Brahman women as cultured homemakers – unpacking caste, gender roles and cultural capital across three generations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Caste privilege is invisible in the lives of so-called upper caste, middle-class women. This paper offers critical insight into Brahman women’s lives, mapping evolving gender roles but examining them as sites of caste privilege. Education, marriage and housework are the registers used to map gender roles. The study uses narratives of three generations of Chitpavan Brahman women and individual interviews of Chitpavan women from Pune, a city in western India. The findings confirm that accumulated cultural capital facilitates a smooth educational progression for Chitpavan women. The modernizing impulse of Brahmans necessitates a minimum social norm of educational attainment before marriage for women across generations. There is an increase in women’s agency in marriage negotiations. Brahman women continue to be responsible for domestic management but can choose to identify as pragalbha grihini i.e. cultured housewives. I argue that the pragalbha grihini lies in a contested discursive space, between the tensions of ‘feminist’ and ‘housewife’. It is an important pathway for the socio-cultural reproduction of caste privilege.