Immigration and the subsequent reconstruction of communities has often been described in terms of "transplantation," evoking images of people who neatly pack their roots and "transplant" them later in an orderly manner in the new society.[41] Such a representation glosses over the fact that immigration constitutes an epistemological crisis of great magnitude, involving changes in legal and political status, ruptures in families, struggles for economic mobility, and the tensions between older social and cultural values and the norms and values of the new society. The renegotiation of gender relations in the community is a significant aspect of the epistemological crisis that accompany the complex process of immigration. In this paper, I describe and analyze the varied gender ideologies that co-exist among South Indian immigrants in Pittsburgh and relate those ideologies to actual behavior patterns. Among the South Indian immigrants in Pittsburgh, there is no visible trend either toward complete egalitarianism or toward the perpetuation of traditional patriarchy.[42] An understanding of the gender ideologies and the gaps between ideology and practice will help clarify the direction of changes in gender dynamics among the immigrants in my study.
Gendered behavior among the immigrants in my study is rooted in a gender ideology that they have brought with them to the new society. When the patriarchal gender ideology predominant in Indian social life has been internalized by the immigrants, there is a tendency to conform to the norms that are associated with that ideology. Even though many of the Indian immigrant women have made inroads into male- dominated occupations, their primary identification is with their own families and their surrogate extended families. The renegotiation of gender relations in the community is a significant aspect of the epistemological ruptures that accompanied the complex process of immigration. Traditional gender roles and relations have been perpetuated in some cultural practices, but transformed in others, often resulting in greater egalitarianism among the South Indian immigrants.
The tendency among the Indian immigrants in my study, toward what I characterize as egalitarianism, must be understood within a cultural context that is specific to their situation. I have come to the conclusion that a number of women in Pittsburgh's South Indian community experience greater freedom in comparison to their lives back home or with the lives of their mothers. These women are educated, economically secure, fairly autonomous in decision-making, religious, and family-oriented. They not only confound the "Third World" stereotype constructed by some western feminists, but they are also participants in transforming certain patriarchal practices in their families and communities.[43] The lived experiences of these women and the level of gender consciousness among them may not appear to be adequately feminist (as the term is understood in the West). But I contend that rather than applying gender as a universal construct, women's experiences must be understood in terms of the concrete historical and political practices within which they are embedded. The assumption that women are a coherent group with a homogeneity of interests, problems and desires, regardless of differences in class, ethnic and racial origins, or religion, implies the notion that gender as a category can be applied universally.[44] Recently, some feminists have been calling for greater specificity in studies of gender, emphasizing that gender is a multi-faceted category open to change and variation.[45] Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing suggests that particular forms of "female marginality" must be examined "in relation to the conditions of women's lives -- as immigrants, minorities, wealthy, poor, black, white, sex workers, maids, or academics."[46]
In this context, Donna Gabaccia's point that immigrant women in most cultures generally identify with their families and communities, and do not think of themselves primarily as individuals, is significant.[47] There is a tendency on the part of some Western feminist scholars to assume that once women identify with their families they are left with little or no power. Gabaccia warns that Western feminists' tendency to dismiss massive evidence of immigrant women's identification with their families as "false consciousness" ignores the roots of feminist consciousness in other societies. Although Hindu immigrant women in the late 20th century are not confined to the domestic sphere, as were many Jewish immigrant women in the early 20th century in the United States, they too identify with their families and define themselves according to traditional value systems into which they were socialized prior to immigration.
However, this does not necessarily mean that immigrant women are continuing to lead an existence that keeps them within the clutches of traditional patriarchy. Sydney Stahl Weinberg notes that early Jewish immigrant women "sought and found meaning for their lives within the framework of their own system of values and culture."[48] Similarly, the women in my study find empowerment within the very traditional structures of patriarchy which they subtly change in the immigrant context. I am not forwarding a proposition that there is some kind of a "feminist movement" in the South Indian community. I am merely attempting to gain some understanding of the gender consciousness of these immigrants through their own reflections on life in the U.S. and the comparisons they make with life back in India. When immigrants begin to live in the new society and imbibe that society's values and norms through acculturation, the dominant ideology carried from their countries of origin undergoes a transformation. In this paper, using an analytical framework borrowed from Arlie Hochschild, I map out the varied gender ideologies and practices among the South Indian immigrants in my study and examine the gaps between the ideologies expressed and the actual practices.[49]
In order to examine gender ideologies of the Hindu immigrants in my study and analyze how their gender strategies and practices are often at variance with their ideologies, I have adapted the conceptual framework used by Arlie Hochschild in The Second Shift.50 The ways in which people reconcile their gender ideology with their actual behavior is what Hochschild calls a "gender strategy."
A gender strategy is a plan of action through which a person tries to solve problems at hand, given the cultural notions of gender at play. To pursue a gender strategy, a man draws on beliefs about manhood and womanhood, beliefs that are forged in early childhood and thus anchored to deep emotions. He makes a connection between how he thinks about his manhood, what he feels about it, and what he does. It is the same way for a woman.[51]
Hochschild divides the ideologies of marital roles into "traditional," "transitional," and "egalitarian." A woman with a "traditional" ideology is described as someone who identifies more with her home than her work place; and a man with a similar ideology would be one whose primary identification is with his work rather than with his home and family. Such a woman wants less power than her husband and is willing to make him feel that he is the boss. A person with an "egalitarian" ideology is one who identifies with the same spheres as his or her spouse and wants equal power in the marriage. A person with a "transitional" ideology seeks a blending of the two ideologies and identifies with both the public as well as the domestic spheres. The "transitional" woman, unlike the "traditional" woman, identifies with her role in the workplace as well as at home. But, unlike the "egalitarian" woman, she expects her husband to focus on bringing home a regular salary rather than on caring for the home. Most of the couples interviewed by Hochschild adhered to a transitional ideology. However, there were contradictions between what people said about their ideology and what they actually felt and did.
Hochschild's typology of ideologies can be applied broadly to the South Indian immigrants in my study, but with the understanding that there are cultural factors that make the experiences of the Hindu immigrants quite distinct from Hochschild's respondents.[52] A second, and broader, qualifier to my adoption of Hochschild's typology is that it is being used only as a valuable heuristic tool and not to precisely label each of my respondents as "traditional," "transitional," or "egalitarian" women and men. I do not use these labels to classify individuals, but to describe the ideas they espouse. Further, even when used to describe ideas, these different types of ideology should be seen only as tendencies rather than as rigid categories. Such a categorization is confounded by the reality of people espousing different ideologies for different aspects of life. For instance, a particular respondent who articulates an egalitarian ideology with respect to domestic work and marital roles, supports a traditional ideology with regard to socialization of male and female children.
Among my respondents, there are contradictions between the gender ideologies they articulate and their actual practices, as there were among those in Hochschild's study. But, more significantly, as I sought to apply Hochschild's typology beyond marital roles, I discovered that individuals in my study did not necessarily have a uniform ideological position towards all aspects of life. I present the ideologies and practices of the South Indian immigrants in Pittsburgh with respect to two central areas of their lives: marital roles and aspirations for their children.
I will characterize immigrants as tending toward a "traditional" ideology with regard to marital roles if they espouse patriarchal beliefs and feel that men should have greater power than women. "Traditional" practices would be a translation of this ideology into actions such as men having greater power in decision- making over household finances, and adopting a rigidly gendered division of labor at home. Those with a "transitional" ideology of marital roles lean toward gender equality, but accept the fact that men could have greater power than women. Those couples adhering to this ideology share in the decision- making, but ultimately it is the woman who is primarily responsible for childcare and household chores. Finally, those who espouse an "egalitarian" ideology are those who tend to believe in equality in all spheres. "Egalitarian" practices would include equally sharing in decision-making as well as in housework and child care.
Among the 40 South Indian immigrants I interviewed for my study, 16 articulated a traditional gender ideology with respect to marital roles. Interestingly, an equal proportion of the men (six out of 15) and women (10 out of 25) interviewed subscribed to such an ideology. An equal number of women and about a third of the men also had a transitional ideology of marital roles. Only nine out of the 40 respondents espoused an egalitarian ideology, with a slightly greater proportion of men than women identifying with it. However, as in Hochschild's study, there is a clear discrepancy between the respondents' stated ideological positions and their practices. Based on my observations as well as interviews, it seems that only about a quarter of the 16 respondents with a traditional ideology actually engaged in traditional practices. In fact, about half of my respondents with varied ideologies follow transitional practices (see Table 1).
Ideology- Traditional Transitional Egalitarian N
Practice
Traditional 4 4 0 8
Transitional 7 8 5 20
Egalitarian 5 3 4 12
N 16 15 9 40
Table
1. Ideologies and practices of respondents with respect to marital roles
Having given this overall picture of my respondents' ideologies of marital roles and practices, I will show how these dynamics between ideology and practice are played out in their lives.
In my study, eight of my 40 respondents (four couples), especially those who are in upper-middle class, dual- career households, employ domestic help on a regular basis as they would have done in India. In addition, there are 10 other respondents (five couples) who hire help occasionally. But unlike their counterparts in India, the Indian immigrant women in my study are not solely responsible for supervising household help since both spouses share the task. In India, women rely on domestic help as well as on relatives rather than expect men to become involved in these activities.[53] In my study, however, many of the spouses of women with demanding careers are involved in managing the household and taking care of children. As a result, one can see men with traditional or transitional ideologies participate in an egalitarian domestic division of labor. Two of my women respondents, Satya and Praveena, who are doctors, said that their husbands are primarily responsible for driving their children to dance and religious classes at the temple and contribute to household tasks.
Eleven of the 15 immigrant men I interviewed share domestic work and attribute this to the fact that in India there is easier and cheaper access to domestic help, while in the U.S. their wives cannot do everything on their own without the men's "help".[54] Secondly, the use of electrical appliances redefines the nature of household work and the men with traditional gender ideologies do not consider the use of a vacuum cleaner to be taboo.[55] However, a majority of the men who do share domestic labor still tend to characterize their part of the work as only assisting the women, thereby reinforcing the idea that transitional or egalitarian practices need not necessarily suggest a corresponding ideology. For instance, Arun, a 50- year old male scientist, describes his part at home in these words:
I have accepted some changes willingly or unwillingly, and I am aware of these changes. My wife started working also and I cannot expect the same kind of service [as] from the non- working wife. If she is cooking, I wash the dishes or cut the vegetables or some other kind of help. I kind of share the responsibility.
Arun's use of the word "service," and his reluctant acceptance of a changed situation with respect to the division of labor indicate that his ideology is traditional while his practices are egalitarian.
About 20 out of 25 women I interviewed in the South Indian community in Pittsburgh had either traditional (10) or transitional (10) ideologies. They tended to advocate patriarchal values and acknowledged the superior role of the man in a marriage. However, their practices were not all traditional. In fact, many of them expressed the feeling that they enjoyed greater freedom after immigration.
For 35- year old Shalini, who came to the U.S. as a new bride at the age of 19, life as a homemaker in the U.S. has been quite an empowering experience. By driving to the temple, about 40 miles away from her suburban home, thrice a week she has reached out to the South Indian community and is an integral part of it. She said that she is independent without the constraints of living in an extended family with her mother- in- law and other relatives. In India, the life of a daughter-in-law in a typical patriarchal extended family is quite constrained and her position is rather low in the domestic power hierarchy. Shalini feels that in India she would not have had the freedom to play tennis, avoid cooking when she was not "in the mood," or socialize to the extent that she has grown accustomed to in the United States.
Forty-eight-year old Shanta, who works in a hospital, was one of the women who said she felt more "liberated" after coming to the U.S. She said she was now quite "adventurous:"
I was raised to think that I will grow up, have kids, be a wife, a housewife, a mother. When I first came here, I took up a job because it was an economic necessity but later I began to like it and enjoyed being with company. There have been 75% changes in my life after coming here. If I had stayed in India I would have slowly become a housewife as my mother did, and not do any of the things I do now. I go on holidays all over the world on my own.... Also I must say that Arun is quite good in allowing [emphasis mine] me to go on these trips.
From the above, it is obvious that some of my respondents attribute changes in their attitudes and behavior to immigration to the United States. Shanta, for instance, had not visualized having a career and being economically independent while she was in India.
Thirty-seven-year old Anita, who came to the U.S. 15 years ago and works as a computer programmer, said she also started experiencing, like Shanta, a sense of "liberation" after coming to the United States. If she had lived in an extended family in India she would not have had the autonomy which she has as an immigrant. This autonomy is particularly evident for her in the performance of religious rituals:
I enjoy religion here more because I have greater freedom. In India, it becomes a ritual, you do it only because you have to, here you do it because you want to. There, I have to get up early and do all the things that our mothers used to do and then feed everyone. Here, I can wake up at 9 and still do the puja and I enjoy the flexibility.
She feels more in control of her home in the U.S. and experiences a sense of empowerment. From my observations of Anita's family on different occasions, Anita and her husband, 43- year old Satish, seem to have adopted egalitarian practices. In her interview, however, Anita gave me the impression that her autonomy in the decision- making process was because of her husband's "broad- mindedness:"
I don't feel that my role is less or his role is more, because of the equal opportunity that he gives me [emphasis mine]. ...he gives me the opportunity to decide for myself and that is how I have become very confident.
In spite of their egalitarian practices, the traditional ideology of both Shanta and Anita is obvious when they describe the power hierarchy in the household. Their respective spouses "allow" them to do certain things and "give" them the opportunities. Espousing a traditional ideology is a common gender strategy adopted by many Indian women even when power and control within the family are more or less equitably distributed. This is quite similar to some of Hochschild's couples who have a traditional ideology but maintain egalitarian practices. Many of the Indian women in my study seem to feel that they should not give people in the community the impression that they are the ones in control. They feel that a man who is "dominated" by his wife is not a respected member of the community. But it will be a mistake to assume that all those women who have traditional ideologies follow egalitarian practices or that they are entirely content with their life situation.
Ten of the 25 female respondents I interviewed are homemakers, out of whom three have previously been students in the U.S. All of the homemakers as well as over half of those who work outside the home have traditional or transitional ideologies with respect to male and female roles within the family. However, while homemakers tend to have traditional or transitional practices, more women who work outside tend to have egalitarian practices.
Most of the immigrant homemakers I interviewed take care of almost all the chores themselves. They have a clear sense of the gendered division of labor -- the women took care of the home, while the men earned their living. When some of the homemakers go to India for a long vacation, they cook and freeze food for their husbands who "cannot" cook for themselves and do not like to eat out. Some male and female respondents also felt that women, both homemakers and those who have jobs, do more work outside the home when compared with their lives back in India. They drive their kids to school, to the temple for dance and music classes, or for piano and ballet lessons and other activities.
Thirty- five- year old Lavanya, one of the homemakers I interviewed, considers her upbringing to have been extremely traditional. Her gender ideology is traditional and so is her practice. She said that once a woman is married then "we (women) do whatever they (men) want us to do." She wants her daughter to be raised as a "proper" Indian girl and even observed the traditional puberty rituals for her.[56] These rituals, primarily because of the acute embarrassment they cause to the girls involved, have been given up not only by most immigrants, but also by many families in urban India.
Lavanya attributed her participation in the Indian community to her husband's motivation. It was apparent to me that she had a number of friends and was active in the social circle in Pittsburgh, and it was not entirely on her husband's initiative that she came to be an important part of the Indian community. But Lavanya was modest and unwilling to admit in the interview that she has a primary role to play in determining her family's collective activities and reiterated that she merely followed her husband's wishes. She preferred to be seen as a follower of her husband rather than as someone who is an initiator.
However, Lavanya did admit to experiencing some uneasiness with her situation as she ends up taking care of her home almost single- handedly without much help from her husband. She said that she would have liked her husband to take care of some of the chores or at least offer her a glass of water when she was tired. She said that before she got her driver's license, her husband would do grocery shopping and chauffeur the kids but that changed after she learned how to drive. Once she started driving she became responsible for not only the work at home but, like many American homemakers, also for things outside the home.
Although driving allowed immigrant women to become more independent of their spouses, it made them fall into another form of gendered labor, one in which many American women are already embedded. Immigrant women's ability to drive brings with it additional responsibilities associated with the traditional homemaker role in the U.S., such as shopping for the home and driving children around. Lavanya's attitude might seem to be in complete harmony with her socialization, but her immigrant situation made her share some of the additional burdens that American homemakers' experience.
A male respondent, Satish, said that immigrant Indian women are burdened with responsibilities outside the home that the men usually took care of in India. According to Satish, the women are actually doing more work (like taking care of bills and insurance problems) which in India were part of the man's contribution to the home. There is thus the danger of falling into the "breadwinner/homemaker" trap of the industrialized world.[57] So changes have not necessarily been totally liberating for the Indian immigrant women and there is the danger of falling from one kind of subjugation and dominance into another.
These ideologies of marital roles articulated by my respondents are only to a small extent reflected in their aspirations for their children and the way they socialize them. Whatever their beliefs may be with respect to the position of women and men in a marriage, they don't necessarily seem to apply the same standards to their daughters and sons.
I will characterize the immigrants in my study as tending toward a "traditional" gender ideology with respect to the aspirations they have for their children if they have differing expectations for their male and female children. Parents according greater priority to the education of a son over that of a daughter is an example of "traditional" gendered practice. Those with a "transitional" gender ideology with respect to their children believe in gender equality, but have greater expectations for a son's success than that of a daughter. Parents who get both their sons and daughters educated, but seek to channel their sons' energies toward a professional career while they encourage their daughters to settle for more "feminine" occupations are engaged in transitional practices. An egalitarian gender ideology in this case would be a belief in gender equality for their children in all areas of life. Such an ideology is reflected in practices such as providing boys and girls equal opportunities to pursue career goals.
Ideology- Traditional Transitional Egalitarian N
Practice
Traditional 0 2 2 4
Transitional 1 11 18 30
Egalitarian 0 4 2 6
N 1 17 22 40
Table
2. Gender ideologies and practices of respondents with respect to aspirations
for children
Among the South Indian immigrants in my study, 22 of the 40 parents I interviewed expressed an egalitarian gender ideology, while 17 others espoused a transitional ideology. It is remarkable that only one of the respondents offered a traditional ideology with respect to aspirations for children, while as many as 16 identified with a traditional ideology of marital roles. As far as practices are concerned, 30 out of my 40 respondents engaged in transitional practices regarding their children. Perhaps as a mark of their middle- and upper-middle class composition, the discrepancy between ideology and practice with respect to their aspirations for children isnot as glaring as it was for marital roles (see Table 2). My findings on this issue are similar to those of Naidoo and Davis whose study revealed that South Asian women in Canada have a "dualistic attitude," one that is "traditional" with regard to marriage, family and religion, but "contemporary" on values related to education and careers outside the home.[58] In order to further understand this "dualistic" attitude, I examine the connection between the gender ideologies and practices as they appear in the lives of my respondents and their children.
In Rao and Rao's study among college students in India, it was found that the attitudes of people are gendered as far as children's success was concerned.[59] Men seem to think that parents derive more satisfaction from a son's success than a daughter's and that girls should not be granted as much freedom and independence as boys. Few people in the Indian community in Pittsburgh, however, expressed such views in my interviews. Parents seem to derive equal satisfaction from their daughters' as well as their sons' successes and spent a great deal of time, money and energy in training their children for a bright future.
This becomes manifest especially in relation to children's education. Since all of them belong to a class of professionals they believe that their children should be given the best opportunities regardless of their gender. Venugopal, a 42-year old male physician, articulated an egalitarian ideology when he said that he hopes to send both his son and daughter to Ivy League schools for professional education. Even if the girls learn a classical dance like Bharata Natyam, they are not expected to make a career of it, rather they are encouraged to become physicians themselves.
However, even though many of my respondents have egalitarian ideologies with regard to children's education, they engage in transitional practices when it comes to their children's career choices. About 18 of my 40 respondents have voiced an egalitarian ideology, but engage in transitional practices. For instance, within the medical profession a number of parents feel strongly that their daughters should keep away from surgery as it would disrupt their family life. My respondents, Shanta and Arun, in separate interviews, said that they discouraged their daughter from going to medical school as it was not necessary for a girl to have a high-pressure career which will affect her "biological clock" and her family life; as a result, their daughter is now majoring in business management. Shanta felt that a woman's income is secondary and only supplements the man's. She is more worried about the career of her son who she expects will be the primary wage earner for his family. This shows a transitional gender ideology since she has different expectations for her son and her daughter. I say "transitional" because they do believe that their daughter should have a career but not something as demanding as medicine.
Interestingly, even those respondents who espoused a traditional ideology of marital roles and engage in traditional practices at home showed a strong inclination toward an egalitarian or transitional gender ideology with respect to their aspirations for children. One such respondent was Lavanya, who herself grew up in an orthodox Brahmin household where it was considered inappropriate for teenage girls to even go out of the house unaccompanied. She said that her desire for education was nipped in the bud by her father who was a conventional patriarch and did not believe in girls' education. She said that although she no longer has an interest in returning to school, she wants her daughter to have a well-rounded education and be given opportunities that she herself was deprived of.
But, this tendency toward greater egalitarianism with respect to children's education does not manifest itself uniformly in other areas of life, particularly in terms of marriage and dating.
Thirty-one of my 40 respondents have children who are teenagers or younger, but when their children get older they seem to want them to marry within the community irrespective of whether they have sons or daughters. Many parents in the Indian community in Pittsburgh have arranged marriages for their children. However, there have been a few cases where young Indian American women have married white American men of their own choice. Since few of the Indian immigrants in Pittsburgh have children who are of "marriageable age," I do not have enough data of my own to comment upon their practices in this area.[60]
However, in a study about conflicts and communication gaps between the first and second generation Indian immigrants in Southern California, Priya Agarwal described the feelings of a young Indian- American woman who is frustrated with the traditional expectations parents have for her because of her gender.
...the second generation Indian woman feels that old- world gender roles are still rigidly being upheld for her.... `Throughout my life, society told me I could be whatever I wanted because I was smart and worked hard. Then, suddenly I become of `marriageable age,' and I am told I have limits because I am a woman and should marry young. It makes me sick that women are still so defined by men'.[61]
Many of Agarwal's respondents attributed the gap in gender ideology (particularly, with regard to issues of marriage and dating) between parents and children to the fact that for the parental generation, India is a "pure space" untouched by change. The rapid changes, particularly, in urban India are ignored by most immigrants and they construct an imaginary world where gender ideology is at its patriarchal zenith.
Agarwal found that Indian parents are more concerned about their girls dating than they are about their sons. Although my respondents expressed a transitional ideology, their practices and strategies are often traditionally gendered in this regard. One of my male respondents, Vaman Rao said that it was important to have an open relationship with children, especially girls, as they are more vulnerable to the problems of American society.[62] This discriminatory attitude toward daughters and sons does not seem to surface much in the way parents divide household tasks among their children.
As far as household chores are concerned, almost all my respondents said that boys and girls have similar chores to do. For example, children, irrespective of their gender, are expected to take care of their own rooms and do other small chores in the house. However, six of my 15 male respondents pointed out that girls are given more feminine chores like dish-washing, while boys took out garbage and mowed lawns. One of my respondents, Vishnuvardhan, said that he does not differentiate between his boy and girl at this stage as the children were young (13 and 11), but that he can visualize asking his son rather than his daughter to join him in playing tennis or working on his car. His wife, Lavanya, said that she is trying to make her daughter more aware of her femininity by telling her to be soft-spoken and training her to perform domestic religious rituals. These examples reflect the fact that while a majority (22) of my respondents espoused an egalitarian ideology with respect to their children, most of them (30) engaged in transitional practices.
My respondents' attitudes towards their children could also be seen in the organization of children's activities at the temple as well as in the nature of participation by boys and girls in those activities. There was universal agreement among both male and female respondents about girls having more to do in the temple than boys. Dance is one of the mechanisms through which Indian tradition is transmitted outside India and it is mostly women and girls who are the transmitters of this tradition.[63] Most of my respondents' daughters are either learning or have learnt Bharata Natyam or Kuchipudi in the temple. This means that they spend at least two to four hours a week learning classical dance, dressed in traditional Indian attire. The parents feel happy that they are able to provide something "traditional and Indian" for their girls. The result is that in the process boys are being alienated from the temple.
Respondents who have either occupied key administrative positions at the temple in the past or do so currently have expressed their desire to create something for the boys to do at the temple. In making this distinction, they are assuming that boys and girls need different activities to sustain a commitment and feel an attachment to the institution. The temple recently introduced ping pong to attract the boys on Friday evenings, under the assumption that girls will be kept busy with dance.
Learning classical Indian dance is considered as much a feminine trait as learning ballet in the West. In spite of such feelings in the community and against the initial reservations of his own parents, one boy has been studying Kuchipudi at the temple for the past few years. This non- conformity has disturbed the boy's parents, but as his father Vaman Rao said, "we have learnt to live with it." This is clearly a case of egalitarian ideology (because they believe their son and daughter to be equal), but transitional practice. Similarly, another woman, Satya, told me that her son wanted to learn dance along with his sister but she and her husband decided that his time was better spent taking tennis lessons. They discouraged him from learning Bharata Natyam, she said, but without making him feel that they are doing it because he is a boy. I would classify this kind of behavior as traditional practice emerging from a transitional ideology.
It was only in the last thirty years in India that classical dance has become almost exclusively a women's art form. Prior to that, girls, especially of upper castes and upper classes, were discouraged from performing on stage as it was compared to the devadasi system in which the temple dancers were seen also as prostitutes. In fact, in certain dance forms, such as Kuchapudi , men dressed up as women and performed in public. However, in post- independence India, upper class and upper caste families began sending their daughters to learn this relatively exclusive and expensive art form. In the last twenty years, India's "high culture" has also been transported to the West mainly by immigrant women and girls, as well as by touring performers from India. Boys learning classical dance in contemporary times is, thus, seen as subverting an important traditional gender practice even though it could be legitimated on the basis that it was an ancient practice. These varied gender ideologies and practices among the South Indian immigrants in my study should be seen against the cultural backdrop of representations of the `ideal' Hindu woman and the role of the mass media in fostering and/or reinforcing these cultural representations.
The Indians in my study were largely socialized into a patriarchal and patrilocal society in which the woman typically has power only as a mother of a son. People who have been socialized into a traditional Hindu culture believe that the woman must either be protected by the male andeven worshipped, or else must be controlled. For instance, identification with an epic figure such as Sita contributes to the Hindu woman's adaptation to married life in her husband's extended family and prepares her for her obligatory participation in the family's patriarchal rituals. Many of these ideals seem to be fully incorporated into the lives of most Hindu wives and daughters- in- law. The traditional ideology of marital roles articulated by respondents like Lavanya in my study illustrates the extent to which this ideology has been internalized by women. Others who continued to espouse a traditional ideology as a strategy in spite of transitional practices, did so because of their socialization into a culture in which the woman is expected to follow the wishes of her husband. There is some empirical evidence to show the prevalence of the pativratya ideology among Hindu women in India.
Vanaja Dhruvarajan, in a qualitative study of a small village in southern India, found the ideology of pativratya to be widely prevalent among her respondents. She summarizes this ideology as it is expressed vividly by some of her respondents:
The wife as pativrata should be his true helpmate by helping him in every possible way to achieve his goals in life. She should never think that she has an existence apart from her husband.... A pativrata always eats whatever is left after her husband has eaten.... Obeying the command of one's husband without question is a mark of virtue and good conduct... He does not have to pay attention even when she is in pain. It does not matter whether he is true to her or not.... She believes Pati pratyaksha devatha (Husband is the Living God).... A true pativrata has extraordinary powers which she accumulates by doing austere services to her husband... She should listen to stories of great pativratas in her spare time so that she is inspired by them .[64]
Dhruvarajan reports that many of her respondents actually suggested that it might be destructive to give women equal freedom as men. The purity of a woman's body is extremely important, so a man must protect her and she should maintain ritual purity at the cost of her freedom and autonomy.[65]
Dhruvarajan found that women who live in extended families are more likely to follow the ideology of pativratya with great deference than those who are part of a nuclear family. To be a good wife signifies being a good woman. She also found that the Hindu epics and mythologies continue to provide models of the ideal woman, reinforcing the ideology of pativratya. These values are transmitted from one generation to the other, not only informally at home, but also through folk culture, including village concerts and dramas, and the mass media.
In recent times, the most popular shows on Indian television have been serialized episodes from the Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. In 1988, the Ramayana was on television every Sunday morning and millions of people stayed glued to their sets and empathized with the trials and tribulations of many of its central characters. Sita's image as the pativrata was once again resurrected as a character with whom women ought to identify. In 1989, after the Ramayana completed its run, the other major epic, Mahabharata, took over television drama and enjoyed even greater popularity.
Popular culture in India is replete with notions of ideal womanhood and especially now, at a time when the country is witnessing the rise of a Hindu fundamentalist movement, images of women like Sita and Savitri have become a part of everyday discourse. When asked what her concept of a liberated Indian woman was, one of the spokespeople of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the right-wing Hindu fundamentalist party, said: "She is a combination of Sita and Savitri. We need to fight against the atrocities committed on women, but fight without rebelling or upsetting the family".[66] Many Indian feminists are now concerned that the resurgence of fundamentalism might well mean the further perpetuation of patriarchal practices.
The power of the media to create, select and convey particular kinds of images about women cannot be underestimated. Participants at India's first National Women's Studies Conference held in 1981 blamed the media for promoting stereotypes of women. The traditional roles of the subservient female and the dominant male are repeatedly reinforced on the Indian screen. A woman is considered to be a goddess by society because of her readiness to sacrifice for her family members.[67] Indian movies represent the ideal woman as one who revels in suffering and sacrifice. An analysis of the mistreatment of women in society as portrayed in films shows that films follow the existing male dominant ideology.[68] According to the authors, such portrayals reaffirm the patriarchal order and perpetuate the existing dichotomy of sex roles.
Even movies and television shows which claim to portray progressive women asserting their individuality rarely help promote positive attitudes about women. Rebellious female characters are shown to eventually succumb to dominant patriarchal ideologies, and those who overcome them are shown to be doing it at some cost.[69] Women are portrayed as facing a large number of insurmountable obstacles and by the time a divorced woman pulls her life back together she undergoes traumatic experiences. Because of their easy accessibility, film and television, reach out both to the educated as well as the illiterate, and to urban as well as rural people. Whether the images presented in the media are apparently "progressive" or blatantly regressive, they seem to contribute to the reinforcement of patriarchal values among people in various sections of society.
Most of the first-generation Indian immigrants in my study grew up in India amidst these images of women and gender roles. Moreover, with the global technological revolution in the 1990s, popular culture in India is quite easily transmitted to immigrants in other parts of the world. The villagers in Dhruvarajan's study, the urbanites in India, and the Indian immigrants in the United States or the Middle-East all watch the same shows and films through videos and on ethnic television. Appadurai calls this kind of electronic transmission of images across the world, "mediascapes."
What is most important about these mediascapes is that they provide...large and complex repertoires of images, narratives and ethnoscapes to viewers throughout the world.... The lines between the realistic and the fictional landscapes they see are blurred, so that the further away these audiences are from the direct experiences of metropolitan life, the more likely are they to construct imagined worlds which are chimerical, aesthetic, even fantastic objects....[70]
The "imagined" world for immigrants is India with all its legends and folktales; and often the patriarchal images in the media appear to be quite real for those who watch and internalize them. Children born in the United States are also exposed to this mythical world through the media, influencing their socialization.
It is not surprising, therefore, that I found a majority of my respondents (both male and female) espousing a traditional ideology of marital roles. One such respondent, Malathi, has a large video collection of all the mythological films which her family watches regularly. When children are socialized through the attractive medium of videos and television serials about Sita and Savitri, they might internalize the patriarchal ideologies embedded in such narratives.
The view that traditional Hindu ideals of womanhood may have negative influences is challenged by some scholars who assert that the idea of women as weak and inferior was in fact inherited from the West.[71] According to this perspective, the status of Indian women was traditionally quite high and it was Western imperialism that magnified the image of the oppressed Indian woman. In my study, a male scientist, 45- year old Rajaraman, speaks about egalitarian gender ideology in Hindu philosophy and the actual patriarchal practice:
If you understand our scriptures and literature correctly, the place of women in India is so wonderful, although it is not practiced. Sita, Draupadi... and all great women saints were held in great esteem. Maybe it is Western influence, but the general impression given is that India is a macho country and that women don't have much freedom and all that. But I don't think that women are greatly mistreated. If you worship goddesses and you see their form in all women, how can you mistreat them?
Even as this respondent speaks of gender equality, he is reinforcing the image of the ideal woman as pure and saintly which, far from being egalitarian, can be a terrible burden. This assumption that Hinduism accords women a highly respected position has been promoted by nationalist historians in India.[72] This is only another facet of patriarchy that is couched within the construction of the woman as goddess. Moreover, not all my respondents subscribe to the thesis that there was greater equality in India, especially those who lived in an extended family under the supervisory role of the mother- in- law.
However, the cultural constructions of the "ideal" Hindu woman and their propagation through the mass media cannot entirely account for the variations in gender ideologies and practices among the immigrants in my study. Contemporary social changes in India, literacy and education, their urban backgrounds in India should also be considered to explain tendencies toward more transitional and egalitarian practices.
Gender ideologies of immigrants in the United States can thus be compared and contrasted with the gender ideologies and strategies of urban, educated women and men in India. Most of the Indian immigrants to the United States were educated in urban or semi- urban India and either pursue higher education or work as professionals in the U.S. Shamita Das Dasgupta's study about sex roles of Asian Indian women in the United States revealed that the most important factor in determining non- traditional gender roles might be the number of years an individual has gone to school in the United States. She says that it is not just the length of stay in the United States, but participation in the Western education system that generates egalitarian thinking among the Asian Indian women in her study.[73]
Fewer than half (15 out of 40) of my respondents went to school in the U.S., but the backgrounds of some of the others suggest that Dasgupta's findings could be extended to include the influences of liberal education in India. One of my respondents, Ramani, who is in her early forties and works in a hospital, was raised and educated in a major metropolitan city in India (in a Westernized school system). Her egalitarian gender ideology or practices, she asserted, are no different now than they were when she was in India. She said she and her siblings were raised with an emphasis on good education and that there was no strict gendered division of labor at home. Ramani and her 45- year old husband Suresh share the work at home as do many other dual- career couples in my study. Suresh attributed their egalitarian lifestyle to the fact that he is from Kerala, a southern Indian state not only with a history of matrilineal societies but also has the highest literacy rates in the country for both men and women. He explained:
It is the woman who plays an important role in the family. Seventy five years ago, there were certain families in which women had their B.A. degrees. Why? Because the woman in that house had decided that her daughter will do her B.A. This still holds good to this day.
But their egalitarianism is certainly not representative of the attitudes and practices of all educated Indians, including other respondents in my study who are embedded in traditional ideologies.
An examination of the context in which people of my respondents' social class (and mine) were educated in India, especially women, gives us a sense of why there is no necessary correlation between education and egalitarianism. Rama Mehta, in her study of Western educated Hindu women in India, sought to understand the influence of education over the traditional value system of women.[74] A majority of the 50 women she interviewed said that their parents sent them to college to bide time till marriage rather than to acquire proficiency in a particular discipline. Education was not a way to attain economic independence, as working outside the home was against the norms established by the cult of domesticity. These women's mothers, who were themselves not formally educated, realized the need for their daughters to be educated just enough to make them "eligible brides" but they did not encourage unmarried women to work. Once married, many of these women said their husbands were proud to have educated wives, but did not want them to work outside the home, as it was necessary for them to be home with their children. An example from my study of someone who expressed a similar traditional gender ideology is Venugopal, who went to medical school in urban India in the 1970s. His rationale for marrying a homemaker was as follows:
I married a homemaker only for two reasons. If two people are working, you don't need a marriage. In my case, I don't have to make her work. That is an advantage she has. The second thing is I wanted somebody to be more attentive to my kids. She is very dedicated to the kids. One- third of her time is completely for the kids. She runs around and does a lot for the kids.... I look at her lifestyle and I think that she got more than she bargained for.
Venugopal, like the respondents in the Raos' study, believes that women are better off if they give primacy to the family and the husband over their own personal ambitions. He believes that marriage is the most crucial and important phase in a woman's life, and all other pursuits -- intellectual, educational or political -- are merely means for attaining the most suitable husband. Although Venugopal has these expectations for his wife and rationalizes any "rebellion" on her part as the price of Americanization, he is prepared to send his daughter as well as his son to an Ivy League school. Thus in terms of his children's education his aspirations may appear to be egalitarian, but I would wait until his 10- year old daughter grows up before writing the last word on it.
In this paper, I have examined the gender ideologies among the immigrants in my study and compared them with their practices. There are gaps in ideology and practice that can be explained in terms of a gender strategy. It is often strategically convenient for women to pursue egalitarian practices, but voice a transitional ideology. A number of female as well as male respondents espoused a traditional or transitional ideology while they were engaged in egalitarian practices. It gives men the satisfaction of being in control and makes the women feel empowered at the same time.
In addition to the discrepancy between ideology and practice, I also found that the immigrants in my study tended toward a particular gender ideology with respect to their own marital roles and quite another with respect to their aspirations for their children. However, as many of my respondents also tended to follow transitional or egalitarian practices, I sought to explain the variations through more contemporary social changes in India. These social changes and their influences on my respondents, along with the effects of immigration, could also explain the nature of participation and leadership roles of South Indian women at the S.V. temple. For many of my women respondents, life in the U.S. after immigration has been to some extent a liberating experience. They are able to exercise a degree of autonomy to do certain things that would have been difficult had they been living in India. For some others, however, life in the U.S. has only been a continuation of their urban experiences in India.