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South Asian Women and Marriage: Experiences of a Cultural Script

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Abstract

Although the South Asian community is one of the largest and fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, there is a paucity of social science research about these communities. A number of authors have assumed the importance of gender, marriage, and family within South Asian diasporic culture; however, relatively little research has explored South Asian women’s lived experiences from their own perspectives or across generations. This study sought to understand how first and second generation South Asian women in the US understand their experiences of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and diaspora. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with 30 South Asian women living in the US, I show that across generations, messages about (heterosexual) marriage emerged as central to how women understood their gendered experience and, as such, marriage and being marriageable function as a “cultural script” for middle-class South Asian womanhood. Women’s narratives elucidate some of the specific messages of this “cultural script” and everyday ways this script is indirectly and directly communicated to women within family and community interactions.

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Notes

  1. For a fuller discussion regarding marriage paths for second generation South Asians, see [32].

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  1. Portland State University, School of Social Work, PO Box 751, Portland, OR, 97207, USA

    Gita R. Mehrotra

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  1. Gita R. Mehrotra
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Correspondence to Gita R. Mehrotra.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Mehrotra, G.R. South Asian Women and Marriage: Experiences of a Cultural Script. Gend. Issues 33, 350–371 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-016-9172-7

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