Please read the following books:

Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science and whose knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives.

Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question of Feminism.

I would also suggest you to read "Women's Political Participation in Bangladesh" written by Pranab Kumar Pandey.

Dr. Pandey basically used a survey to examine women's economic empowerment, and also used case studies to validate his research question regarding political empowerment. I would suggest to do both while measuring women's political empowerment which will allow you disentangle the dynamics associated with the process. For doing this, you could use other research methodology books written by Denzin, Bailey etc.

"Gender Trouble" Buttler 1990 especially if you focus on power aspects

Dear Satya,

try the following articles / literature for your research project:

Sharline Nagy Hesse-Biber (Ed.) (2014): Feminist research practice. A Primer. Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, California, SAGE Publications. (see link below)

Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber (Ed.) (2012): Handbook of Feminist Research. Theory and Praxis. Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, California, SAGE Publications. (see link and file below)

Andrea Doucet, Natasha Mauthner (2006): Feminist methodology and epistemology. In: Clifton Bryant, Dennis Peck (Ed.) (2006): 21st Century Sociology. A Reference Handbook, Volume 2, speciality and interdisciplinary studies, part 1, chapter 5, pp. 36 - 42. (see files below)

Jane Wambui (2013): An introduction to feminist research. (see file below)

Katharine Sarikakis, Ramona R. Rush, Autumn Grubb-Swetnam and Christina Lane (2009): Feminist Theory and research. In: Don W. Stacks, Michael B. Salwen (Ed.) (2009): An Integrated Approach To Communication Theory and Research, second edition, Routledge, pp 504 - 522.

Gwendolyn Beetham & Justina Demetriades (2007): Feminist research methodo-logies and development. Overview and practical application. In: Gender & Development, Volume 15, Issue 2, 2007, special issue: Gender Research Methods, pp. 199 - 216.

Sandra Harding and Kathryn Norberg (2005): New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies. An Introduction. In: Signs, Vol. 30, No. 4, Summer 2005, pp. 2009 - 2015.

Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook (2005): Feminist Methodology. New Applications in the Academy and Public Policy. In: Signs, Vol. 30, No. 4, Summer 2005, pp. 2211 - 2236.

Leslie McCall (2005): The Complexity of Intersectionality. In: Signs, Vol. 30, No. 3, Spring 2005, pp. 1771 - 1800.

Barbara Pini (2002): Focus groups, feminist research and farm women. Opportunities for empowerment in rural social research. In: Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 18, Issue 3, July 2002, pp. 339 - 351.

Caroline Ramazanoğlu and Janet Holland (2002): Feminist methodology. Challenges and choices.Thousand Oaks, SAGE publications.

Literature with special attention for the topic "developing countries":

Myfanwy Franks (2002): Feminisms and Cross-ideological Feminist Social Research: Standpoint, Situatedness and Positionality. Developing Cross-ideological Feminist Research. In: Journal of International Women's Studies, 3(2), 38-50. Download: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol3/iss2/3

Mary Ssonko Nabacwa (2009): A Critical Reflection on the Feminist Research Methodology. (see link below)

Fatuma Chege (2011): Doing Gender and Feminist Research in Developing Countries.

The African Context. (see: http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/3213)

Women's Studies and Development Centre (Ed.) (2006): Developing Indian perspectives on feminist theory and methodology. Final report. (see link below)

Good luck with your research project and kind regards, Detlef

http://occupytampa.org/files/tristan/fem/feminist.research.practice.pdf

http://www.sagepub.com/refbooks/Book234499

http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol3/iss2/3

http://wilgpacific.org/files/8514/0425/7449/WiLG_Research_Feminist_Research_Methodology.pdf

http://ncw.nic.in/pdfreports/developing%20indian%20perspective%20on%20feminist%20theory.pdf

Thank you very much Mahmuda, Stephane, Detlef

Oakley, A. 2005) The Ann Oakley Reader: Gender, Women and Social Science

It is useful to look at 

Richardson, D and Robinson, V (eds) (2007) Introducing Gender Studies, 3rd edn, especially the chapter by Stanley and Wise

Letherby, G. (2003) Feminist Research in Theory and Practice

and a critical and important voice:

Hammersley, M. (1995) The Politics of Social Research. London: SAGE.

Symbols of power: studies on the political status of women in India. By Vina Mazumdar, 1979 is a good read. However, it does not cover Panchayati Raj specifically.

Dorothy Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987).   

You can also look at:

Hesse-Biber and Yaiser (eds) Feminist Perspectives on Social Research- 2004

Dorothy Smith also edited a special issue of the journal Culture and Organization in Institutional Ethnography, which presents applications/discussions of her feminist ethnography applied more widely (see also her Institutional Ethnography :a sociology for people (2005)A good single example of standpoint ethnography used to develop theory is Patricia Yancey Martin (2001) Mobilizing Masculinities in the journal Organization 8/4.

Don't forget Patricia Maguire's:

Doing participatory research: A feminist approach (1987). It's not new but it's terrific.

I don't know that my article falls into this exalted list, but it's available here and I like to think it's a contribution:

Fontes, L. A. (2004). Ethics in violence against women research: The sensitive, the dangerous and the overlooked. Ethics and Behavior, 14, 141-174.

The handbook of Qualitative Research ( 4th edition) by Denzin and Lincoln offers a robust overview.

As so many "classics" have been mentioned here, I think Donna Haraways "Situated Knowledges. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (Feminist Studies 14(3), 1988, pp. 575–599) is still missing. For me this text was very important for my perspective on research.