The “Good-Girl” Value Construct: Asian Indian Immigrant Women in the U.S. and Contested Spaces

Abstract

The multiple constructions of identity that define an Indian woman - as a wife, a mother, a Goddess - and the thread that holds these identities together, the “good-girl” are explored in this paper. Fox’s (1977) argument of the use of “nice-girl” or “good-girl” as value constructs for the social control of women is used to examine the narratives of three Asian Indian immigrant women. The discourses presented in the case studies, reflect strongly on the socialized nature of the “good-girl” construct and indicate how its influences, sources, and definitions lead women to communicatively produce and reproduce the meanings of this construct whilst undergoing the dual tensions of embodying and resisting becoming the “good-girl”.