked up across borders. Srilatha lives and works from her home base of Bangalore, India and spends several months a year at the Hauser Center.