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"Couch Potatoes and Super-Women": Gender, Migration, and the Emerging Discourse on Housework among Asian Indian Immigrants

VIBHA BHALLA


      IN APRIL 1991 a letter written by Ms. Subbi Mathur and titled "Couch Potatoes and Super-Women" appeared in India Abroad, the first newspaper of the expatriate Indian community in the United States.1 A quasi-humorous piece of writing, the letter focused on the household division of labor within Indian immigrant families in the U.S. and particularly noted Indian immigrant wives' increasing workload as a consequence of migration. The letter portrayed Indian women's transformation into "super-women," who were continuously juggling increasing work at home along with their paid work. In sharp contrast, the letter labeled Indian immigrant husbands as "couch potatoes," or indolent men, who seemed oblivious to their wives' increasing household responsibilities, remained glued to their couches, and did not participate in household chores. The letter stated:
Indian husbands rule the household from their couches (any resemblance to a couch potato is entirely incidental) through most of their married and child-rearing years, without much ado about anything ... Indian women living abroad inherit duties of both worlds. Most hold decent jobs....
      After putting in a "man(!)day's" work, Indian women muster fresh energy to perform the menial tasks without which a house stops being a home.... In spite of the multitude of gadgets, the workload of Indian wives here is more demanding than that of their counterparts in India who have less amenities but more household help.... Not having the immediate family's support, raising children becomes a lonely job filled with daily anguish and self-doubt. An Indian husband watches his wife with a condescending and philosophical air while she struggles with the daily trials and tribulations of "their" offspring.... While they are trying their best not to fly away in a super-women costume, the ever patient Indian husband waits for his dinner, relaxing on a couch, while enriching his mind with news around the world on all television channels.2
 		1
      This characterization of Indian immigrant husbands as couch potatoes was rather surprising, since men in India, husbands or not, rarely participated in everyday domestic tasks; the strict separation of spheres dictated by Indian cultural norms deemed domesticity as woman's domain and economic responsibilities as the male realm. Despite its drollness, the critical undertones toward Indian immigrant husbands reflected a new desire, at least in this letter's author, for male assistance in household chores, a remarkable development since it was contrary to Indian cultural practices. What was amazing was that this letter was not unique in displaying changing expectations towards male participation in domestic tasks; it was, in fact, part of the fourth round of an exchange occurring since 1978 among the expatriate Indian men and women in the "Letters to the Editor" pages of India Abroad. Indian immigrant wives in the U.S. were increasingly voicing their complaints about their escalating domestic responsibilities and displaying new expectations for their spouses to ease their growing domestic chores. Implicit in their complaints and their simple wish for male participation in household tasks lay the seeds of overturning age-old Indian family norms as they applied to male and female responsibilities and, ultimately, determined their gendered identities. 2
      Indian women's complaints that their household burden had increased as a consequence of migration and their attempts at transforming traditional male-female identities in the domestic division of labor are not unique. Literature on immigrant families has amply documented family as a key site where immigrant men and women struggle to renegotiate gendered responsibilities and power.3 Families, Nancy Foner points out, are gendered, cultural units that undergo transformation after migration, and this development is particularly noticeable among first-generation immigrants.4 Foner argues that the constant interaction between three variables—culture, structure, and agency—are instrumental in altering relationships within immigrant families. The structural conditions immigrants encounter in the host country, especially their relationship to the labor market, is pivotal in bringing about changes within families. The inability of immigrant men to find work in the U.S. forces women to enter the labor force and becomes the central factor in transforming gender relationships. Women's greater participation in the waged labor force strikes at the heart of gendered identities within families that traditionally view men as primary economic providers. Along with women's economic contributions to sustain the family economy, the cultural influences of the host society also affect immigrant families. Immigrants, Foner argues, are active agents who constantly act upon changing circumstances. Migration's dislocations provide women with new opportunities to renegotiate power and recreate family patterns that are favorable to them.5 3
      Along with Foner, other works on immigrant families have also located them as arenas of conflict where immigrant men and women struggle. In doing so, these studies have also drawn attention to the particularities of a given migration stream, as well as to noneconomic factors that strengthen women's position within families. Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo's study of Mexican families highlighted the role of female networks in renegotiating gender relationships.6 Nazli Kibria's work on Vietnamese immigrant families further emphasized the salience of noneconomic factors and demonstrated the vital role played by the gender imbalance within the Vietnamese community in transforming family relationships.7 Kibria also argued that women selectively challenged particular aspects of family structure to benefit their position and rarely challenged patriarchy.8 4
      A large majority of the studies on immigrant families have focused on working-class families. Since the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, many skilled, professional immigrants have migrated to the United States, and this migration stream includes professional women. Our knowledge of the issues that shape the struggles of middle-class immigrant families and the ways in which women's skilled, professional work shapes their domestic responsibilities after migration remains sketchy. How does migration affect the workings of immigrant families where both men and women occupy equivalent positions in the professional work force? The family experiences of Indian immigrants in the U.S. allow us insights into the ways class and women's professional work shape domestic practices after migration. 5
      This article documents the emerging public discourse on the domestic division of work between Indian men and women in the United States as it emerged through approximately forty readers' letters written to the expatriate Indian newspaper India Abroad from 1978 to 1992. These letters highlight the gendered nature of Indian settlement and help us examine the issues confronting Indian immigrant families in the U.S. and their role in transforming women's activities within Indian families. The article argues that migration's adversity forced Indian wives to carve out new gender identities. As Indian women began moving away from Indian traditions that defined the domestic arena exclusively as woman's domain, they began propagating new identities that argued for principles of shared domestic responsibility with men. These letters indicate that the loss of class privileges, especially the loss of domestic help, as a result of migration, strongly influenced women's desire to redistribute domestic tasks. However, in the call for redefining male-female domestic roles lay issues of gender, class, and identity. While women were attempting to preserve their class privileges, they were also trying to move away from their primary and traditional identities as wives and mothers and preserve dual identities as wives and as workers. 6
      Gendered identities are shaped by class, and the letters clearly reveal the women's middle-class origins. Along with the reference to "household help," pointing to middle-class women's privilege of employing women to take care of their domestic responsibilities, the use of the term "man(!)day's work" suggests a comparison of woman's paid work to male work. It also draws attention to middle-class women's entrance into the professional work force, which was increasing since India's independence in 1947. The command of English as evident in Ms. Subbi Mathur's letter further implied privileged upbringing since middle- and upper-class families commonly provided their children with English education. These new, dual identities as wives and workers were permanent, and women intended to reproduce them in their daughters; these identities are also particular to Indian immigrants in the U.S. 7
      To draw conclusions on the basis of forty letters may seem rather ambitious, since the letters have their limitations. They are not part of any comprehensive study, nor do they constitute a substantial sample either of the Indian community or of Indian immigrant women. The letters do not provide background details of their writers, their paths of migration, the relationships of letter writers to the labor market, or the economic inequities between men and women within families. Despite these limitations, the letters are an important source and provide a foothold from which to explore the private workings of the Indian families. The impromptu nature of these letters, the issue-based engagement among complete strangers, and the diverse voices of Indians across the United States represented in them provide new insights into the problems encountered by Indian women in the early phase of post-1965 migration. Most importantly, the developing discourse on the topic of women's problems seen in these letters helps us historicize this issue and detail the transformations that occurred within Indian families in the U.S. during this period. 8
      This article further argues that India Abroad played a vital role in mediating this gendered conflict. Its "Letters to the Editor" page emerged as a site where immigrant men and women began to thrash out publicly their private struggles. The newspaper in particular provided Indian women across the United States a space to form a women's community to strategize and to organize, or perhaps at least to imagine, forms of domestic resistance. The exigency of women's problems and the women's consequent determination to change the prevalent male-female relationship vis-à-vis domestic work is evident from the frequent discussions of this issue by women writing to India Abroad. Women increasingly wrote letters to the newspaper drawing attention to their domestic concerns, a notable development given the fact that they rarely wrote letters to the newspaper; these letters also brought to the fore other women's issues that were rarely reported in the newspaper. This article further contends that the public nature of this debate demonstrated a keen desire for transformation not only at the level of the individual family but throughout the Indian community. 9
      Large-scale Indian migration to the United States began with the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. In 1970 there were 172,132 Indians in the United States, a population that increased to 286,120 in 1980 and 815,447 in 1990.9 As Indians migrated under the labor certification provisions of this act, the consequent migration was very selective, resulting in the settlement of a highly educated and professional Indian community, primarily as engineers, scientists, and physicians. Even Indian women were disproportionately employed in specialized skills. In 1980 more than half of the Asian Indian population in the U.S. was employed in managerial and professional specialty occupations; among women, more than one-third of those employed were in managerial occupations.10 In 1990, 49 percent of Indian men and 35 percent of Indian women were in professional and managerial work.11 10
      Studies on Indian immigrants have noted the development of more egalitarian gender relations within Indian families after arrival in the United States with greater male participation in domestic work, although the degree and nature of this participation varied among families.12 These studies suggest that the professional nature of women's work, the distance from the immigrants' Indian homes, and the subsequent social isolation in the U.S. brought about a closer relationship between Indian husbands and wives. A recent work by Sheba George on Indian nurses from the state of Kerala has added new dimensions to our knowledge of the domestic redistribution of work within immigrant families. Like other researchers, George found transformations occurring within Indian families and also noted the uneven degree of change within families. She found that the largest transformation occurred in families where women became the primary earners and concluded that the paths of migration and immigrants' resultant relationship to the U.S. labor market played a central role in shaping this transformation. The need for nurses in the United States resulted in many women's emergence not only as primary migrants but also as primary economic providers, since their spouses often encountered problems in locating work. This economic role reversal and the shift work of nurses emerged as the central factors in the redistribution of domestic responsibilities and in increased male participation in domestic tasks. 11
      George, using Arlie Hochschild's conceptual framework and terminology of "gender ideologies" and "gender strategies," argues that redistribution of domestic responsibilities did not necessarily entail ideological transformations among men and women. Transformations in gender ideologies are usually accompanied by ideological shifts in the understanding of new male and female roles within individuals and their families. These are permanent changes and probably are reproduced in subsequent generations. Gender strategies, however, are "plans of actions that individuals adopt to reconcile their gender ideology with their lived reality."13 George argues that the redistribution of work within Keralite immigrant families was part of a gendered strategy to deal with the larger structural problem of the male inability to find work and did not signify a transformation in the cultural ideologies of the families. She found that families where men remained the primary economic providers continued the traditional gendered division of household work.14 12
      The letters from India Abroad further illuminate these dynamics. India Abroad was the first newspaper of the Indian immigrant community in the United States, commencing publication in New York City in 1970, first as a monthly, then a fortnightly in 1972, and becoming a weekly in 1973. The primary purpose of the newspaper was to provide the growing Indian immigrant community in the U.S. with news of India. However, as the Indian settlement became permanent, the paper's contents began changing to incorporate issues pertinent to the Indian community in the U.S. Readers began voicing their problems of settlement through the "Letters to the Editor" page and its special column titled "Reflections on Life Abroad," or in the "Life and Leisure" section of the newspaper. It was in the "Letters to the Editor" page that Indian men and women began informing the larger Indian community of their domestic problems and engaged other men and women of that community in a discussion about the need for role transformation in domestic labor. The first letter and the resultant interactions among Indian men and women on this issue appeared in 1978, roughly a decade after the commencement of large-scale Indian immigration to the United States. The second letter appeared in 1983, the third debate opened in 1988, and a fourth exchange, of which Ms. Mathur's letter was a part, started in 1991. 13
   

WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES

 
      The first letter to provoke a discussion on domestic issues in India Abroad, interestingly enough, was written by an American woman who was married to an Indian. Writing in 1978, S.S., the initials by which the author identified herself, censured Indian husbands for not helping their wives in household chores. She wrote that
In almost every home that I have visited I have had the misfortune to meet a terrible M.C.P. i.e. "Male Chauvinist Pig." This all supreme gent will sit in the living room and virtually order his wife—who may herself be a qualified doctor or professional—to get everything from an ash tray to dinner. And while the men intellectually gossip about their newest car, the poor "domestic help" will be frantically trying to save the honor of all great women of Indian mythology by finishing the dishes before the guests leave.... At this rate the Indian woman will never be liberated—not even in the United States.15
 		14
      S.S.'s letter portrayed the gendered division of work within Indian homes in the U.S. and bemoaned the continuation of Indian domestic practices within Indian immigrant homes. Furthermore, the letter writer indicated migration's ill effects on working women. The loss of domestic help pushed even professional women to perform domestic tasks that in India were done by the hired help. S.S.'s desire to initiate domestic changes within Indian homes aimed not only to alleviate her Indian sisters' domestic burden, but also to pave the way for Indian families' immersion into American culture. S.S.'s motivation, while individualistic, reminded one of the "Americanization" movement of the early decades of the twentieth century, although her context and language was particular to the decade of the 1970s. Her language, especially the use of words like male chauvinist pig, domestic help, and liberation suggests the influence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s, where liberation, among other things, included liberation from housework for women, given the fact that U.S. men and women shared domestic tasks. 15
      S.S.'s attempt to cross cultural boundaries and form a bond of sisterhood with Indian women failed miserably, as other letters revealed that Indian immigrants overwhelmingly rejected her recipe of liberation and assimilation. All of the letter writers, with one exception, opposed S.S.'s attempts to initiate changes within Indian families.16 Women particularly defended Indian gendered norms and the prevalent division of work within Indian homes, emphasizing cultural differences in the internal working of Indian and American households and rejecting adaptation to American ways of life. "American values," wrote one respondent, "do not always fit comfortably into the patterns of Indian homes.... What disturbed [S.S.] ... about Indian women may not be disturbing to the Indian women."17 Defending Indian men's lack of participation in domestic chores, the writer further stated, "we do not blame them, for they are not accustomed to helping in certain things."18 16
      S.S.'s attempts to connect the domestic division of labor with the larger issues of women's liberation and assimilation into American culture did not seem to impress Indian women at all, since those who responded to her revealed a strong disapproval of liberation as well as of American women. Women's liberation emerged in these letters as a negative notion fraught with conceptions of neglected homes and broken marriages, frightening for women who held marriage as sacrosanct. Elaborating on this theme, one letter writer stated: "The situation of the Indian wife with all its shortcomings seems stabler than the intolerable dilemma we might be forced into by choosing to be 'liberated.' How would Indian men accept so-called liberated wives and neglected homes? The risk of finding out seems rather great, for we might lose our husbands."19 Linking the stability of Indian marriages to their ability to follow the traditional division of work, the author further stated: "If you want to see a happy man and a happy marital life, you may have to make the man happy and leave him the way he wants to be and not try to change him to what you want him to be."20 17
      While S.S. was trying to liberate Indian women from domestic tasks, an Indian woman, by drawing attention to the wage differentials between men and women in the U.S. labor force, questioned the very notion that American women were liberated. Furthermore, highlighting the issue of domestic abuse, the writer also pointed to the problems plaguing the liberated American homes. She wrote, "I think it is a piece of misguided (however well intentioned) advice to suggest a stay in the U.S. as a recipe for liberation."21 Another woman, pointing to the issue of legal rights, informed S.S. that India's Hindu Code gave women legal equality with men whereas in the U.S. the ERA had not passed as yet.22 18
      The sole letter that supported S.S's viewpoint was from an Indian woman who displayed new expectations from marriage. Marriage, she wrote, was a "participatory relationship" between men and women and, consequently, men and women shared responsibilities in all aspects of life, including onerous domestic chores. Expressing a firm belief that American marriages were egalitarian in nature, she implored Indian men to learn from their American counterparts. "One does not degrade oneself by offering a helping hand," she reminded the Indian men.23 This writer, however, did not contextualize the need for male participation in domestic work in relation to working women or their problems. 19
      The first kitchen debate clearly became mired in nationalistic tones where Indian values prevailed over U.S. ideals. Indian women and men, with one exception, presented a united front, stating their intent to continue traditional Indian domestic arrangements in the United States and opposing the adoption of U.S. domestic practices. The letters presented a picture that all was well in Indian homes, and S.S's attempts were viewed as interfering and reflecting her own ethnocentric notions and presumed cultural superiority. Consequently, little emerged in this debate about Indian immigrant women's increasing domestic workload or whether, indeed, professional women were performing the work of servants as S.S. had suggested in her letter. 20
      If the first debate upheld Indian cultural values, the second began five years later in 1983 with another letter to the editor from an Indian woman bemoaning the startling changes occurring within Indian families in the United States due to the transgression of traditional Indian male-female roles. In an attempt to stall these revolutionary changes, she wrote to India Abroad to remind women of Indian family norms as they applied to the division of work at home. She wrote,
I am ashamed of people who have changed their lifestyle after coming to the United States. Back in India I used to see wives worshipping their husbands. On the other hand I see housewives and those who are working make their husbands do cooking, cleaning and looking after the children. I would rather commit suicide than ask my husband to change my own kids' diaper. Sometimes the wives work and help their student-husbands pay tuition fees. The husbands no longer remain husbands because of this. They go down in esteem and when they have to do housework, they resent it.
      If the husband wants to work it is fine, but the wives should not ask them to help them. After all, I do not think ladies should forget their own culture.24
 		21
      In stark contrast to the 1978 exchanges, this letter suggested that a rapid change was occurring within Indian homes. Migration had altered traditional notions of male-female identities within marriage, resulting in the ability of men in some families, especially student families, to be the sole economic providers, allowing women to be the domestic caretakers.25 Economic marginalization, the erosion of the male's role as economic provider in the U.S., and the subsequent participation of women in the work force to support their family were instrumental in blurring male-female identities. Consequently, new domestic arrangements were emerging within dual-income families where women were seeking paid work to support their family economy and were seeking male help in daily domestic tasks. These changes, the author suggested, were accompanied by increasing domestic tensions within Indian homes. 22
      Although this letter was in the same vein as were the vast majority of letters written in 1978 and advocated the continuation of traditional family roles between men and women in the United States, women's responses to this letter were startlingly different and pointed to changing expectations. Women now expected men to share the domestic tasks, and they provided their rationale for their viewpoints.26 For the first time, working women documented a considerable increase in their domestic workload since their migration and revealed their problems in attempting to juggle paid work and domestic responsibilities. They also confessed living a life in which they were continually tired. "A lot of us combine two jobs, one outside the home and one inside.... Perpetual exhaustion was not asked for by any woman who married a man and went abroad," stated one writer.27 "A wife's job is never done," wrote another.28 In addition to carrying on their traditional domestic responsibilities, women also noted the additional responsibilities of outdoor work like mowing the lawn and gardening, which in India were considered male tasks. Furthermore, pointing to the blurring of public and private responsibilities, another letter writer asked: "How many women take the responsibility of grocery and other shopping by driving around in India as they do here ... ?"29 Letters particularly complained of the absence of hired and family help. "After all we do not have servants at our beck and call as our sisters do in India," wrote one woman.30 "There are no servants, and there are no relatives to help," noted another.31 In view of their escalating domestic work, women expressed a desire for their husbands' assistance in order to ease their domestic responsibilities. The arguments they put forth can be divided into four categories. 23
      The first argument that justified male participation in domestic work viewed men as taking over some domestic responsibility to make up for the absence of domestic servants. "A working woman gets home tired after a hard day's work as much as the husband does. It will be cruel on the part of the husband to relax and watch television when she starts cooking, feeding the children and cleaning up—without any help from anyone," wrote one woman.32 While agreeing with the initiator of this debate that domestic tensions within Indian immigrant families were on the rise, women unequivocally rejected her claim that male participation in household work caused marital problems. One letter writer suggested that, on the contrary, it was women's increasing domestic work that contributed to increasing family stress and that, consequently, male help in household tasks would alleviate such tensions within families. "Cooperation," argued one reader, "strengthens marriages."33 The writer further stated: "A marriage is not so fragile that it results in divorce merely because the male partner takes out the garbage or cooks a meal."34 Demonstrating awareness that their solution went against Indian cultural norms, women justified their request by extolling the principle of the dignity of work. 24
      The second argument came from a woman who claimed to be modern and progressive and had new expectations for marriage. Marriage, according to her, was as an institution "based on concepts of equality," and she expected partnership from her spouse in all spheres of family life, including onerous domestic tasks.35 These companionate marriages, the author argued, brought a closer relationship between husbands and wives and resulted in happy marriages, unlike the traditional Indian marriages that, she argued, were akin to a slave-master relationship. To support her point, she referred to studies and surveys.36 Given the fact that the majority of Indian marriages were arranged and based on a relationship where men wielded more power, these companionate marriages and the close relationship they entailed between husbands and wives emerged as an important argument justifying male work at home. It should be stated that the notion of companionate marriages was within the framework of changing expectations among women in India and was not related to the adoption of U.S. practices. 25
      The transformation in the traditional norms of marriages as a consequence of migration became the basis for the third argument. Migration, a letter writer argued, had altered certain sacrosanct canons of Indian marriages. "Traditionally," wrote a reader, "an Indian woman married for economic security and a tacit understanding that she would raise the family and do the household work."37 In the U.S., however, she noted, these time-honored practices were changing, and in some families women were emerging as the primary economic providers of their families. She wrote, "I have noticed that a good number of Indian immigrants [mostly men] go to India and marry physicians just to protect themselves from possible future unemployment."38 The author was referring to the complex interaction of gender, work, and the particularities of Indian migration, whereby a disproportionate number of female physicians were migrating through arranged marriages.39 Given the high earnings commanded by physicians in the United States, these marriages resulted in economic role reversals, with women becoming the primary economic providers for their families. The writer put forth the notion that economic role reversals justified domestic role reversals. She wrote that "in cases like this, can one blame the wives if they make demands on their husbands? ... It is time to redefine marriage and its obligations, if we want this trend to be reversed."40 While this letter alluded to families where women were the primary breadwinners, it did not state whether similar role transformations should occur in marriages where women were working but were not the primary breadwinners. 26
      The fourth and final argument for change was rooted in the need for Indian immigrants to instill new values in their children. As the Indian settlement became permanent, women argued that domestic practices within Indian families needed to change for the sake of their children. This was a revolutionary argument, since it signified a clear break from Indian family traditions and underscored women's unwillingness to reproduce cultural values as they related to male and female identities within Indian homes. Women did not expect their daughters to be solely responsible for domestic concerns; they also wanted their sons to be trained in household chores. Therefore, they wanted the fathers to work at home and set examples for their children. "We try to instill the best of both cultures in our children, and we hope they will learn from examples set by their parents and choose the right path," wrote a woman.41 This ideology was also shaped by class expectations. Indian families expected their children, sons as well as daughters, to be educated and professionals. Along with women, a fourteen-year-old girl joined the forum and threatened not to marry an Indian man if he did not help with her professional aims: "Even though I am only 14, I have big career plans for the future. And if that means not marrying an Indian chauvinist, I am willing to sacrifice that with no regrets at all."42 27
      The letters of 1983, unlike those of 1978, clearly demonstrated migration's ill effects on working women. Migration selectivity had resulted in a presence of a disproportionate number of highly educated and professional Indian men as well as women in the United States. Moreover, the exigencies of migration, coupled with the desire of many to attain middle-class status, also resulted in Indian women's entry into the paid world, resulting in a large pool of Indian immigrant working women in the U.S. In presenting their problems, these women were also exhibiting their class consciousness and their loss of class privileges. Migration had removed these working women's class privileges, and in the U.S. they had the added responsibility of performing servants' work as part of their wifely duties in addition to their new tasks acquired in the U.S., such as yard work, grocery shopping, and driving children around for their various activities. Facing downward mobility, these women were asking for a redistribution of domestic work to maintain their class position, even if it entailed changing age-old Indian traditions. These letters contextualized Indian women's domestic problems within the daily realities of Indian immigrant women's lives and were bereft of notions of assimilation, liberation, and becoming American. 28
      Although these letters reflected for the first time a strong desire among working women for change in domestic arrangements, they also revealed that little real change had occurred in Indian homes in the U.S.. The maximum change noted was an understanding by men of women's plight, without an accompanying change in men's domestic roles. A woman wrote that "even though my husband does not know cooking, he sends out for pizza, and even though he hates cleaning, he will do it off and on."43 Cooking remained woman's prerogative; men who cared resorted to ordering takeout. 29
      The slow pace of change in the redistribution of work at home resulted in yet another letter in 1988 drawing attention once again to the double bind facing Indian working women in the U.S. Titled "Super Woman Balances Career, Family," the letter, for the first time, characterized the Indian immigrant woman as a "super woman" and located immigrant women's problems to India and its cultural norms.44 The author pointed to contradictions between contemporary women's lives and their historical representation. Despite the reverence accorded to strong Indian women in Indian mythology and history, women in modern India were expected to be subservient and identified primarily in their roles as wives and daughters. Consequently, educated, middle-class, working women in India, whose numbers were rapidly increasing, faced an identity crisis since their labor force participation in India occurred without redefining women's traditional household responsibilities, and their identity remained rooted in their domestic roles. 30
      This contradiction between women's traditional domestic roles and their new realities as working women, the author argued, migrated to the United States and became the root cause of Indian immigrant women's problems. Women's labor force participation in the U.S. increased without any corresponding relief from their increased domestic responsibilities. Rather than addressing women's problems, the author argued, migration added new responsibilities for women, especially of reproducing Indian cultural traditions. This additional responsibility, the author continued, put pressure on women to follow the traditional separation of roles between men and women, although there were differences in the ways it affected professional and nonprofessional working women. Professional women were expected to demonstrate that having a successful career had not "turned their heads" and that they were prepared to meet the demands of the family, just like the traditional wife in India, despite the absence of hired help in the U.S. Women who were working at low-paying jobs faced a different kind of pressure; their jobs were seen as secondary to their household responsibilities as well as to their spouses' work. "The husband reaches the conclusion that because the work she does is not important, she is not subject to the same fatigue and tensions that he is. Hence, she ought to be able to juggle her household chores and her career with ease," wrote the author.45 This letter writer not only wanted changes in the domestic division of work but also wanted women to have a say in family financial matters, an area that was traditionally a male preserve.46 31
      The letters of 1988 by and large followed the rationale established by women in 1983, especially women's lack of expectations that the traditional separation of spheres between men and women would continue in their children's lives. A woman wrote,
One had to consider what kinds of examples are being set for kids. Those who are being raised in a home where Mom and Dad are equally comfortable in doing any task, domestic or financial, will face less hang-ups in the future. They will have fewer stereotypes to deal with. They will know that there is nothing wrong in Dad changing a diaper and cleaning house, or Mom working and mowing the lawn.47
 		32
      While discussing concrete ways to alleviate women's problems, one letter revealed a major attitudinal shift and a move away from Indian traditions in some women. For the first time, a writer reproached Indian women, arguing that women's problems were of their own making because of their inability to make choices between their work and domestic responsibilities. First, she asked women to stop trying to recreate their mothers' homes, which, she stated, were based on an array of hired help ranging from "maid, dhobi, cook, and at times a gardener."48 Second, she asked women to stop feeling guilty if they wanted to give precedence to their paid work, relegating their household responsibilities to a secondary concern. In addition, the author also asked Indian women to emulate American women's example: "When American women entered the workforce certain changes followed. Instead of cooking women bought food. In my opinion there is nothing wrong in using this as a model."49 33
      This new rationale for change suggested that the professional nature of women's work allowed women a considerable reduction in their domestic burdens. Comparing women's work to men's work, a writer stated that women held responsible jobs, which "demand[ed] their time, energy, and physical and mental effort."50 Giving precedence to her paid work, she advocated reducing women's cooking responsibilities as a way of alleviating women's problems. Complaining that even "westernized Indian men," a term used to denote cosmopolitan Indian men, remained Indian when it came to food habits, she asked those men either to participate in domestic work or to change their food habits and lower their expectations from women with regards to cooking.51 Another writer, seeking new alternatives that were suited for the Indian immigrant families in the U.S., recommended that Indian women forget about the way homes were run in India. "The only way to do this is to forget what used to be the way of things back home," she wrote.52 34
      The final debate started in 1991 after a male reader commented on the blissful state of Indian wives in the U.S. He wrote: "The Indian wife in America, I think, is perhaps the luckier of the human species. Thanks to the miracle of microwave and other modern gadgets, her household chores are done with alacrity."53 Along with the benefits of modern gadgetry ubiquitous in American homes, the author also pointed to Indian immigrant husbands' transformation in the U.S. into "genial husbands" who shared domestic burdens with their wives. Describing men's work, he wrote: "In most households, he is the one who does the income tax or talks to the broker about family finances or pays all the monthly bills or keeps the car running or mows the lawn or calls the plumber or takes the children to the baseball game."54 35
      Disputing the contention that modern gadgets either eased their domestic responsibilities or reduced the time spent on it, a woman wrote: "Believe me it has not been easy trying to perform well in everything one wants to do, even with modern gadgets and microwave ovens."55 Household gadgets, noted another writer, were a necessity and not a luxury, as men generally believed.56 Documenting the time spent on domestic chores, a writer noted: "In an average week we put in 35–40 hours in the office, 10–15 hours behind the wheel commuting, running errands, shopping and taking the children to school, and 20–25 hours cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and running the household."57 In addition to these daily chores, the writer also documented women's additional responsibilities in the United States, especially those relating to running ethnic and community institutions. She stated, "We are the ones who play a major role in child rearing and many social and community functions and give emotional support and understanding to our loved ones."58 Referring to other additional responsibilities, especially those related to child rearing in the U.S., another woman wrote, "Indeed with easy access to cars, the burden of grocery shopping and rushing back from work to bring home an ailing child from the day-care, attending PTA meetings rests on the wife's shoulders.... The workload of the 'genial' husbands," she wrote, consists of "playing the chauffer for the family, meeting occasional plumbing needs or filing the income tax once a year," for which he prides himself.59 Although agreeing that Indian husbands in the U.S. worked more in their homes than did their counterparts in India, she stated that it was usually at the insistence of the wife, given Indian men's penchant for watching football on TV and "leaving the wife to tackle the much heavier domestic ball."60 Furthermore, the author derided the initiator of this debate for comparing men's occasional or annual domestic tasks to women's daily household responsibilities. "But it is the wife who wakes at the crack of dawn, prepares the family breakfast, feeds the children and readies them for school, and helps her husband to find his tie—all while getting herself organized and ready for a long day ahead," she noted.61 36
      Although a large majority of letters by women discussed ways to alleviate their condition and cautiously sought new domestic arrangements, this debate brought forth a new argument. A writer argued that women had the power to change their lives, giving individual woman the agency to override cultural traditions. Stating that women and not culture dictated women's responsibilities, she asked women to take action and demand change. The author also criticized women writers who were creating an impression that Indian woman "will have to carry the heavy burden of raising children and household chores."62 She wrote that "we women play a big part in making our destinies. It is not karma that makes our marriage what it is. If working women do not expect and extract more from the men they are married to (or plan to marry), they will end up with ... [a] 'genial husband.'"63 Showing signs of change in her marriage, this writer documented her husband's work, stating that it ranged from "child-care responsibilities, grocery shopping, mopping and vacuuming the floor to picking up the child from day-care, to little expectation from his wife in terms of cooking; he did not have a problem ordering pizza."64 37
      It was within this context—women demanding changes in domestic arrangements—that Ms. Subbi Mathur wrote the letter titled "Couch potatoes and Super-women" in 1991. Her letter reiterated the old theme of Indian women's increasing workload in the United States. Her description of Indian men as lazy and helpless, dependent upon their wives, was somewhat new. It demonstrated that a segment of Indian women had given up hopes of changing their husbands' behavior. Her letter, however, also implied that the emergence of the super-women phenomenon was a way for women to deal with their daily realities and an indicator that Indian women continued to follow traditional Indian ways, taking care of domestic chores along with the new responsibilities that befell them. It also suggested that women had given up on their men and reconciled themselves with the idea of taking complete household responsibility. 38
   

MEN'S PERSPECTIVES

 
      Along with women, men also actively participated in these domestic debates. In fact, in the earlier forums, men wrote more frequently than women. However, with each forum, the increase in women's participation was accompanied by a marked decrease in male letter writing. The men, with one exception, wanted the continuation of the domestic arrangements that prevailed in India. 39
      In the first debate, spurred by S.S.'s letter, men and women were united in opposing her plans of liberating Indian women. Voicing sentiments similar to Indian women, a letter by a male writer stated: "Indian women do not care about Women's lib, but about the happiness and oneness of the family."65 Another man, redefining liberation as rooted in Indian women's domestic roles, argued that Indian women were liberated. The Indian family system, he wrote, might seem male dominated to an outsider; in reality, women wielded real power within their homes. He wrote that "it is really the Indian woman who is the guiding force behind her family. She pulls and manipulates the strings and reins of social customs, home finances, and the destiny of the entire family.... Indian women may seem subservient and submissive but in reality they are the uncrowned captains of the family ship"66 This definition of liberation propagated the continuation of the domestic division of work between men and women as it existed in India. 40
      In subsequent debates, new rationales emerged to support the continuation of traditional domestic arrangements. A writer argued that women's domestic responsibility should continue not for just cultural reasons but for practical ones. Women, after all, were "experts in cooking, cleaning and looking after children."67 Letters also cited Hindu philosophy to support the traditional separation of family responsibilities. A writer argued that "in the Hindu religion, man and wife are considered two wheels of a cart. Both have to share equal responsibilities and try to live in harmony instead of competing with each other. Let men do their duties of providing financial support and let women do rearing of family. This is our ancient tradition and it has worked for thousands of years."68 Showing a lack of understanding of the changing world around him in which working women were becoming common, the author of this letter suggested that women's outside work was acceptable as long as it supported the family's economic needs. Becoming career oriented, however, was not acceptable, since it implied competition with their husbands. This letter writer viewed careerism in women as a sign of adapting to American practices and as the root cause of tension. "In order to qualify themselves to earn more wages, Indian women began to compete with their husbands and became career oriented.... One has to sacrifice family life, in order to go out and earn money.... More family disappointments, more disruption in routine life and more arguments with their husbands. This is a perfect groundwork for broken marriages," he wrote.69 Male letter writers' continued support of traditional ideologies revealed that working women were seen as an anathema. Their letters also revealed a disconnection between the new reality of professional and working Indian women within the Indian community and their Indian ideologies. 41
      There was, however, one exception to this male discourse. A male writer taking umbrage at women's complaints noted that men were increasingly beginning to share in domestic chores. Agreeing with women that "the extent of work required in a home is much greater in the U.S.," the writer rejected the notion that women, especially professional women, took their domestic responsibility seriously. He wrote: "I would very much like to meet the physician who runs home to cook. I do not know any woman who took cooking seriously. As a matter of fact, I admire the man who can manage to make her do that. I am personally sick and tired of eating pizza, Chinese food and spaghetti and meatballs. I look forward to the summer when I can barbecue."70 He also disagreed with the characterization of men as chauvinists and sexists or the view that men did not work at home. He wrote: "Of all the people I know, no man, repeat, no man sits down and watches the tube while the wife is breaking her back over the stove."71 His letter documented his extensive responsibilities at home:
Painting, repairing appliances, gardening, lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, fall-cleanup; car repairs and maintenance; swimming pool service; bathe kids and put to bed; read to kids and help with homework; take kids to sitter and doctor; stay home when kids are sick; clean up after dinner; serve when we have company and clean up; iron shirts and vacuum. The men I know do similar amount of work, some do grocery and laundry but not some of the above chores. I always joke, "A man's work is never done."72
 		42
      This letter revealed that male domestic responsibilities, as with women's, increased in the United States with regard to tasks that had been completed by hired help in India, or in regard to tasks that were particular to American homes, such as snow shoveling, fall cleanup, and swimming pool service. Interestingly, the letter showcased the fact that this change was occurring within the homes of professionals and that some Indian women preferred their work and were relegating their domestic responsibilities, especially the onerous task of cooking, to a secondary status. The rapid blurring of male and female roles occurring at least within some families of professionals was further revealed when the writer expressed a desire for women to share responsibilities in areas that were traditionally the male preserve, especially financial matters. He complained that "in spite of all the MBA's, work experience and decision-making, I have not met any who will take responsibility of making and tracking investments. They will not invest the family money in the market, certificates of deposits, mutual funds or other instruments. They just want the freedom to have the credit cards to go shopping with and not worry where the money is coming from."73 43
      This letter was extraordinary because it revealed some women's movement away from their conventional domestic responsibilities. These professional women were according primacy to their paid work. It is not clear how representative this family was among Indian immigrants, since this letter did not generate any response from the readers of India Abroad. 44
   

GENDER, MIGRATION, AND CHANGING IDENTITIES

 
      These letters, in detailing women's problems, document the growing realization among women that Indian gendered norms as they applied to domestic tasks were not feasible in the United States. In tracing the emerging discourse on housework, these letters inform us about the larger issue of recreating Indian gendered identities in the U.S. The early letters highlighted women's increasing household responsibilities since migration and emphasized the loss of class privileges as a result of the absence of domestic help in the U.S., a fact noted by various studies on Indian immigrants.74 Moreover, the letters documented women's additional domestic responsibilities after migration. Child care now incorporated driving children to various extracurricular activities and domestic tasks also now incorporated yard work and grocery shopping. In addition, Indian immigrants' attempts to maintain the Indian way of life in the U.S., along with the emergence of home as the bastion of resistance against the dominant culture, meant that women had new responsibilities as cultural reproducers.75 Furthermore, new community responsibilities of maintaining and sustaining Indian ethnic and religious institutions also fell on women.76 Finally, works on Indian immigrants accentuate a new development occurring within the Indian community that adversely affected women. In trying to carve out a homogenous Indian identity, Indian institutions, especially religious institutions, began redefining women's identities in traditional restrictive terms as housewives and as family caretakers who subsumed their individual identity for the greater good of the family.77 This new representation of women's identities was particularly disturbing for working women, since it created a deep disconnect between their lived realities and the emerging gendered expectations. 45
      It is within this larger context of Indian settlement that women's attempts to recreate new gendered identities need to be analyzed. The propagation of principles of shared domestic responsibilities reflected a desire of Indian women to move away from traditional identities as wives and as mothers and to carve out new dual identities as wives and as workers, a phenomenon that had not emerged in India with middle-class women's entry into the labor force.78 Consequently, women's entry into the work world did not increase male contributions to domestic tasks in India.79 Migration selectivity and the presence of disproportionate numbers of young professional women who demonstrated more affinity toward their careers than their domestic work were central factors in this emerging discourse, since these women compared their employment with men and concluded that their jobs demanded as much attention as did men's work. Man day's work and responsible jobs were some of the terms used in the letters to signify the nature of their work. They represented a new type of Indian women, who—although they were termed derogatorily as "careerists" in one letter—took pride in their work and did not assign negative connotations to "careerism." While not questioning their household responsibilities, they wanted a balance between their work and their family identities without feeling guilty about neglecting some of their domestic responsibilities. 46
      The transformation of the domestic division of work, Nazli Kibria argues, is based upon the balance of power between men and women and their access to resources.80 Parminder Bhachu's work on Indian immigrant women in Great Britain points to independent women's transformative power.81 While the extent of support among women for change, the details of women's economic contributions to their families, and the economic role of the men are unknown, what is evident is that professional women started a new discourse on the need for change within families. The professional nature of their work in the United States became a central factor in their argument for transformation. Not keen on taking on the multiple domestic responsibilities that were coming their way, they exhorted women not to be passive victims nor to blame their karma for their situation but, instead, to establish their own cultural norms suited to their needs rather than be held hostage by the dictates of Indian culture. While professional women were at the forefront in seeking these changes and their letters were the most vocal in demanding that the allocation of domestic work be based on revised premises, it should be noted that the consequences of their efforts would surely have trickled down to all Indian families. 47
      However, the letters also demonstrate a diversity of attitudes among women and some women's resistance to change. The letter writers to India Abroad can be classified into three categories: the traditionalists, the pragmatists, and the modernists. The traditionalists accepted the prevalent male and female identities and were highly uncomfortable with changes occurring within Indian immigrant families. Studies indicate that this group even included professional women, who gave up their professions after migration and became transitional workers in order to take care of their family, in particular to take on child-rearing responsibilities.82 These studies also note women's ambivalent attitudes towards these changes, documenting their unhappiness over having to give up their work or having accorded primacy to their spouses' work. The second group, the pragmatists, wanted a middle ground and were strategizing ways to reconcile their working and domestic identities, necessitated by their inability to perform both roles to the best of their abilities. While hesitant to completely overhaul the domestic division of labor, they seemed unwilling to let their daughters carry similar domestic burdens. The third group constituted the modern, progressive women, primarily professional, who demonstrated new egalitarian expectations of companionate marriages and openly rejected the notion that women were responsible for domestic tasks. Their identity, as it was shaped in India, was not solely in domestic terms.83 48
      Three factors clearly indicate progressive women's aspirations for permanent change. First, mothers did not want to reproduce for their daughters those Indian cultural norms that pertained to domestic responsibilities. In fact, women's first rationale for men to participate in household tasks was so that the men would become a role model for their children and teach their sons that men also worked at home. Studies of Indian immigrants, however, paint a complex picture regarding this matter. While a large majority of the studies contend that Indian women were reproducing Indian cultural identity in their daughters, it should be noted that the retention of Indian cultural traditions was in relation and opposition to dominant American cultural practices regarding sexuality; the women were attempting to control daughters' sexuality, given Indian families' opposition to dating and premarital sex.84 49
      Indian families, as Jean Bacon's study has highlighted, were not homogenous; individual family dynamics, the sacrosanct values of a given family and their notion of Indian identity to be transmitted to the second generation, varied considerably across families.85 Moreover, studies also document that while mothers were inculcating messages of cultural normativity and appropriate gender behavior, they were also encouraging their daughters to become professionals, were training their children in new gender ideology, bent family rules for their daughters, encouraged them to be economically independent, and essentially wished better lives and more egalitarian relationships for their daughters than they had experienced in their own family relationships.86 Sangeeta Gupta has noted the complexity of mothers' attempts to socialize their daughters. She stated that daughters received implicit and explicit messages from mothers about Indian culture, allowing the daughters to negotiate their own beliefs and behavior reflecting their gender and cultural identities. Studies of second-generation Indian women also point out that these women were redefining gender boundaries and creating their own understanding of what it meant to be Indian by reconciling their cultural norms with their lived realities. In family relationships these young women expected equality and expected men to equally share domestic tasks; Gupta, however, noted that male expectations were not as quick to change.87 50
      The second argument which suggests that women wanted permanent change is based on the fact that women seemed dissatisfied even with "genial" husbands who claimed that they shared in domestic tasks but who did not do an equal share. Pointing to the inequity of prevalent work distribution, the women expressed wishes for a more equitable division of work.88 A case in point was the narrative of a stay-at-home mother whose unhappiness with her husband's domestic contribution was clear in her statement, "I don't want to be grateful for the crumbs."89 51
      Third, the very public nature of the debate is a firm indicator of women's desire to transform gender identities within the Indian community. The success of family struggle, Nazli Kibria argues, is dependent upon its visibility, and the discussions in India Abroad provided women's cause a visibility. Women seemingly devised a two-pronged strategy: to initiate changes at home within their individual families, and also to discuss the issue in the Indian community at large through the pages of India Abroad. Narratives of individual successes and personal alternatives provided others with options and strategies to employ within their own homes; documentation of changes in the immigrant newspaper also emerged as a way to legitimize individual gains. 52
      These letters also showcase the centrality of India Abroad in mediating women's concerns. Its "Opinion/Letters to the Editor" page (formerly "Letters to the Editor" page) provided Indian men and women a space to voice their concerns. By taking their personal struggles to public spaces, women not only changed the discourse within the Indian community but also in India Abroad, which, until then, had ignored women's issues.90India Abroad essentially became a place where women organized domestic resistance. Although Madhulika Khandelwal has pointed out that in New York City, with one of the largest concentrations of Indian immigrant population in the United States, public discussions on women's concerns were beginning to take place, for the majority of Indian women, living in the isolation of their homes, the immigrant newspaper was the only avenue for discussion and provided a forum where strangers from across the country bonded through letters.91 Letters generated support groups, creating a community of women united by their common concerns. 53
      The issue of housework, although begun as an issue of assimilation, was in no way related to women's desire to adapt to American cultural practices or to assimilate into mainstream American society. These letters clearly documented Indian women's negative views on liberation as well as of American women. Moreover, the language of the letters was bereft of the language of feminist discourse; women used language and means that were within their cultural context. Letters were rarely confrontational. They cajoled, respectfully asked, slowly prodded, and even pleaded with men to understand their plight; only later did they demand.92 Although women were not using the language of feminism, they were displaying the behavior of liberated women and a common understanding of their situation. 54
      India Abroad, while it provided women space to voice their concerns, also wielded editorial power in selecting letters or curtailing these debates. Current events further limited readers' input in matters of importance to the community. A case in point was the abrupt ending of the "couch potatoes" debate soon after the publication of Ms. Mathur's letter. The political turmoil in India as a result of the assassination of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi completely transformed the content of the newspaper and its letters for months to come. Despite such limitations, these letters clearly indicate that a section of Indian women was unwilling to perpetuate their domestic responsibilities as defined by Indian gendered norms, and that they were collectively taking new steps to define a new identity for Indian women. These letters also indicate that becoming a "super-woman" was a forced phenomenon and an unwelcome development that women were beginning to resist. Women's attempts to transform "couch potatoes" into working men at home indicated ideological changes, new relationships between men and women, and a new Indian domestic culture that was more egalitarian. How successful they were in effectuating these new domestic ideologies within their homes and those of their children remains to be explored. What is important is that Indian immigrant women were attempting to carve out new identities as Indian women in America, individually and collectively.
We learned,
in this country, to stand straighter,
speak up for what we want.
And what we want is this: for us and our daughters,
India and America,
the best of both together93
 		55


NOTES

      I would like to thank Rob Buffington, Eithne Luibheid, Tim Messer-Kruse, Leslie Moch, Susana Peña, and the two anonymous readers for their helpful comments. In addition, I would like to thank the members of the "Sexuality and Border" writing cluster of the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society at Bowling Green State University.

1.  Ms. Subbi Mathur, "Couch Potatoes and Super-Women," India Abroad, April 26, 1991, 3.

2.  Ibid.

3.  Numerous studies have focused on tensions within immigrant families that occur after migration. Some of these are Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly and Anna Garcia, "Power Surrendered, Power Restored: The Politics of Home and Work among Hispanic Women in Southern California," in Women in Politics in America, ed. Louise Tilly and Patricia Guerin (New York, 1991), 130–49; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nissei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia, 1986); Sherri Grasmuck and Patricia Pessar, Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration (Berkeley, CA, 1991); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions: The Mexican Experience of Immigration (Berkeley, CA, 1994); Nazli Kibria, Family Tightropes: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans (Princeton, NJ, 1993); and Pierette Hondagneu–Sotelo, ed., Gender and U.S. Immigration: Contemporary Trends (Berkeley, CA, 2003).

4.  Nancy Foner, "The Immigrant Family: Cultural Legacies and Cultural Changes," International Migration Review 31, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 961–74.

5.  Ibid., 961–74.

6.  Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions.

7.  Kibria, Family Tightropes, 112–21.

8.  Ibid., 108–43.

9. Census of Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics (Washington, DC, 1980), T-79; Census of Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics (Washington, DC, 1990), T-105.

10. Census of Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics (Washington, DC, 1980), T-163.

11. Census of Population: General Social and Economic Characteristics (Washington, DC, 1990), T-110.

12.  See Madhulika Khandelwal, Becoming American, Being Indian: An Indian Immigrant Community in New York City (Ithaca, NY, 2002); Prema Kurien, "Gendered Ethnicity: Creating a Hindu Indian Identity in the United States," in Gender and U.S. Immigration, ed., Hondagneu-Sotelo, 151–73; Prema Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India. (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002); Padma Rangaswamy, Namasté America: Indian Immigrants in an American Metropolis (University Park, PA, 2000); Sheba George, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration (Berkeley, CA, 2005); Aparna Rayaprol, Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora (Delhi, India,1997); and Arpana Sircar, Work Roles, Gender Roles, and Asian Indian Immigrant Women in the United States (Lewiston, NY, 2000). The majority of these works, however, do not explore the factors that motivated these changes. Consequently, it appears that changes within Indian families occurred as a natural progression without any accompanying tensions.

13.  George, When Women Come First, 77–117.

14.  Ibid., 19–38.

15.  S.S., "Disgusting," India Abroad, February 10, 1978, 10.

16.  In a period of three months, seventeen people responded to S.S.'s letter. These included four women, nine men, and four persons who chose to remain anonymous by signing their letters with initials.

17.  Mrs. A. Q. Hoque, "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 17, 1978, 10.

18.  Ibid.

19.  Ibid.

20.  Ibid., 14.

21.  Meera Mitra, "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 17, 1978, 14.

22.  Shailaja Kambli, "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 25, 1978, 14.

23.  S.T., "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 17, 1978, 14.

24.  Kumari Kalpana R. Jhakur, India Abroad, December 2, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv.

25.  During the decades of the 1970s and the 1980s, there were a considerable number of Indian students in the U.S. According to Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange (New York, 1975), in the academic year 1974–75, there were 9,660 students from India in the U.S.; a decade later, the number was 14,610.

26.  Eight people responded to this letter and, in contrast to the first debate, six were written by women.

27.  U. Radhakant, "Not So Fragile," India Abroad, December 22, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv.

28.  Sundari Ramachandran, "Cooperation the Key," India Abroad, December 22, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv.

29.  U. Radhakant, "Not So Fragile."

30.  Ibid.

31.  Raj Prasad, "Family Link Enhanced," India Abroad, January 27, 1984, Life & Leisure section, iv.

32.  Sundari Ramachandran, "Cooperation the Key."

33.  U. Radhakant, "Not So Fragile."

34.  Ibid.

35.  Pooja Mahajan, "On Team Spirit," India Abroad, December 22, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv

36.  Ibid.

37.  Sarojini Reddi, "Blame the Men," India Abroad, December 22, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv.

38.  Ibid.

39.  Occupations are gendered. According to Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste, and Class in India (London, 1986), 72–73, in independent India, the medical profession, along with teaching and social work, were considered suitable professions for women, resulting in many middle-class women becoming physicians. Many of these female medical professionals migrated to the United States through arranged marriages.

40.  Sarojini Reddi, "Blame the Men."

41.  U. Radhakant, "Not So Fragile."

42.  Ina Hathi, "Help the Women."

43.  U. Radhakant, "Not So Fragile."

44.  Farhat Biviji, "Superwoman Balances Career, Family," India Abroad, January 22, 1988, 3.

45.  Ibid.

46.  Ibid.

47.  Latha Kumar, "Choices, Not Clichés," India Abroad, March 4, 1988, 3.

48.  Sunita Saxena, "Choices for Working Indian Women," India Abroad, February 26, 1988, 3.

49.  Ibid.

50.  Sharmila Nambiar, "A Wife's View on Wifehood," India Abroad, March 15, 1988, 3.

51.  Ibid.

52.  Ammini Murthy, "Working Couples Can Play Fair and without Conflict," India Abroad, March 15, 1988, 3.

53.  P. Ramanathan, "A Husband's View of Wifehood," India Abroad, January 11, 1991, 3.

54.  Ibid.

55.  Ammini Murthy, "Working Couples," 3.

56.  Sharmila Nambiar, "A Wife's View," 3.

57.  Ammini Murthy, "Working Couples," 3. A study by Krishnendu Ray, "Meals, Migration, and Modernity: Domestic Cooking and Bengali Indian Ethnicity in the United States," Amerasia Journal 21, no. 1 (1988): 105–27, is the only work that I have come across which offers insights into the Indian immigrant—or, to be more specific—the Bengali immigrant kitchen, its foods, and the ways food habits were changing as a result of migration.

58.  Ammini Murthy, "Working Couples," 3.

59.  Sharmila Nambiar, "A Wife's View," 3.

60.  Ibid.

61.  Ibid.

62.  Marita Gonzalves, "Men Who Share the Chores," India Abroad, May 3, 1991, 3.

63.  Ibid.

64.  Ibid.

65.  Jayant Shah, "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 17, 1978, 14.

66.  M. P. Patel, "Indian Wives," India Abroad, March 25, 1978, 14.

67.  Dharam Jit Jigyasu, "Woman's Place," India Abroad, December 22, 1983, Life & Leisure section, iv.

68.  G. Modi, "How to Break Up a Marriage," India Abroad, February 19, 1988, 3.

69.  Ibid.

70.  Viresh Sharma, "Who Says Husbands Do No Housework," India Abroad, February 19, 1988, 3.

71.  Ibid.

72.  Ibid.

73.  Ibid.

74.  Sangeeta R. Gupta, ed., Emerging Voices: South Asian American Women Redefine Self, Family, and Community (Walnut Creek, CA, 1999); Khandelwal, Becoming American, Being Indian; Johanna Lessinger, From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City (Boston, 1995); Kurien, "Gendered Ethnicity," 151–73; Rangaswamy, Namasté America; George, When Women Come First; Rayaprol, Negotiating Identities; Sircar, Work Roles, Gender Roles, and Asian Indian Immigrant Women in the United States; and Sathi S. Dasgupta, On the Trail of An Uncertain Dream: Indian Immigrant Experience in America (New York, 1989), all emphasize the absence of domestic help and the substantial increase in women's domestic work.

75.  Sonia Shah, "Three Hot Meals and a Full Day at Work: South Asian Women's Labor in the United States," in A Patchwork Shawl: Chronicles of South Asian Women in America, ed. Shamita Das Dasgupta (New Brunswick, NJ, 1998), 206–22.

76.  See Kurien, "Gendered Ethnicity," 151–73. Maxine P. Fisher, The Indians of New York City: A Study of Immigrants from India (Columbia, MO, 1980), 61, 62, and 66 also details the elaborate meals that were served to hundreds of people at Indian community events, religious, cultural, and social.

77.  Shamita Das Dasgupta, "Introduction," in A Patchwork Shawl, 1–7; Sayantani Das Gupta and Shamita Das Gupta, "Women in Exile: Gender Relations in the Asian Indian Community in the United States," in Asian American Studies: A Reader, ed. Jean Ye-wen and Min Song (New Brunswick, NJ, 2000), 324–37; Anannya Bhatacharjee, "The Habit of Ex-nomination: Nation, Women, and the Indian Bourgeoisie," Public Culture 5, no. 2 (Fall 1992): 19–44; Kurien, "Gendered Ethnicity," 151–73; Margaret Abraham, Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence among South Asian Immigrants in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ, 2000), 9–15, 19–23.

78.  The emergence of middle-class women in the Indian work force was a relatively new phenomenon that became more common after India's independence in 1947. The following works provide insights into the lives of Indian middle-class women after independence: Carol Chapnick Mukhopadhyaya and Susan Seymour, ed., Women, Education, and Family Structure in India (Boulder, CO, 1994); Joanna Liddle and Rama Joshi, Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste, and Class in India (London, 1986); Rhoda Lois Blumberg and Leela Dwarki, India's Educated Women: Options and Constraints (Delhi, India,1980); and B. R. Nanda, ed., Indian Women from Purdah to Modernity (New Delhi, India, 1976).

79.  G. N. Ramu, "Indian Husbands: Their Role Perceptions and Performance in Single-and Dual-Earner Families," Journal of Marriage and the Family 49, no. 4 (November 1987): 903–15.

80.  Kibria, Family Tightropes, 22–23.

81.  Parminder Bhachu, "Identities Constructed and Reconstructed: Representations of Asian Women in Britain," in Migrant Women: Crossing Boundaries and Changing Identities, ed. Gina Buijs (Oxford, 1993), 99–118.

82.  Sunil Bhatia, American Karma: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Indian Diaspora (New York, 2007), 100–11; Khandelwal, Becoming American, Being Indian, 123–34; Arpana Sircar, Work Roles, Gender Roles, and Asian Indian Immigrant Women in the United States, 135–48, 215–22; Dasgupta, On the Trail of an Uncertain Dream, 131–87.

83.  My research on Indian immigrants in metropolitan Detroit indicates that many professional women were encouraged by their families to focus on their professional education; consequently, they did not know how to cook.

84.  Sharmila Rudrappa, "Disciplining Desire in Making the Home: Engendering Ethnicity in Indian Immigrant Families," in The Second Generation: Ethnic Identity among Asian Americans, ed. Pyong Gap Min (Walnut Creek, CA, 2002), 85–112; Bandana Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World (New Brunswick, NJ, 2005), 87–116; Karen Isaksen Leonard, The South Asian Americans (Westport, CT, 1997), 145–68; Karen Leonard, "The Management of Desire: Sexuality and Marriage for Young South Asian Women in America," in Gupta, ed., Emerging Voices, 107–19.

85.  Jean Bacon, Life Lines: Community, Family, and Assimilation among Asian Indian Immigrants (New York, 1996).

86.  See Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, 87–116; Bacon, Life Lines, 75–201. Manisha Roy, "Mothers and Daughters in Indian American Families: A Failed Communication?" in Dasgupta, ed., A Patchwork Shawl, 97–110, highlights the pressures Indian parents put on their children to become professionals.

87.  Sangeeta R. Gupta, "Walking on the Edge: Indian American Women Speak Out on Dating and Marriage," in Gupta, ed., Emerging Voices, 120–45; Diya Kallivayalil, "Gender and Cultural Socialization in Indian Immigrant Families in the United States," Feminism and Psychology 14, no. 4 (November 2004): 535–59.

88.  Khandelwal, Becoming American, Being Indian, 123–34; Anju Jain and Jay Belsky, "Fathering and Acculturation: Immigrant Indian Families with Young Children," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59, no. 4 (November 1997): 873–83; Sudha Sethu Balagopal, "The Case of the Brown Memsahib: Issues That Confront Working South Asian Wives and Mothers," in Gupta, ed., Emerging Voices, 146–68; Raji Swaminathan, "Relational Worlds: South Asian Immigrant Women Talk about Home/Work," in Immigrant Women of the Academy: Negotiating Boundaries, Crossing Borders in Higher Education, ed. Mary V. Alfred and Raji Swaminathan (New York, 2004), 89–104.

89.  Balagopal, "The Case of the Brown Memsahib," 146–68.

90.  Rashmi Luthra, Coverage of Women's Issues in the Indian Immigrant Press: A Content Analysis, Women in International Development Series, Working Paper no. 138 (East Lansing, MI, 1987).

91.  Khandelwal, Becoming American, Being Indian, 133.

92.  Maria Mies, Indian Women and Patriarchy: Conflicts and Dilemmas of Students and Working Women in India (New Delhi, India, 1982), argues that Indian women are rarely confrontational; instead, they negotiate delicately within the system.

93.  Chitra Banerjee Divarkaruni, "We the Indian Women in America," in Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, ed. Sunaina Maira and Rajni Srikanth (New York, 1996), 268–70.

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