narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

a solution the gender inequality both in structural and cultural terms. This needs to be
subjected to further analytical scrutiny by deconstructing the very idea of the ‘productive’
and the ‘professional’ as highly masculinized and capitalistic concepts that has
incorporated women into it but has left largely untouched its patriarchal bias. For
instance, it is interesting to note the ways in which not only professional middle-class
men but also some professional middle-class working women narrativize ‘homemaking’
as a less important female-only space of “house-wives”. They express their desire to
‘other’ this space by a condescending rejection of it and a desire to distance the
professional ‘self’ from this inferior ‘other’ (Walker, 1994).
Forty-two year-old Arna, a manager in the education sector, assumes an unspoken
pride in her body language and tone in narrating how her busy professional life does not
allow her a,
“leisurely ‘useless’ waste of time and the luxury of spending husband’s money
like the ‘housewives’ who cannot appreciate the hard labour of ‘working’ woman
who have to deal with ‘more important issues’!”
Fifty-year-old woman, Dipti, who is a doctor by profession is disdainful of female addas
as,
“unintelligent and typically feminine in their unproductive engagement with
nothing better than family politics, gossips, rivalries, television soaps and at best
a bit of NGO work!”
Forty-two year old Dalia who is Arna’s colleague and also an intimate friend adds,
“I would go crazy if I had to stay back home to contemplate what spices I should
put in the cooking- coriander powder or mustard? It’s such a ‘non-intellectual
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