Negotiations of cultural identities by Indian women engineering students in US engineering programmes

Abstract

The paper analyses the identities of Indian women engineers in the gendered organizational context of US engineering programmes. Participant narratives discuss the ways in which women are subjected to identity struggles in India due to gendered patrifocal norms that impose structural, societal, and familial pressures on women. Subsequently, when these women enter US engineering programmes, they encounter a highly masculine organizational and cultural space. Participants discuss identity dislocations, transformations, and assimilation as they seek to meld into the existing structures and find a career trajectory. I draw upon liminality theory to explore the cultural transitions, identity restructuring, and negotiations of Indian women engineers, navigating the intersections of competing and intersecting cultural norms of gender and engineering in India and the US, work, and family. The findings indicate the layers of gendered ideology that constitute engineering education in India and the US, the societal pressures of marriage and family rooted in patrifocal Indian norms, the barriers to finding an engineering job, the resources within the structures that support women, and the identification of patriarchy as the enactment of agency and as a site for change.

Keywords:

• Liminality
• patrifocality
• gender
• identity
• culture
• communication