A Woman's Job

Against the backdrop of rapid socio-economic change in post-1990 India scholars and policy makers have expressed surprise at the low rate of women''s participation in the workforce particularly in urban areas. A Woman''s Job presents a unique urban ethnography of young lower middle class women''s lives in Delhi as they weave in and out of service employment education and domestic contracts. Urban educated and skilled these young women seek employment in cafes malls call centres and offices in the globalising landscape of Delhi. Their participation in work enables access to ''things'' such as jeans smartphones English language and the metro that symbolise global modernity. However caught in a web of gender class and caste inequalities their identification as ''working'' women also generates social anxieties. The book shows how women adopt ''middle-ness'' as a strategy of life-making at the multiple sites of work home and leisure.