Gender, Class and Reflexive Modernity in India

J. Belliappa

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780230300187
• eBook ISBN: 9781137319227
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Using in-depth interviews, this book explores women employed in the Indian IT industry and highlights the gender specific and culturally specific consequences of reflexive modernity in neo-liberal India.

1

Setting Out to Study Class and Gender in Contemporary India

While there are many ways for a scholar to choose a topic for research, it occasionally happens that the topic of research chooses the scholar. Usually this occurs when a setting or community which is familiar to the scholar begins to show signs of rapid change. I first began asking the questions addressed in this book at the turn of the century when my hometown, Bangalore, a quiet city in southern India, became the nerve centre of India’s burgeoning information technology (IT) industry. My friends and neighbours went to work for large multinational corporations at unprecedented salaries; international brands of soft drinks, apparel and white goods appeared on the shelves of neighbourhood stores; and people started remarking on how India had arrived on the world stage. Bangalore, the administrative capital of the peninsular state of Karnataka, affectionately nicknamed ‘pensioner’s paradise’ due to its slow pace of life, came to be known as India’s ‘Silicon Valley’.

A clamour of voices arose around me – some excited, optimistic, eager to be part of the new, globalized India that our city had come to represent; others cautious, fearing that our society would be polarized between those who could benefit from the opportunities that globalization creates and those who were marginalized by it; still others angry, aggressive – clamouring for protecting our culture and heritage from what they viewed as the decadence of the West. Several of these voices mentioned women: ‘women will benefit most from the new opportunities created by the free-market economy’; ‘women have begun to embrace change ahead of men’; ‘women will preserve our culture in the face of globalization’; ‘women need to be protected from corrupt Western influences’. This book began as an attempt to hear, over the clamour of these multiple and contradictory voices, the voices of women themselves. Quite early on I decided to zero in on women employed in the IT industry, to question how those women who are constructed as representatives and beneficiaries of India’s economic growth story understand their experiences.

Over the past seven years I have carried first my questions and later my tentative answers into conferences and seminars, informal discussions with colleagues and the occasional dinner party with friends. While some of my initial naive hopes that my questions will lead to unambiguous answers have been shed, the aim of understanding how women make sense of their experiences rather than using their experiences as raw data to be theorized remains strong. I have also begun to see my research as a small part of a larger feminist project: that of raising questions about mainstream sociology. Therefore while this book is born of a qualitative research project on middle class Indian women employed in the global economy, its broader aim is to contribute to a Southern feminist perspective within the ongoing critique of reflexive modernity within sociology.

A Southern feminist project

The project of Southern feminism is not new – over the past twenty years a significant body of theoretical and empirical work has been developed around women of the Global South. Much has been said in favour of understanding women’s experiences in the Global South and against monochromatic perspectives of non-White/Southern/non-Western/peripheral/marginal women offered by White/mainstream/Western feminists located in the Global North/western hemisphere/centre (see, for example, Bulbeck, 1998; Trinh, 1989; Mohanty, 1984; Narayan, 2000). It has been argued that as a result of centering the concerns and perspectives of southern women, feminism has become more inclusive and critical, engaging with wider concerns such as racism, communalism and poverty.

Thirty years ago Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1984) contended that much of the predominantly White, Western/First World scholarship on non-White or non-Western women tends to take a reductionist approach, constructing the ‘average’ Asian, Black or Third World woman as a monolithic entity usually characterized by victimhood. She argued for an understanding of non-White or non-Western women that was located in real lived experiences of women in material and structural conditions of disempowerment or disenfranchisement and in the historical, cultural and geographical specificities of local contexts. Moreover, she argued, the very categories of Asian women, Arab women or Third World women may obliterate the class, ethnic and religious diversities within the societies they represent, a view echoed by Chilla Bulbeck (1998). While Mohanty’s terminological classification of First and Third Worlds and Bulbeck’s West and East may not always be appropriate, their ideas continue to remain relevant. In this book I take inspiration from the call of these and other Southern feminists to study the day-to-day lived experiences of one specific group of Southern women in their local context and understand how they negotiate and resist hegemonic gendered values.

By focussing on an economically relatively privileged group that nevertheless faces marginalization and discrimination in professional life, and contends with traditional constraints in family life, I query the constructions of Southern women as victims of religious orthodoxies, patriarchal families and global capitalist interests. I attempt to change the angle from Southern women as recipients of help from international donors to Southern women as economic agents. Drawing attention to the consequences of neoliberalism and global capitalism, I investigate how access to economic opportunities influences women’s sense of self. In the 19th century, social reformer Pandita¹ Ramabai argued that the lack of opportunities for middle class/upper caste women to practise self-reliance is a key issue in their oppression (Pandita Ramabai/Kosambi, 1888/2000). The Pandita’s assertion alerts us to two important ideas: that middle class women’s experiences do not represent an average or universal by which we can draw conclusions about gender relations across society and that economic privileges do not always translate into empowerment for women.

The university educated English-speaking women represented in this study are in a unique position as workers: their education gives them access to what might seem like relatively well-paid jobs in the trans-national IT (software) industry, but their location within the global labour market makes them vulnerable to economic shifts and changes. Although they work in luxurious environments and enjoy higher incomes than others with comparable experience in less prestigious industries, they have limited means of negotiating working conditions, compensation, hours and benefits with transnational employers and clients. The acclaim that they receive in the media, in popular discourse and in their families for their participation in the global economy and their position as representatives of India’s new status as an economic power masks their vulnerability in the face of global capital. Yet the constraints that they face are very different from non-literate, poorer women employed in other global industries such as the garment industry or transnational domestic workers.

This book investigates, through first-person accounts, how these women understand the complexities of their positions in the professional sphere and in their families. While acknowledging the importance of studying the lives of women who are oppressed by caste, class and religious hierarchies, it contends that not all Southern women are oppressed or even marginalized in the same way. Moreover, it argues that India’s (economic) growth story needs to be problematized and examined through the lenses of gender and class. By querying middle class discourses, it attempts to further emerging trends in self-reflexivity amongst Indian sociologists and social anthropologists.

It also addresses, indirectly, what might be called a crisis in Indian feminism (echoed by other feminisms across the world, see Scharff, 2011; McRobbie, 2009; Rich, 2005). As Chapter 3 will argue, the contemporary women’s movement has a long history in India dating at least to the 19th century. Many middle class/upper caste women participated in the nationalist movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, seeking women’s liberation in conjunction with the nation’s independence. In independent India, a robust women’s movement grew in the 1970s and early 1980s. This time women’s rights were sought independently from other political issues, resulting in the label ‘autonomous women’s movement’. In both phases, the movement was largely dominated by educated, urban, middle class women, leading to accusations of elitism and suggestions that middle class leaders of the movement had appropriated the right to speak on behalf of their less privileged ‘sisters’ (Rege, 1998; Agnes, 1994). In spite of these somewhat justified accusations, it might be argued that these early feminists of pre- and post-independent India were motivated by a strong sense of commitment to a wider social and political cause and, in many cases, a willingness to support women who were additionally marginalized by caste, poverty or rural location.

Several political events and circumstances undermined the feminist cause in the 1990s and at the turn of the century, including the active participation of elite and middle class women in the anti-Mandal commission agitation which saw upper castes violently opposing affirmative action towards lower castes and classes. Women played key roles in right-wing religious movements and communal conflicts, including the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the violence against Muslims in Mumbai in 1993 and Gujarat in 2002. These issues have given rise to grave concerns amongst veteran feminists that the cause of women’s liberation is challenged by conflicting allegiances in terms of caste, religion and political affiliation (Agnes, 1994; Agnihotri and Mazumdar, 1995; Tharu and Niranjana, 1996; Padke, 2003). But a more steady and insidious erosion of the feminist movement amongst the middle classes seems to have occurred with the advance of neoliberalism.

Feminists in Britain such as McRobbie (2009) and Scharff (2011) argue that neoliberalism offers possibilities of emancipation and autonomy not through collective action but through individual effort. The women whose accounts inform this book seek autonomy, independence and self-determination through sustained individual effort, carefully planned choices and strategic conformity to traditional norms. There is little evidence of their commitment to a larger social or political cause, feminist or otherwise. This book analyses their engagement with neoliberal ideals of choice and empowerment, thereby indirectly suggesting some reasons behind their disengagement with feminism.

A word on terminology: over the past few decades, many binary terms have been used to describe cultures across the world: First World and Third World, centre and periphery, West and non-West and more recently Global North and Global South. All these classifications carry the possibility of reducing diversity in cultures to a small number of essentialized traits. In an increasingly interlinked world where people, goods and ideas flow in multiple directions, such binary categories can become unproductive and limiting; they might conceal internal diversities and contradictions. Yet it is necessary to use some categories whilst acknowledging with Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989: 94) that ‘despite our desperate eternal attempt to contain and mend, categories always leak’. Amongst the various terms I have chosen to use in this book are the Global South and Global North which indicate the structural inequities and cultural differences between cultures, societies and nations of the northern and southern hemispheres whilst acknowledging the presence of prosperous nations in the South and relatively poor nations in the North. However when quoting writers who employ a different set of binaries, I use their terminology rather than my own. This might be confusing for the reader, but I see no other way of preserving the authenticity of their arguments.

The challenges of the ‘insider’ position in the south

Trinh T. Min-ha (1989) argues that although Third World feminists are increasingly visible in First World forums, their participation is often circumscribed by certain implicit and explicit expectations: that they will represent their culture authentically (the judgement of this authenticity is usually in the hands of powerful First World academies), that they will enable their First World colleagues to understand and experience difference, that they will refrain from engaging with First World issues. Her views resonate with feminist academics from Asia, Africa and Latin America who are usually expected to represent the predominant view of their culture. Such expectations overlook the diversity within societies and cultures, the multiple political positions that individual feminists might take on their own culture and their capacity to comment on cultures other than their own.

The Southern feminist academic researching her own culture then stands under a double-edged sword. On the one hand she might see great value in researching and representing her own culture either in an attempt to challenge the myths and fallacies of previous representations or with the goal of representing an under-represented subject. On the other hand she risks being seen as a native informant offering an exotic ‘Other’ to mainstream Northern subjects. In my experience this paradoxical position further is complicated by pressure from within my home culture to provide an authentic (read: positive) account of Indian women to audiences abroad. This pressure was particularly evident when research participants would ask repeatedly, ‘Do you understand what I am saying?’ or instruct, ‘This is what you need to say about Indian women.’ These dual pressures from within and outside her culture position the Southern feminist researcher as either native informant or ambassador. Both positions presume a certain expertise on ‘the field’ and are ethically suspect since they suggest that ‘insider’ status directly translates into superior knowledge about the culture.

Mohanty (1984), Narayan (2000) and other Southern feminists warn White, Western scholars about the dangers of cultural essentialism in studying non-White, non-Western women. However, the same warning might be given to Southern researchers who may be tempted to present over-essentialized pictures of their cultures in response to the myths and fallacies about their cultures that they encounter in their academic and social environments. Southern feminists are in no less danger than other academics of reinscribing ‘the researched into prevailing representations’ of victimhood or deviance (Bhavnani, 1994: 30), constructing research participants as victims (Mohanty, 1984; Narayan, 2000) of their cultures, of patriarchal families and of global capitalism. Such a position denies their ability to negotiate with their families, their capacity to challenge power structures and their sense of agency. The reverse trap would be to construct ‘heroine stories’, celebrating the success and empowerment of Indian women in the global economy. Both forms of essentialization close off analytical possibilities by masking complexities within cultures and disguising how power is exchanged, bartered, withheld and deployed in given contexts.

Whilst recognizing and theorizing differences between and within ethnic and national communities, Southern researchers also need to recognize that uncritical uses of difference lead to another pitfall – that of obliterating the similarities between cultures in different geographical locations, especially those that confronted each other in unequal relations of colonialism. The tendency of each power to create an identity in opposition to the Other obliterates ‘[p]rofound similarities between Western culture and many of its Others, such as hierarchical social systems, huge economic disparities between members, and the mistreatment and inequality of women’ (Narayan, 2000: 84, italics in original). In this study cautious comparisons with other cultures have helped me to recognize similarities in women’s experiences of work-life collision, motherhood and individualization across the globe. Narayan’s argument is even more relevant than when she made it ten years ago, given the multiple linkages between cultures and nations across the globe, the interactions between people across transnational spaces, mediatization and digitization of public life and the close relationships between national economies. This study therefore upholds a position of ‘difference’ which, to paraphrase Trinh T. (1989), carries creative possibilities of both difference and sameness, but not difference as a synonym for a separate and authentic non-White ‘self’.

Research participants: Self-selected, eager and enthusiastic

The twenty-six women whose accounts inform this book were interviewed via semi-structured interviews and two focus groups between 2006 and 2007. They are employed in various functions in the IT industry, including administration, software engineering, finance, human resources and technical writing. All of them worked with well-established multinational IT (software and software services) companies, including both offshore development centres of major foreign companies and Indian multinationals that had a transnational presence. Both women in management-track positions and non-management-track positions were interviewed. The women were aged between twenty-four and thirty-seven years at the time of the interviews. Of these twenty-three were married, two were single and one was going through marital separation and divorce. Sixteen of the married women had either one or two children (the prevalent norm amongst Indian middle class families). Considering that the mean age for marriage in India is 19.5 years the large number of married women is not surprising. Brief profiles of all interviewees are recorded in the appendix.

There is considerable diversity amongst the research participants in terms of social background: between them they represent about seven different linguistic groups; eleven of them are from the south of India and five from the North; fourteen explicitly identified as Hindu, three identified as Christian and one as Muslim. The remaining eight did not indicate their religion. None of the Hindus belonged to the depressed castes. While I do not claim to have recruited a representative sample for the study, the smaller proportion of religious minorities and the absence of depressed castes amongst my participants reflect their poor representation in the industry (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006), an issue that is discussed in Chapter 4.

Interviews lasted for an average of 2 to 2½ hours. They were conducted in English, the language of business communication in India. However the interviewees’ fluency in the language is considerably varied as the quotes from the interviews will indicate. To preserve the authenticity of their accounts, no attempt has been made to ‘clean up’ quotes or translate them into colloquial English, though some quotes may be shortened for lack of space. In such cases, ellipses are used to indicate the missing text. Since quotes are otherwise verbatim, they often contain grammatical errors and unfinished sentences, indicated by a dash. As with most communication in India, English is supplemented with words from vernacular languages (in this case Hindi and Kannada, the national and regional languages) which have been translated for the reader.

Although I considered contacting interviewees through the human resource departments of various IT companies, I finally decided to use personal contacts in the IT industry and find interviewees through a snowballing method. This method worked well as interviewees inevitably introduced me to their friends and colleagues, thereby soon taking my network much beyond my initial contacts. Being introduced in this mann...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Setting Out to Study Class and Gender in Contemporary India
• 2 Interrogating Reflexive Modernity
• 3 The ‘New’ Indian Middle Class Woman
• 4 Individualism and Responsibility: Women’s Relationships Within Their Families
• 5 Women’s Relationships with Paid Work in the Transnational Economy
• 6 Managing Paid Employment and Family Life
• 7 Relational Reflexivity, Individual Choice and ‘Respectable Modernity’
• Conclusion: The Collective Project of Self
• Notes
• References
• Appendix: Profiles of Interviewees
• Index