Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a “New” India

Abstract

This study of professional software women in urban India examines practices of respectable femininity and discourses of the Indian family to understand the changing and abiding aspects of a seemingly new national culture. Colonial and nationalist constructs of the Indian home, and the middle-class women who protected that home, continue to powerfully shape everyday articulations of national belonging, even as they are transformed through individual negotiations and a global economy. Drawing from extensive interviews and ethnographic work, this paper analyzes the interplay of gender, class, and nation in contemporary urban India as individualized, gendered efforts to accumulate symbolic capital.

Negotiating Middle-class Respectable Femininity: Bangladeshi Women and their Families

“…The normative conception of middle-class respectable femininity in South Asia is traditionally measured through women prioritizing family above work (Radhakrishnan 2009(Radhakrishnan , 2011Fernando and Cohen 2013;Sabur 2010). Even a woman who engages in the global economy of work and consumption must claim her high cultural and symbolic status through the "assertiveness and autonomy afforded by her education and earnings," which must still be focused on the service of the family and the nation (Gilbertson 2011:119;Radhakrishnan 2009;Mankekar 1999;Rajan 1993).…”

“…While much research in India and emerging literature in other South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh address the transformation of women's roles in urban areas, it is largely focused on women's involvement in the "public" sphere through employment and education (Radhakrishnan 2009(Radhakrishnan , 2011Liechty 2003;Kabeer 1997Kabeer , 2000. Additionally, the growing visibility of Islamic practices such as the headscarf and burqa 1 among women has been addressed in recent research on women's agency and respectability (Hussain 2010), empowerment (White 2010;Rozario 2006) and honor (Naher 2010).…”

“…Normative conceptions of middle-class respectability in India portray stay-at-home mothers as respectable women (Radhakrishnan 2009(Radhakrishnan , 2011. In the IT sector, Indian women often "choose" family over career and either leave their jobs after childbirth, reduce their workload or decline opportunities for promotion (2011:156).…”

Who is a “real woman”? Empowerment and the discourse of respectability in Namibia's Zambezi region

“…Feminist and gender and development scholars have shown that norms of "respectability" reinforce gender inequality (e.g. Fernando & Cohen, 2014;Hungwe, 2006;Radhakrishnan, 2009). Such respectability discourse (or "respectable femininity", e.g.…”

Discrimination in the University in India

“…Therefore, for working women, including female academics, the assumption is that the women is not fully focussed on her work. As noted by Radhakrishnan (2009), respectability and femininity are still not fully associated with the working women. So that from the onset, many women have to prove their right to work with other colleagues and that there working life is 'respectable'.…”