India's Working Women and Career Discourses: Society, Socialization, and AgencyThis study investigates Indian working women's sense of the discourses surrounding work and careers. In interviews conducted with seventy-seven women across socioeconomic statuses, castes, classes, and occupational and generational categories in the city of Pune, India, women express how feeling bound by tradition confronts excitement about ongoing changes in the country. The work lives of these women are influenced symbiotically by India's sociocultural practices and the contemporary phenomenon of globalization. Using feminist standpoint theory as a theoretical lens, Suchitra Shenoy-Packer explores how women deconstruct, coconstruct, and reconstruct systems of knowledge about their worlds of work as embedded within and influenced by the intersections of society, socialization, and individual agency. The meanings that Indian women associate with their work as well as their definition of a career in twenty-first-century India will be of interest to students and scholars of feminist theory, women's studies, globalization, Asian studies, and labor studies. |
Contents
| 1 | |
2 The Materiality of Social Discourses | 39 |
3 Family Socialization and Career Discourses | 67 |
4 Constrained Agency and Communion | 111 |
5 Meanings of Work and Career | 139 |
6 Conclusion | 163 |
Research Methodology | 179 |
Positionality and Field Research Experiences | 185 |
Interview Guide | 201 |
Profiles of Participants | 203 |
| 207 | |
| 219 | |
About the Author | 221 |
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India's Working Women and Career Discourses: Society, Socialization, and Agency Suchitra Shenoy-Packer No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
accepted agency Air India Anahita anticipatory socialization asked behaviors Bhavana Bindiya career choices caste constrained continue cultural daugh daughters decisions discourses discrimination discussed earning enable expectations experiences father feel feminist standpoint financially independent findings fulfill gender going high-income occupations Hindu husband important in-laws Indian society Indian women Indian working women individuals influenced informal sector interview Jablin Jagruti labor lives low-income category low-income occupations maids mangalsutra Marathi marriage married meaning messages mother Mumbai negotiate norms one’s opportunities organizational paid employment parents participants position Priyanka profession professional Pune pursue Rakhi responsibilities reverse discrimination role says Shraddha sit at home social class Standpoint Theory status street sweepers Suchitra things tion told traditional understand upper-caste urban Vanaja Vidisha wanted warkaris woman women in low-income women’s career work-life work-life balance workforce workplace