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Abstract
Indian mega-cities have been undergoing remarkable socio-cultural transformations alongside major economic shifts driven by information and communication technologies. The newly emerging economic spaces are characterized by numerous complex home–workplace links, speeding up of information and communication flows; time–space compression; and increased individualism (Cresswell, 2009). These have juxtaposed different spatial and temporal domains in close proximity to each other. In this context, the location of female subjectivity posits an interesting field of enquiry, primarily because women have often been projected as epitomizing these new economic spaces in the visual images and corporate billboards that dot the urban cityscape. These new “iconic” women are perceived to have access to technical and higher education, corporate jobs, and greater autonomy—in short, they are portrayed as the privileged signifiers and transmitters of new India (Radhakrishnan, 2009). And the new economic spaces have been construed as gender-neutral sites of agency and empowerment (Wajcman, 2010). However, such an avant-garde and rosy view of these spaces needs to be examined. This article tries to explore how gendered spaces fare in the new urban economic spaces thrown up by globalization in Kolkata. The study shows that although women have gained access to liberating work spaces and economic opportunities, their workplace interactions with colleagues and peer groups continue to be framed within the cultural encodings of ideal femininity. Such socially controlled workplace socialization of women eventually culminates in loss of empowering information, resources, and other career benefits. Thus, these new economic spaces emerge as heterotopic sites where the “modern” boundaries and local binaries coexist ambivalently, and are simultaneously contested and subverted.
