‘Child That Belongs Over There’: Coping With Cultural Biases Against Working Women
“Our relatives are visiting us next week and we cannot keep it a secret anymore,” my husband said to me. Our big secret: I had started working outside the home four months ago. I had taken a job at a preschool, but we had kept it to ourselves. Sound strange? Here is why we kept it quiet: My family is from India. I had a toddler at home. As an Indian woman from a conservative family, I knew that raising children and homemaking is what was expected of me. It is simply not OK for your little one to be raised by others while you worked. A typical conservative Indian woman has no backing from men in any stage of her life when it comes to a job, let alone a career. Fathers — and mothers — encourage their daughters to go to school and finish college, as having college credentials is deemed prestigious. In our language (Telugu), a girl is called “aadapilla,” which literally translates to “child that belongs over there.” That means she does not belong “over here,” in her home —...