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The jugaarus: elite female Indian programmers' use of confidence and creativity to succeed in a male-dominated field

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The jugaarus: elite female Indian programmers' use of confidence and creativity to succeed in a male-dominated field

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THE JUGAARUS:
ELITE FEMALE INDIAN PROGRAMMERS’ USE OF CONFIDENCE AND CREATIVITY
TO SUCCEED IN A MALE-DOMINATED FIELD
by

Chris Robbins

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Christiana Robbins

ii
Dedication
To all the women and men with whom I spoke. Your stories deserve to be heard.

iii
Acknowledgements
Jorge Luis Borges said, “Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build
on the sand as if it were stone.” It has been a terrifying thing for me to build this work on sand. I
am grateful to everyone who helped me create a dissertation on such shaky ground. I would not
have succeeded without your support and your unflagging belief in me. Thank you.
Near the end of my first year in the program, Dr. Lynn Miller told me that she saw
potential in me and that I had a unique mind that worked in fascinating ways. This was the first,
but not the last time her generosity of spirit would pull me up when I had fallen. As my co-
advisor, Lynn has always supported me in any way she could, from writing last-minute
recommendation letters to attending my wedding. Learning from her has been joyful.
I am a former English major, so rhetoric is my natural home in communication. How
lovely it was to be welcomed home by one of the most thoughtful, deliberate, and kind people I
have met in academia: my co-advisor, Dr. Randy Lake. I thank Randy for the hours of
conversation we have had about rhetoric and philosophy. I am wiser for what he shared with me.
He is an immensely gifted writer and I am honored by the time he has spent reviewing and
editing my work. No one devotes the effort to drawing out the true meaning of students’ words
like he does.
Since I have known her, Dr. Patti Riley has always had too many things going on at once.
I have never seen her at rest. And yet, she always made time to help me with my work. I am so
grateful that she agreed to be on my dissertation committee. I also want to thank Dr. Valente, not
only for being an excellent, passionate lecturer but for showing me how much an ADHD brain
can accomplish in academia; his example gave me reason to hope. Dr. Peter Monge was the first
faculty member at Annenberg to believe in my potential; without him I never would have gotten

iv
a foot in the door, and for that I am grateful. Anne Marie Campian and Sarah Hesterman
organize all our lives and should win many awards for competence, reliability, and patience.
In my time at Annenberg, I became extremely sick. I struggled to remain in the program
during what were some of the most difficult years of my life. I can finish this dissertation
because people intervened. I thank my then-boyfriend, now-husband, David, who insisted I go to
the doctor when I was ignoring the symptoms, and who caught me so many times as I began to
fall. I also thank the professors who definitely went easy on me the first semester I was
diagnosed—Drs. Miller, Valente, McLaughlin, and Fulk. I was ashamed of being sick, so it was
hard for me to ask for help. They gave me help anyways. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Harvey
Elder, who, when I was both sick and homeless, allowed me, a stranger, to just up and move into
his home for months, for free, for no other reason than his granddaughter vouched for me. Thank
you also to Marcia Allison, who is braver than I am. Her self-advocacy and refusal to be silenced
made me less ashamed to ask for what I needed. Thank you to Olivia Wills and Sarah Hesterman
who got me a much-needed paid health leave. Thank you most of all to Dr. Chelsea Hesterman, a
brilliant neurologist and the first doctor to make me feel seen. Today, I am healthy because of the
work she did.
Along the way, I had good people by my side. Thank you to Marcia Allison, Emma
Bloomfield, Marina Litvinsky, Deborah Neffa-Creech, Ruthie Kelly, Ruqin Ren, Nazli Senyuva,
Sonia Shaikh, Emily Sidnam-Mauch, Nathan Walter, and Larry Zhiming Xu. Nathan had bigger
dreams for me than I had for myself. I thank him for seeing me as someone with so much to
offer. Sonia has been my partner through all our pain. I hope that in future, life gives her all the
wonderful things she clearly deserves; either way I will still be her friend. Thank you to my
friends at ASU’s NNCI Winter School for making me feel at home in STS, and to Christian

v
Ross, who somehow procured 18 more interviews for my dissertation at the last minute. I knew
there was a reason I trusted him.
I am fortunate that Danielle Hagood and I have struggled through our PhD
simultaneously and that along the way we have been able to learn from one another. Her
fearlessness engenders my respect and admiration, time and again. I hope we continue to meet
minds long into the future. Out of all the things Annemarie Gregory has done with me and for
me, I am most grateful for the hundreds of hours spent holed up in one or the other of our cars, in
some parking lot, until late in the night, eating vegan donuts and talking together.
I know my mom and dad have worried about me a lot over the past six years. I want to
thank them for trusting me anyways and for being the haven I know I can always return to.
Thank you, most of all, for believing in me with such intensity that I could never doubt, not even
for one second, that I can accomplish whatever I set out to do. Their faith in me is a large part of
why I am here today. I have admired my big sister, Becca, since we were children. I thank her
for being such a worthy role model, and for all the support she has given, especially the endless
conversations about doctor’s visits and new medications. She is my biggest advocate.
I thank my husband, David, for sharing his life with me. There is no way to sum up all he
has done to make this dissertation happen, but for starters, I would have missed the application
deadline for USC’s doctoral program if he had not been there, frantically editing my personal
statement thirty minutes before midnight. He made me promise that something like that was
never going to happen again. I am sorry to have broken this promise so many times, but how
lucky I am that he is still here, seven years later, despite my pernicious efforts. He is my constant
reminder that the life I have outside of books is far more beautiful and more precious than
anything I could find inside their pages.

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Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List of Tables viii
List of Figures ix
Abstract x
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Structuring Reality 3
Chapter Summaries 6

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Research Questions 9
Women Living in India 9
India at Work 32
The Computer Programmer in India 53

Chapter 3: Methods 63
Research Design 63
Participants 65
Materials 73
Procedure 83
Data Analysis 86

Chapter 4: Results Concerning Cultural Influences on Young Indian Women 95
The Ideal Indian Woman 96
Women’s Safety 103
A Girl Growing Up in India 110
Labor of Love 122

Chapter 5: Results Concerning Workplace Sexism and Women Who Program 134
Gender Ratios 134
Indian Women’s Perceptions of Sexism 135
Indian Men’s Perceptions of Sexism 145
Characteristics of an Adept Programmer 154
Should you be a Jugaaru? 157
Women’s Communication 162

Chapter 6: Discussion 181
A Review of Key Conclusions 181
The Problem with Knowledge Work 185
Buying into the Myth of Meritocracy 187

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Female-Friendly Indian IT Work 189
The Female Participants are the Jugaarus 192

Chapter 7: Conclusion 196
Summation of Primary Dissertation Claims 196
Limitations of the Study 199
Future Directions of Research 201
Some Messages to Future Female Indian Computer Programmers 201

References 205
Appendices
Appendix A: Semi-Structured Interview Guide 222
Appendix B: Map of India Distributed to Participants to Mark Home State 224
Appendix C: Recruitment Emails 225
Appendix D: Consent Form 226

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List of Tables
Table 2.1. Soft Skills Described as Important to Computer Programming 55
Table 3.1. Participant Demographics 68
Table 3.2. Participant Wealth and Educational Opportunities 70
Table 3.3. Primary Coding Themes and their Sources 89
Table 3.4. Primary Themes and their Sub-themes 90
Table 4.1. Study Research Questions Sorted by Topic 95
Table 6.1. Key Conclusions Drawn from Each Research Question 184
Table 6.2. Pros and Cons of Working in India’s IT Sector as a Woman 190

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List of Figures
Figure 3.1. Heat Map Depicting the Distribution of Participants’ Home States 66
Figure 3.2. Map of Geographic Distribution of Mother Tongues Across India 79
Figure 3.3. Sample of Coding Process for the Topic, “Parental Support” 88
Figure 5.1. Rates of Perceived Differential Treatment Between Genders in Tech 146
Figure 5.2. Most Named Computer Programming Soft Skills, by Total Number of Citations 155
Figure 5.3. Most Named Computer Programming Soft Skills, by Percent per Gender 157
Figure 5.4. Most Frequently Used Words When Defining Jugaad 158
Figure 5.5. Impact of Work Experience on Women’s Valuation of Jugaad in the Workplace 160

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Abstract
India is a developing nation that, from the 1990s onward, became a technological hub
with significant job growth in the information technology (IT) sector (Radhakrishnan, 2011).
Given India’s patriarchal culture, one might expect low female participation in the IT sector;
however, India has female participation in IT at around 35%, which is nearly double women’s
rate of participation in the general workforce (World Bank Group, 2020). This dissertation
investigates the unique factors that enable young Indian women’s success as computer
programmers, despite their immersion in a misogynistic environment that is actively hostile to
women’s participation in the workforce. It does so by asking two interrelated questions. First,
how does the structure of Indian society impact young women’s tech workplace success?
Second, what latent factors do these women articulate that enable their success in tech? The
answers to these questions are examined utilizing structuration theory (Giddens, 1979) and they
help reveal the relationship between structure and agency for members of this cultural and
economic community.
To collect data, one-hour long, semi-structured, one-on-one interviews were conducted.
In total 50 participants were interviewed, 35 females (70%) and 15 males (30%); monetary
compensation was provided. All participants were 18 years of age or older, of Indian nationality,
fluent in English, and currently enrolled in a master’s program in a computer science field at The
University of Southern California or Arizona State University. The coding method was informed
by Corbin and Strauss’s grounded approach (2014) as well as Beterding and Waters’s flexible
coding approach (2018). Results reveal the tensions between Indian cultural norms and the
behaviors necessary for a woman to succeed in the IT workplace; however, women’s capacity to
cleverly maneuver around obstacles is also apparent. Unexpectedly, results also demonstrate the

xi
ways that interlocking discriminatory effects often combine to enable Indian women’s success in
the IT workforce.
Poster’s (2013) argument that different international contexts produce “different kinds of
discriminating environments” that may offer “hidden advantages,” despite being discriminatory
is combined with Takhteyev’s (2012) argument that structuration takes place across large
geographical distances (p. 42). Utilizing these two ideas in combination with the tenets of
structuration theory, this dissertation argues that the many different and overlapping types of
discrimination of a local context combine to function as a single discriminatory structure, with a
specific signature, unique to its location. Each discriminatory structure is distinctive because
individual structural elements impact one another’s expression while actors’ behaviors feed back
into the structure, continually undoing and reconstructing its various parts. As Giddens (1979)
argues, the accumulation of actions create social systems and thus social systems are formed
over time and in a physical space and cannot be studied or measured as isolated entities.
The dissertation also posits that the female participants and the population they represent
are experts at jugaad—a popular Indian term that describes the practice of achieving outcomes in
creative ways utilizing only limited resources—and thus function as unlikely jugaarus, or
experts at jugaad. Every woman who becomes a successful computer programmer has had to
jugaad her way into the role, because the discriminatory structure she was immersed in was not
designed to accommodate her needs, nor to contain her peripheral nature.

Keywords: computer programmer, female, India, IT, jugaad, sexism, structuration, surveillance,
workplace

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Chapter 1: Introduction
Late in the afternoon on a hot summer’s day in 2018, I found myself on the advantageous
side of a large, one-way glass window, peering in at the most recent small group in my pilot
dissertation research. While I watched, four Indian programming students attempted to
collaboratively write computer code for an online version of the children’s game, Connect 4.
Progress towards the assigned task had rapidly devolved into what could be called one-sided
bickering. The single male, outnumbered though he was, boomed orders to the three women as
they hurried around. I soon realized that though these women were offering affirmative sounds at
the right moments, they mostly worked amongst themselves whenever he was otherwise
engaged. From time to time, they exchanged a certain long-suffering look.
When time ran out, the group submitted the solution the man had been working on. I
glanced down at it and was disappointed to see that it was mostly incomplete. He hurried off, but
the women stayed behind to collect their things and chat. One of them looked over at me and off-
handedly mentioned that some members of the group had produced another solution, if I would
like to see it. I said yes and the three women gave me their far more complete and more carefully
reasoned response. “Apparently,” I thought, “the gentleman had been both outnumbered and
outgunned.” I started to laugh and could not resist asking them why they had not told their other
group member about this solution. One of the women sighed, saying, “We did try.” With a nod,
another added, “We’re used to it.” The first women chimed in again, “Convincing him wouldn’t
have been worth the effort.” I was both impressed and frustrated by the practiced ease with
which they dismissed the unprofitable energies of their male partner and collaboratively
embraced their own skillfulness.

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This short conversation and many others like it became the foundations of my
dissertation. The women I spoke with made me aware of a world that, however invisible it had
been, ran parallel to my own. Up to that point, when I imagined computer programmers, I saw
Americans—geeky young white males based in or around Silicon Valley, all part of a boy’s club
of innovation, creativity, and risk. These conversations triggered a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962)
towards a more accurate perspective: Computer programming is a global industry with a thriving
south Asian workforce, many of whom are women. There are far more programmers outside
Silicon Valley than within it. Realizing this, however, left me with more questions than answers.
Indian women are employed in the IT industry at a rate that is nearly double their rate of
participation in the general Indian workforce (World Bank Group, 2020). Compare this to the
United States—a country that is imagined as both a hub of egalitarianism and of technological
development—where women are employed in the IT industry at less than half the rate of their
participation in the general workforce (McDonald, 2008). What was happening to create and
maintain this strange disparity? To find the answer, I began conducting in-depth interviews with
female Indian computer programmers. My dissertation was born from these conversations.
The women I interviewed were incredibly successful, but in ways vastly different from
their Western counterparts. My participants showed me a type of computer programming that
thrives in marginal spaces, built on a skillset self-confidence, tenacity, and sheer force of will.
How had these women gained necessary skills, when the entire technological world seemed
oriented around places and cultures utterly unlike their own? How had these women succeeded,
when faced with the many and diverse barriers put up by rampantly patriarchal societies such as
in India? This dissertation aims to better understand what unique factors enable young Indian

3
women’s success as computer programmers
1
, despite their immersion in an environment that is
actively hostile to women’s participation in the workforce and their exclusion from the major
hubs of technological advancement, such as Silicon Valley.
Structuring Reality
Giddens’ (1979) structuration theory provides a foundation for understanding the
interplay of individual agency and institutional control in this dissertation. In structuration
theory, action cannot be understood without considering the context in which it occurred. The
system conceived by Giddens is one of interaction and interdependence of what normally is and
how people react to what is. Giddens claims, “Actors sustain the meaning of what they say and
do through routinely incorporating ‘what went before’ and anticipations of ‘what will come next’
into the present of an encounter” (Giddens, 1979, p. 84). The dialectic of control—the interplay
between the individual and the social system—allows for an overarching structure of culturally
determined behavioral patterns as well as commonplace individual actions which follow or
deviate from these socially normative rules. In structuration, culture is not simply a static web of
meaning that individuals embrace out of necessity, nor something that entirely constrains
individual actors.
The theory of structuration rests on the fact that “structure is both enabling and
constraining” (Giddens, 1979, p 69). The individual chooses a behavior within the context of a
social system and that simultaneously a behavioral choice exerts power over that social system.
He considers both internal motivations and external pressures and encompasses all social norms
in the term ‘rules.’ A social system is thus constructed by conscious choice to act, by

1
There are many names used to describe workers in the Information Technology sector who primarily specialize in
writing and editing computer code. This dissertation solely uses the term, computer programmer to describe these
workers to avoid confusion.

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unconscious choice to act, and by the choice to abstain from action. Within this social system,
agency is a tool which allow actors to understand and consequently align with or deviate from
rules. Social systems are both the structures in which action is performed and the ephemeral
memory traces that exist in human minds; individuals act and through their actions reify or reject
certain elements of the social system. A social system is the sum of all these parts; it is a
collection of decisions of individual agents which occurs over time and across an area of space.
In his book, Coding Places, Takhteyev (2012) says that software development is seen as
“a quintessential example of ‘knowledge work,’ a global profession, freed from the constraints of
geography by the immaterial nature of its inputs and outputs” (p. 2). This argument posits that
though computer code is written in English and though the practices and customs around
designing code were crafted in the United States, computer code is placeless, able to be lifted up
from one context and placed down into another, from California to Kenya, without issue. All that
is required is someone in Kenya who can ‘speak the language’ of code. This vision of placeless
code offers a utopian view of globalization, seeing in it only the promise of greater possibilities
and more connections.
But globalization has revealed itself as something far different from an equalizing force.
As Takheteyev (2012) says, “Globalization links places, but it does not equalize them. Often, it
highlights the differences” (p. 24). In the case of computer programming, the distortions of
inequality pull the global community, as if by gravity or magnetism, to one central location:
Silicon Valley. This one small location becomes the standard by which other communities are
judged. In a similar fashion, globalization has created a booming IT industry in India that seems
open to the masses but is reserved for urban, well-educated, middle- and upper-class men. What
stands out about India is that the unfolding of globalizing forces has uniquely benefited women’s

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IT careers. Within India’s larger work culture, however, women continue to exist on the
periphery. Female computer programmers in India must navigate these incompatible organizing
forces. They should be appropriately Indian but also sufficiently Western. They should be
‘homely’ and simple, focused on the needs of their families while also astutely navigating
dangerously hostile public spaces. They should be submissive at home but confident at work.
This balancing act requires cognitive and emotional resources, but it also positions them as what
Takhteyev (2012) calls peripheral practitioners, utilizing what Susan Leigh Star (1990) calls
multiple memberships. Because they exist in multiple systems but fully belong to none of them,
people who exist on the periphery offer unique perspectives than span disparate cultures and
geographies.
Peripheral practitioners who have multiple memberships across various systems must
frequently utilize creative problem-solving skills to bridge the gap between the benefits a
system’s design offers its members and the resources a person on the margins of that system
needs to survive (Star, 1990). This dissertation argues that peripheral practitioners, including
female Indian computer programmers, embody the Indian concept of jugaad—using scarce
resources in an innovative way to solve emergent problems—to survive and even thrive in
otherwise hostile climes (“Jugaad”, 2017).
Trauth et al. (2008) concern themselves with “why some women persist in the IT field in
the face of systemic gender biases in both education and the workplace” (p. 8). What are “the
sources of individual agency that enable some women to overcome systemic negative
influences” (Trauth et al., 2008, p. 8)? Trauth et al. argue that “the answer can be found in the
combined influence of endogenous and exogenous factors that influence an individual’s personal
development and subsequent IT career decisions” (p. 8). What are the influences at work on

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Indian female programmers? Though both India and the United States have low IT labor force
participation by women, India’s status as a patriarchal, developing nation would lead one to
believe that it would be at a disadvantage when recruiting women to the IT sector. To the
contrary, Poster (2013) notes that “features of the United States such as greater wealth and lower
population do not help pull women into technical work” (p. 39). Thus, Poster proposes that
different international contexts produce “different kinds of discriminating environments” and that
there might be “hidden advantages in these settings” (p. 42). Poster’s argument is not that
discrimination is less in one country or another, but that the different kinds of discrimination a
group experiences will impact its response.
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Research Questions provides an overview of existing
literature related to this topic, as well as an introduction to the ten research questions that drive
this research. The literature review is divided into three main sections, each covering a different
element of female Indian computer programmers’ lives. First, the literature review examines the
lived experiences of women in India: their history, their rights, major threats to their well-being
and safety, their roles in society, and so on. Next, it looks at the rise of the IT industry in India
and India’s relationship to the United States concerning tech. It then discusses reasons for
women’s low rates of participation in the Indian workforce and women’s higher rates of
participation in the IT workforce, as well as factors that enable and inhibit Indian women’s
participation in the IT sector. The final section compiles literature that discusses what sorts of
soft skills computer programmers need and then explores the meaning and significance of
jugaad.

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Chapter 3: Methods discusses methods utilized in conducting this research, including
research design selection and rationale, participant selection and demographic characteristics, a
breakdown of materials used to collect data, the procedures by which the data were collected,
and methods of data analysis to create results.
Chapter 4: Results Concerning Cultural Influences on Young Indian Women is the first
of two results chapters and goes over results related to Indian women’s backgrounds and lived
experiences. First, this chapter looks at the role of reputation in Indian women’s lives, as well as
characteristics that are deemed appropriately feminine and chaste. Second, it investigates the
alarmingly significant impact of safety issues on Indian women’s day-to-day lives as well as
some of the psychological components of the constant, low-grade fear that this unsafe
environment promotes. Third, the chapter provides stories from participants about their
formative childhood experiences—ones that helped them realize they were going to be computer
programmers or taught them their own worth. Fourth, and finally, the chapter looks at the role of
marriage in an Indian woman’s life and how her marital duties will impact her ability to work
outside the home.
Chapter 5: Results Concerning Workplace Sexism and Women Who Program continues
discussing results and focuses more on women’s work experiences rather than their personal
lives. This chapter begins by providing gender ratios for the participants’ various places of
employment. It then contrasts women’s perceptions of sexism in the workplace with men’s
perceptions of sexism in the workplace. Next, it lists characteristics participants described as
necessary to be a successful computer programmer and discusses participant’s perceptions of the
meaning of jugaad and the appropriateness of its use in the workplace. Finally, it describes the

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communication styles of female participants, noting which behaviors proved beneficial in the IT
workplace.
Chapter 6: Discussion is an analysis of results. It first reviews the key conclusions that
can be drawn from the two results chapters. Then, in The Problem with Knowledge Work and
Buying into the Myth of Meritocracy, it sets up key difficulties of being an Indian woman in tech
and demonstrates how the difficulty is minimized and trivialized by the myth of meritocracy,
which is omnipresent in the Indian IT workforce. After this, the chapter utilizes the knowledge
accrued by this dissertation to set up a comparison between women’s work experience in India
and in the United States. This comparison reveals why IT work is so much more appealing for
Indian women than American women. Finally, the Discussion section concludes by proposing a
theory about female Indian computer programmers: They function as jugaarus. Through use of
adaptability, creativity, confidence, and a certain disregard for the opinions of others, these
Indian women can manipulate circumstances laden with obstacles to obtain success.
Chapter 7: Conclusion begins by summarizing the dissertation’s most fundamental
claims. Next, it provides some theoretical and practical implications of this work. It then offers
some limitations of the research and proposes potential avenues for further investigation of
reasons for the success of female Indian computer programmers. Finally, it lets the female
participants of this dissertation speak for themselves about how India can move forward as a
more egalitarian nation, and how Indian women can empower themselves to achieve success.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review and Research Questions
This literature review provides broad coverage of the major issues concerning female
Indian computer programmers. It is divided into three major categories. The first category,
Women Living in India, is not specific to programmers and instead examines the cultural
backdrop against which the typical Indian woman would live her life, since culture is a structure
that has powerful repercussions on women’s agency in all facets of life, including in the
workplace (Giddens, 1984). The second category, India at Work, looks both at the history of the
Indian IT sector and at women’s recent forays into the male-dominated Indian workforce. It
investigates structural elements of the working process that prove advantages or disadvantages to
Indian women in IT, constraining and enabling their actions in sometimes unexpected ways
(Giddens, 1984). The third and final section, The Computer Programmer in India, deals with how
actors practice agency in the workplace structure and is divided into two parts. The first part
looks at existing literature to see which traits are considered valuable to be a skillful computer
programmer. The second part of this final section examines the Indian concept of jugaad and
demonstrates the term’s relevance to computer programming.
Women Living in India
This first portion of the literature review covers women’s place in India. It provides a
brief history of Indian women’s rights, then looks at two pervasive types of modern-day
devaluations of Indian women: an imbalanced sex ratio and a tradition of unwanted daughters.
Next, it traces the consequences of this devaluation, including six major areas of harm: less
education, more household labor, younger marriages, dowry-related dangers, domestic violence,
and violence against women in public spaces. The final section of Women Living in India is a

10
review of the ways gender is performed by women as a reaction to the structural environment
they have been immersed in.
A History of Indian Women’s Rights
Hindi women enjoyed high status positions with many rights during the Vedic period of
India’s history (1500-500 BCE), including access to education, ability to choose a husband, and
the right to be a rishi, or sage (Punam & Sharma, 2017). As Punam and Sharma’s (2017)
overview of the history of women’s rights in India discusses, shortly after the end of the Vedic
period women’s fortunes began to decline, and Indian law was altered to state, “women have to
be under father during childhood, under her husband during youth, and under her son during old
age. At no stage shall she deserve freedom” (p. 5). Child marriage and polygyny became
common; women were denied access to educational opportunities and many religious rituals;
only men could hold property; and middle- and upper-class women became confined to the home
through purdah (Punam & Sharma, 2017). The many oppressive practices “attracted the attention
of social reformers focused on the education of girls” starting in the mid-1800s, and women’s
reform movements began to take place (Chanana, 2006, p. 273). For instance, the uncommon but
highly respected practice of sati, or a widow’s self-immolation on her husband’s pyre, was
banned in 1829 and the first women’s college was established in 1849 (Thakur, 2017).
Only since the 1950s have these efforts culminated into a social reality dramatically
different than before, and today, Indian women see their fortunes reversed from that of their
mothers and grandmothers. India has modernized dramatically in the last 70 years, since its
freedom from the British in 1947, and women’s rights have expanded rapidly during this time.
Today, the Constitution of India grants all Indian women “equality (Article 14), no
discrimination by the state (Article 15(1)), equality of opportunity (Article 16), and equal pay for

11
equal work (Article 51(A))” (Punam & Sharma, 2017, p. 11). Though women’s status in the
modern age has markedly improved, they are certainly not receiving all the benefits the Indian
Constitution promises, and India has much work left to do before its female citizens truly achieve
parity with men.
India is a vast country, known for its extreme diversity, with differences in language and
culture that US scholars struggle to comprehend. The manifestation of sexism in India is an
example of this diversity. Even though rights guaranteed in the Constitution of India should be
applicable to everyone in the country, women’s freedoms vary from north to south, and from
rural to urban areas (Chanana, 2006). There are two general rules: first, the further south in India
one travels, the more equitable the treatment of women becomes; second, urban areas tend to
treat women more favorably than rural areas (Emran & Shilpi, 2015). For instance, consider the
practice of purdah (Hindi ghunghat), which requires women’s confinement to the home and a
male escort and full body covering when venturing in public (Punam & Sharma, 2017). Variants
of purdah are still commonly practiced in north India but are virtually nonexistent in south India
(Desai & Andrist, 2010). Another key example of difference based on location is the age at
which women are married. In their work on marital ages, Desai and Andrist (2010) note,
Regional differences in income, education, and culture dominate the Indian panorama;
age at marriage is no exception. Studies documenting these interstate differences often
note that these differences are so robust that the addition of individual-level
socioeconomic controls do little to dampen the differences between states. (p. 679)

There are also significant differences in age of marriage between urban and rural women, due in
part to a decreased emphasis on gender performance in cities (Desai & Andrist, 2010). As
geography functions as one of many structures that constrains and enables women’s agency,
differences in geography result in differences in treatment of women for every topic touched
upon in this literature review, including marriage, education, public safety, work environment,

12
and communicative practices. When geographical differences result in relevant differing
outcomes closely tied to women in the Indian IT workplace, those differences are noted.
The Devaluation of Women in India
Sex Ratio. In India, women have less value than men; quite literally, their lives are worth
less because their existence is less desired. This is evident in India’s distorted sex ratio, which is
the result of millions of sex-selective abortions. As explained by Hesketh and Xing (2006) on
their work on abnormal sex ratios, the sex ratio in India deviates from the expected 50:50
balance “because of the tradition of son preference” that is “manifested prenatally, through sex
determination and sex-selective abortion, and postnatally through neglect and abandonment of
female children” (Hesketh & Xing, 2006, p. 13272). Though sex-selective abortion is technically
illegal in India, its practice is rampant; as of 2001, it was reported that there were 27-39 million
missing females in India because of parental preference for male children (Hesketh & Xing,
2006). By 2011, there were just 918 girls for every 1000 boys in India, one of the largest gaps of
any country in the world (Bagcchi, 2014).
At first glance, it may seem that a decrease in the supply of marriageable females would
increase the demand for, and thus the status of, young woman; however, Hesketh and Xing
(2006) note, “Increased female value may not benefit the woman herself, but rather the males
around her. Her father, husband, and in-laws all hold her value, so when her value increases her
life is more controlled by them” (p. 13274). Thus, a reduction in the number of females results in
further loss of agency for women.
High sex ratios also have consequences for the community. Consistently across cultures,
it has been shown that “an overwhelming percentage of violent crime is perpetrated by young,
un-married, low-status males” and in India in particular, the same study by Hesketh and Xing

13
(2006) showed “a strong correlation between homicide rates in individual states across the
country and the sex ratio in those states” (p. 13273). Parental preference for male offspring has
continued, despite dramatic increases in recent years in the average education level of the Indian
citizenry. Echávarri and Ezcurra (2010) argue that though increased education has been shown to
reduce biased sex preference, increased education also means increased opportunities and
resources, and thus increased access to sex-selective abortive technologies. In modern India, the
rising tide of opportunities and resources overwhelms whatever cultural gains education has
achieved, and the sex ratio remains distorted.
Undesired Daughters. Daughters are less welcome than sons for four key reasons:
traditions of the Hindu religion; burdens of safety and protection that fall more heavily on
families with daughters than families with sons; the financial burden of marriage and dowry; and
a cultural belief that daughters inevitably leave their families, and take any invested resources
with them. The concept of the undesirable daughter is a sentiment supported by Hindu rituals and
myths proclaiming that for mother, birth of a son is a fulfillment of her responsibility as a women
whereas birth of a daughter “is a letdown in some absolute sense” (Thakur, 2017, p. 68). Sons
not only carry on the family name, they also traditionally remain in the home to care for parents
in their old age and even perform parents’ death rites and rituals; Hinduism forbids daughters
from doing so (Thakur, 2017). Thus, there is external pressure from in-laws and the community
for a woman to give birth to a son, as well as internal motivators, such as religious beliefs.
India is one of the least safe countries for women in the world (Bhattacharyya, 2015) and,
perhaps paradoxically, also has “a culture of honor that places a greater burden of safety and
protection on the parents of girls,” increasing families’ responsibilities to ensure daughters’
chastity and safety (Bagcchi, 2014, para. 4). Thus, a daughter, through no fault of her own, is

14
likely to be perceived as a source of stress and worry for her parents. Sons, on the other hand, do
not warrant concern and, if anything, have the potential to improve the family’s reputation and
financial status through their achievements.
Indian young adults are expected to marry in an elaborate and expensive ceremony
attended by hundreds or thousands of guests. As a result, “one of the most significant financial
transactions for Indian households occurs at the time of marriage” (Chiplunkar & Weaver, 2019,
p. 1). The marriage of a daughter is more expensive than the marriage of a son (Soy & Sahoo,
2016) and, on top of this expense, also requires payment of a dowry—a gift of cash or physical
objects such as jewelry, cars, or household items—to the groom’s family, typically in an amount
greater than the annual income of the bride’s household (Chiplunkar & Weaver, 2019).
Regardless of their child’s gender, Indian parents will often save for a child’s wedding for
decades. Indian parents of a daughter know they must bear an increased fiscal burden, up to
twice as much as it would be for a son (Soy & Sahoo, 2016). In the case of marriage and dowry,
it is simply less practical for a couple to give birth to a daughter.
Finally, because of the nature of Indian living arrangements, daughters are perceived as
the children who will eventually leave the parents behind and become part of a new family.
Indian households traditionally have multiple generations living under one roof, and often have
extended family living on the same street or in the same city. When a woman marries, she is
expected to move away from her home (and her kin network) to whatever town her new husband
and his family reside in. All the free household labor she contributes is now benefiting her ‘new’
family. If she works outside the home, this money is only distributed to herself, her husband, and
her in-laws. Parents take care of daughters and pay for their educations, marriages, and dowries,
and then must part with them along with any fiscal benefits they might provide in the future. In a

15
sense, caring for a daughter ensures a net loss whereas caring for a son ensures a net gain. As a
result of all these factors, 21% of both women and men state a preference for male children,
while only approximately 3% of people state a preference for female children (Thakur, 2017).
Consequences of Women’s Devaluation
There are major consequences for women that result from their families’ and their
culture’s devaluation of them. These categories of harm become relevant at specific points in an
Indian woman’s life. In childhood, she will struggle to access educational opportunities and will
be burdened by greater household labor. In early adulthood, she will face an arranged marriage
and all the potential problems that arise from it, including dowry-related violence and domestic
violence. From early puberty onward, she will need to guard herself against the many forms of
violence perpetrated against Indian women in public spaces. All these factors serve to constrain
Indian women, limiting their opportunities, their resources, and their freedoms, and have a
cumulative impact that will negatively affect employment prospects.
Childhood Harms. As Chanana (2006) notes, “educational institutions are sites of social
reproduction” where gender-based cultural norms are reaffirmed from generation to generation
(p. 269). The Indian classroom demonstrates this: Indian girls trail boys at every rung of the
educational ladder; each step forward that women take is preceded by men who are more highly
prioritized and thus given first opportunities (Sahni & Shankar, 2012). In general, girls are likely
to be enrolled in school for less total time than boys (Emran & Shilpi, 2015). When it is time for
college, household spending on higher education is significantly higher for male than female
students (Duraisamy & Duraisamy, 2016). This is in part because, for daughters, “the benefits of
extra education are over-ridden by the cost of delaying marriage…. Because girls are restricted
to domestic production after marriage, high-level ability [higher education] is irrelevant to their

16
desirability on the marriage market” (Chiplunkar & Weaver, 2019, p. 3). Out of everyone, rural
women experience the greatest disadvantages. As Emran and Shilpi (2015) describe in their work
on longitudinal differences in education opportunities for rural and urban men and women,
though urban women have experienced significant improvement in their access to educational
opportunities, rural women remain locked out of the classroom, with little improvement from
1991 to 2006. In all, Abichandani (2016) notes that only 55% of Indian women are literate,
compared with 77% of men.
Girls also bear a disproportionate burden of household chores. As Lin and Adserà (2011)
demonstrate, the level of preference a mother has for male offspring predicts the proportional
burden of household chores her daughter(s) will bear. Lin and Adserá explain, “This gap grows
with son preference” because the more parents prefer males, the more they “reduce boys’ burden
of household chores” (p. 555). With an increase in preference of just one extra son, daughter(s)
are forced to do an average of 2.5 extra hours of household work per week (Lin & Adserá, 2011).
Marital Dangers. Marriage is, for all intents and purposes, a requirement in India
(Gupta, 2017; Desai & Andrist, 2010), because it is a society “where marriage is regarded as
virtually universal and social status and acceptance depend, in large part, on being married and
creating a new family” (Hesketh & Xing, 2006, p. 13273). As Desai and Andrist (2010) note,
when researching societies such as India, where immediate family and the extended kin network
are influential in deciding the terms of marriage for young people, any theoretical framework
must keep in mind “a social context within which marriage decisions are overwhelmingly made
by the corporate family” (p. 668). It is because of this social context that the vast majority of
Indian marriages are arranged marriages, with less than 5% of female respondents reporting that

17
they had a primary role in choosing their husband but 62% reporting that they were consulted in
the decision-making process (Desai & Andrist, 2010).
Women will be married, often at very young ages, to men they’ve never met or only met
once or twice. Though child marriage has been banned in India since 1929, its practice remains
common, particularly in rural areas. In the year 2007 to 2008, 48.7% of rural women and 29.4%
of urban women ages 20-24 were married before they were 18 years old (Thakur, 2017). Age of
marriage, and many other demographic variables, vary widely across different regions of India;
in 2007, 52% of women 18-29 were married by age 18 in Uttar Pradesh in north India, but only
25% in Tamil Nadu and 17% in Kerala, both of which are in south India (Desai & Andrist,
2010). These large differences are reflective of different cultures, with the southern part of India
valuing women more than the northern part (Desai & Andrist, 2010). However, India has one of
the highest maternal mortality rates of any country in the world, in part because of high
incidences of child marriage (Punam & Sharma, 2017).
Desai and Andrist (2010) state that 90% of new marriages in India involve the bride
moving to the home of the groom’s parents. This is a particularly challenging adjustment for new
brides since about 66% of women report meeting their husbands for the first time “on or around
the day of the wedding” and 78% report knowing their husbands “for one month or less” when
married (Desai & Andrist, 2010, p. 675). Again, differences between north and south India
impact the level of trauma for new brides, with north Indians requiring women to relocate to an
unknown family whereas south Indians commonly marry daughters off to cousins, so that the
girls remain in the kin network, often moving to homes they have grown up visiting (Soy &
Sahoo, 2016).

18
Despite its illegality, 93% of modern Indian marriages involve the exchange of a dowry
consisting of property, money, jewelry, and other assets, from the bride’s family to the groom’s
family, as compensation for the groom’s family taking care of the bride for the rest of her life
(Chari & Maertens, 2011). As Chiplunkar and Weaver (2019) discuss in their study of dowry in
Indian marriage markets, though dowry seems like an archaic tradition, it is only in recent years
that the adoption of the practice has become universal in India. In fact, in the 1920s, only 37.5%
of marriages utilized dowry (Chiplunkar & Weaver, 2019). The use of dowry payments and the
amount of dowry required per transaction have been sharply increasing in recent years and
Chiplunkar and Weaver conclude that the dramatic and disproportionate rise in dowry-price is
due to a dramatic increase in education rates and levels for Indian men (thus increasing their
value on the market). Unsatisfactory dowries are a common cause of murders and suicides in
India, where new brides are tortured or killed because the groom’s family feels that her family
contributed insufficient funds. In India, one woman dies every hour—specifically, one woman is
burned alive every 93 minutes—due to dowry-related reasons, and the number of murders over
recent years have been rising rather than declining (Thakur, 2017; Punam & Sharma, 2017).
Domestic violence is rampant, and because many women adhere to patriarchal
ideologies, rarely reported. In her essay examining the spatialities of sexual assault in India,
Bhattacharyya (2015) states,
Women’s persistent victimization through DV [domestic violence] sends a strong
message: a woman occupies a low status within the household, where she (especially a
wife/daughter-in-law) is expected to abide by the habits, customs and practices of her
husband’s family, even when these practices significantly differ from those of her natal
family. (p. 1342)

In fact, in a nationwide survey, “41% of women believed their husbands were justified in
slapping them and 35% of women even believed that a brutal beating is also justified if they

19
neglected doing their household chores or looking after their children” (Himabindu et al., 2014,
p. 23720). Bhattacharyya notes that “one of the findings by UNICEF (2012) flags that 57% of
Indian boys aged 15-19 years justify wife beating” (p. 1346). Bhattacharyya concludes,
“Arguably, these perceptions bear no boundaries, often roll over and manifest patriarchal
oppression in the public spaces where women are ‘objectified’, maltreated and sexually abused”
(p. 1342). Given the many factors that disadvantage Indian women and girls throughout their
lives and across the country, and the dearth of research on Indian female computer programmers’
perspectives on these issues, this study asks,
RQ1: In what ways do Indian cultural norms that concern gender impact young women’s
likelihood of success in the tech workplace?

Violence Against Women in Public Spaces. Bhattacharyya’s (2015) theory that
violence in the private sphere also manifests in the public sphere is supported by extensive
literature demonstrating the many ways that Indian public spaces, both rural and urban, are
hostile environments for women (see Bharucha & Khatri, 2018; Bhatt, et al., n.d.; Bhattacharyya,
2015; Gekowski, et al., 2017; Grover, 2017; Madan & Nalla, 2016; Natarajan, 2016; Solotaroff
et al., 2014; Tripathi, et al., 2017; UN Women, 2013; and World Bank, 2011). In their work on
the status of women in Indian society, Punam and Sharma (2017) state, “In India violence
against women is a common evil…. The woman is not safe anywhere” (p. 12). Bhattacharyya
(2015) notes, “In India, a woman is raped every 22 minutes” and the single most influential
factor in increasing a person’s fear of crime is being a woman (p. 1345). “Indian society
witnesses a culture of misogyny: most public spaces lack a sense of ‘belongingness’ and suffer
from a general animosity towards women” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1345). In fact, “India
occupies 19
th
position (after Saudi Arabia) among G20 nations (excluding the European Union
economic grouping) in VAW [violence against women] and is the fourth most dangerous place

20
for women in the world” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1345). India’s national capital, New Delhi,
home to 22 million people, reports “the highest crime rate against women” of any city in India,
with more than triple the average Indian rates of SAAW [sexual assault against women], and “is
derogatorily labelled as the ‘rape capital’ of India” (Madan & Nalla, 2016, p. 85; Bhattacharyya,
2015, p. 1345). A study by UN Women (2013) revealed that in New Delhi, 95% of women and
girls felt unsafe in public spaces. However, even in ‘safer’ cities, SAAW and other forms of
violence are disturbingly high. Bharucha and Khatri’s (2018) questionnaires and in-depth
interviews of women of Mumbai—routinely rated the safest city in India—reveals that “91
percent of women worry about their safety all the time or most of the time when they are outside
their homes,” no doubt in large part because “on the streets of the city almost all had experienced
some tangible threats to their safety at some point of time” (p. 101). Danger for women when
outside the home is intrinsic to Indian society, and “women’s fear of rape is emblematic of their
exclusion from public life” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1343).
The sense that public spaces are unsafe impacts women’s agency and correspondingly
their rights as Indian citizens (Grover, 2017). Bhattacharyya (2015) defines public spaces as
“those spaces where all citizens—irrespective of gender, class, sexuality, disability or any other
social identity—have the right to access” (p. 1343). Grover (2017) explains that the lack of
safety for women in Indian public spaces “significantly undermines their rights” including “the
right to move around freely; to use and access public spaces and services; to make choices about
their place of residence, work, or leisure and more broadly, to make the best of the opportunities
the city offers” (p. 325). Women’s denial of unfettered access to these spaces is indicative of
their status as second-class citizens. Because of the normalization of women working outside the
home, “Indian women now have greater access to public space for education, work, services or

21
even leisure, but the lack of safety in their routine mobility remains a serious obstacle to their full
participation in public life” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1343). In a sense, “Class mobility and
infrastructural mobility are collapsed such that women are class mobile but rely on men to be
spatially mobile” (Amrute, 2015, p. 349). In other words, using solely their own resources and
willpower, Indian women have the capacity to increase their wealth and improve their status in
society, thus drastically increasing their personal agency, and yet, they simultaneously have so
little agency that they cannot safely walk outside their front doors without the guardianship of a
male escort. Duchene (2011) states, “The difficulties faced by women with regard to their
mobility are a form of social exclusion which affects all aspects of their lives and in particular
hinders their economic output and health” (p. 11). Indian women have a right to a public life they
cannot access, and it costs them.
Whatever the danger level for Indian women is during the day, it dramatically increases
after sundown. A geographer by trade, Patel (2010) says, “The nightscape is not a static
geographic or temporal landscape. It is a dynamic space with a spatiality that is different from
the day” (p. 3). Though the night is universally understood to be a differing temporal landscape
where illicit or hidden activities occur, India is unique in its pervasive cultural belief that women
have no right to public spaces after darkness falls. In her book on women who work the night
shift in Indian call centers, Patel (2010) notes, “Stories about the dangers of going out at night
are used to control women’s mobility” (p. 3). As a result, Bhattacharyya (2015) adds, “Women
can feel out of place in public spaces at night and consequently impose upon themselves a
‘curfew’” (p. 1348). In this situation, the woman has constrained her own agency as a method of
self-defense, both against potential physical harm and the judgment of her family or community.
Patel (2010) explains,

22
Because an overarching safety net (meaning police and local government) is not in place
to secure a woman’s right to be out at night, women are compelled to self-police their
mobility, and parents are compelled to maintain a watchful eye over them. (p. 121)

The cultural belief that women’s bodies do not belong in the nightscape has serious
consequences, including that when women ventures out after dark, they become liable for their
own potential violation. As Amrute (2015) says, “The subject herself is responsible for safety,
risk, and conduct, while ‘dangerous’ subjects’ behavior is managed, not reformed” (p. 347). This
self-policing is one of many examples of the ways that Foucauldian surveillance—where
external rules and regulations become internalized and thus no longer need to be actively
enforced (Oksala, 2011)—takes place, serving to further control women’s behaviors.
The Indian government bears a large part of the blame for the situation Indian women
find themselves in. In her article on sexual violence in Delhi, Batra (2018) states, “Sexualized
violence is a result of both individual patriarchal predilections and a systemic neglect of basic
safety concerns,” what Batra describes as “institutionalized apathy” (p. 388-389). This
institutional apathy creates an environment where “the conditions facilitating violence” are not
“an exceptional occurrence” but a “part of everyday city life” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 388).
Bhatt et al.’s (n.d.) study of public transit in Bhopal, India notes that, “Good design [of public
transport] plays an important role in creating a safe and inviting space for women and
discourages situations where women get harassed” (p. 9). However, because of the country’s
booming economy and large population, major Indian cities have been expanding at rates that
make it almost impossible for local governments to maintain good design, with cities falling far
behind on infrastructure projects such as streetlights, public transit, and plumbing. As a result,
even going to the bathroom is often dangerous, particularly for poor urban women, since many
homes still lack access to plumbing and women are forced to relieve themselves outside, where

23
they are attacked (Srinivasan, 2015). Women must devote energy and time to ensuring their own
safety every time they walk outside, bearing an unequal burden of fear.
These gaping holes in the transportation infrastructures of most Indian cities force
women—the primary users of public transit—to find ways to bridge the gaps in orderly to safely
navigate from home to work and back again. In India, “Incidences of verbal harassment and
groping are widespread on overcrowded public transport especially during the rush hours of the
day when the majority of the women have to travel to the places of study or employment”
(Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1346). One response to this harassment is utilization of private modes
of transportation rather than public transit or walking. This strategy is logical, as Tripathi, et al.
(2018) demonstrate in their study of female students in Lucknow, where they found that
likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment “increases with the frequency of use of public
transport” (p. 240). Unfortunately, though “safe modes of transportation are essential for
successful navigation of public spaces,” safety cannot be assured except through those private
transport options that are unavailable to most female commuters (Batra, 2018, p. 387).
This highlights the role wealth plays in a woman’s likelihood of experiencing sexual
assault or harassment, since wealth enables access to resources such as taxis, a family-owned car,
or a personal scooter. The lack of infrastructure also highlights the ever-diminishing role of the
Indian government in regulating public spaces. As India has moved away from a socialist
perspective on citizen welfare, the government’s power has been reduced and Indians,
particularly those with the wealth to afford it, have turned towards privatized forms of
infrastructure, such as private bus services that supplement the government-run bus system. This
neoliberal turn further disadvantages India’s poorest women.

24
Women’s inferior position in society is also evident when observing India’s incomplete,
ill-thought out, and poorly enforced laws against gender violence, as well as the actions of its
poorly regulated and universally distrusted police force. For example, marital rape is not
considered a crime and, in two states, neither is rape by a military or police officer (Himabindu
et. al, 2014). As for the police force, Bhattacharyya (2015) reports that “only 1 in 10,000 cases of
SAAW is reported to the police” (p. 1347). Of the cases reported, only 16% of rape cases that are
reported result in convictions (Himabindu, et. al, 2014). This lack of reporting is partially
because female police officers constitute only 4.41% of the police force, and male police officers
commonly “abase a woman complainant and sometimes even refuse to file a complaint by
labelling it as ‘spurious’” (Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1348). In fact, a survey showed that most
Indian policemen believe “that what a woman wears is one of the reasons for rape”
(Bhattacharyya, 2015, p. 1348). The Indian government demonstrates negligence of women’s
well-being in both its failing infrastructure and its corrupt and misogynistic police force. The two
forces combine to further circumscribe women’s mobility.
The harms created by the Indian government’s passive neglect are only brought to
fruition by the active threats perpetrated by Indian men. Bhattacharyya (2015) describes the most
common type of street harassment, which is locally known as ‘eve-teasing’: “lewd comments on
the physical beauty of women or the way they dress, whistling, staring, stalking, singing songs or
even some form of physical assaults such as groping, fondling and pinching” (p. 1345). The term
‘eve-teasing’ connotes something linked to innocence and to triviality, as if the practice does no
great harm. Bhattacharyya (2015) continues, eve-teasing “has always been considered as a minor
nuisance, a jocular practice validated both culturally and subculturally [sic] across India” (p.
1346). This relabeling of sexual harassment and assault as something harmless reflects the

25
attitudes of Indian men. Madan and Nalla (2016) demonstrate that in the Indian capital of New
Delhi, men rate the seriousness of incidents of sexual harassment significantly lower than
women; Banerjee and Sharma (2011) also find this result when looking at south Indian men. In
fact, Banerjee and Sharma (2011) show that men are significantly more likely than women to
believe that women enjoy eve teasing, with a full 46% of men agreeing or strongly agreeing with
that statement, and with 70% of Indian men believing women are responsible for their own
harassment. Behaviors such as eve-teasing always have the potential to escalate to life-
threatening actions, and research has shown that sexual harassment is a way of lording power
over another human being (Uggen & Blackstone, 2004). Indian women live in the shadow of
horror stories such as the brutal 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year old physiotherapy
student known as Nirbhaya (“Fearless”), whose only crime was to board a private bus in New
Delhi with her boyfriend (“2012 Delhi Gang Rape,” 2020). Without Indian men’s perpetuation
of these practices, from eve-teasing to murder, there would be no need for women to be afraid of
leaving their homes.
It is worth inquiring about what elements of Indian society convince men they are entitled
to behave in these ways, and whether these behaviors have any hope of changing in the future.
Amrute (2015) notes that there are multiple culprits, including “prevailing attitudes toward
women in public as sexually available, police collusion in rape, and cultures of shame that blame
women for their own violation,” pointing to both systemic issues and cultural values as culprits
(p. 332). However, many Indians would argue that another cause lays at the root of these ill
effects: a lack of education and economic resources. Because education has long been the catch-
all solution to all of India’s problems, many Indians believe that an increase in access to
education or economic resources for the lowest castes and classes will reduce the frequency of

26
these crimes against women. Himabindu et al. (2014) disagree, noting that, contrary to Indian
popular opinion, “education and economic growth alone do not influence the occurrence of these
crimes” (p. 23719). Instead, Himabindu et al. (2014) argue that “socio-political and cultural
factors” are also to blame, and thus that these crimes against women will continue even as the
economy improves and education levels rise (p. 23719). What is necessary to improve outcomes
for women is a cultural shift in the way women are perceived, especially in people’s perceptions
of the reduced value of women as compared to men. Patel (2010) eloquently sums up the impact
of geographic mobility on women’s rights when she says, “The ability and freedom to drive a
car, traverse the urban nightscape, and explore neighborhoods beyond the confines of one’s
community speak volumes in terms of gender equality” (p. 5). No matter how successful Indian
women are enabled to be in the workplace, they will remain burdened with the fear and shame
that accompany the constant threat of sexual harassment and assault. Though Indian women must
deal with routine threats to their safety when in public spaces, no literature investigates
perceptions of this threat by women working in the tech industry. Therefore, this dissertation
asks,
RQ2: Do young female Indian computer programmers identify the threat of violence
against women in the public sphere as a factor inhibiting their ability to work and to
advance in their careers?

Performative Gender in India
Women in India are asked to perform two main roles in their day-to-day lives. The first
role is the traditional Hindi woman. Society asks this of women because of anxiety stemming
from India’s rapid modernization and the elements of traditional Indian culture that may be lost
as a result. The second role women perform is the homemaker, not just in the sense of taking care
of the home, but also in the sense that a woman is bound to the home, and to all the

27
responsibilities that come with it. What Indians call ‘homeliness’ is one of the most essential
traits for a woman to possess and her ‘female-ness’ will frequently be defined based on the
strength of her affiliation with the home.
Women’s Bodies as Vessels of Indian and Familial Honor. Modern Indian women find
themselves embedded in a culture that is as firmly rooted in the traditions of the past as it is
eager to embrace the technologies of the future. Because India has modernized rapidly, standards
for women’s development have not kept pace; in fact, women are actively held back from
freedoms because of their value as representations of ‘true’ Indian culture. Jodhka and Prakash
(2016) explain that recent Indian middle-class reform movements, which eagerly embraced many
Western concepts like neoliberalism, “did not go all the way to ‘liberate’ women from
patriarchal frames of social life. On the contrary, they passionately argued for a reassertion of
tradition, which alone, they argued, could restore women’s honor and the nation’s identity” (p.
50). In a country where values and standards in the public sphere are constantly evolving,
women—imagined as bastions of the private sphere—are used as embodiments of a comforting
and idealized Indian past. Radhakrishnan (2011) says,
Men, whose identity was linked to the public sphere, could and should modernize to
support the nation. Women, in contract, could be educated and refined, but they were not
to be ‘essentially’ modernized. Rather, as the protectors of the nation’s superior essence,
located in the private sphere, they had to remain Indian in essence. (p. 49)

As a result, Mount (2017) explains, “There is a great cultural important given to preserving and
carrying on tradition and in many geographical areas, these tasks are the responsibility of
women, as is the case in India” (p. 168). Amrute (2016) notes how cultural responsibilities, such
as planning for festivals, maintaining shrines, and even dressing in a traditional manner are borne
entirely by women, who see it as their responsibility to keep their communities connected to
Indian culture.

28
This cultural maintenance is also distinctly classist (or caste-based). In 1977, Indian
social anthropologist Srinivas was the first to articulate the ways that, particularly for the upper
castes, Indian women serve as “custodians of family status and caste purity” whose behavior has
the potential to increase a family’s reputation in the community (Desai & Andrist, 2010, p. 671).
As Desai and Andrist (2010) explain, “Gender displays are woven into a hierarchical society
such that these displays not only reflect an ideal of Indian womanhood, they reflect an ideal of
upper class and upper caste womanhood” (p. 682). Women perform in a variety of ways,
including their attire, their mannerisms, the food they prepare, their honoring of Hindu rituals
and traditions, and even their sexuality.
The custodial role that women serve within the family not only places a greater burden on
them to perform for the good of the family, it also increases familial and community surveillance
of women. Patel (2010) explains, “Every place—from a public bus to a kitchen—comes with
regimes of surveillance. These regimes are both external and self-inflicted and stem from the
pressures placed on women to maintain their reputation” (p. 145). Modernity has not reduced
surveillance and may have even heightened families’ anxieties about women’s behaviors.
Krishnan (2018) notes that, despite India opening many areas of public life to female
participation, on a wide variety of fronts, “women’s labor and sexuality” continue to be subject
“to a regime of surveillance and gendered discipline” (p. 72). Patel concurs, noting, “Women
continue to face strict regimes of surveillance and control of their physical and temporal
mobility, despite increased income and education” (Patel, 2010, p. 3). With women’s increased
freedom to seek an education and work outside the home comes increased scrutiny from the
community.

29
A woman’s physicality is subject to public censure in India. Mount’s (2017) essay
examining saris shows that the practice of wearing saris demonstrates the “cultural pressure
placed on middle-class women to conform to dictates of traditional womanhood while also
aligning themselves with modernity” (p. 167). Mount continues, “Since women’s bodies are
strongly associated with family, community, and national identity,” women’s attire and sexuality
are more heavily scrutinized than men’s clothing or sexuality would be (p. 168). Just as wearing
immodest or non-traditional clothing reflects badly on the Indian image, so too does sexual
activity of any kind prior to marriage. Desai and Andrist (2010) explain,
There is a universal concern that nothing should damage the value of a daughter in the
marriage market. It is difficult to find data on premarital sex, but studies indicate that less
than 5% of women acknowledge having sex before marriage, and often this includes
premarital sex with men they subsequently marry. Popular literature, films, and social
science literature all… suggest that even a possibility that the bride may not be a virgin
reduces her desirability to her prospective parents-in-law. In practice, a girl does not even
have to be sexually active to be labeled promiscuous. Simple contact and platonic
friendship with the opposite sex can be enough to damage her reputation (p. 671).

Bhattacharyya (2015) states, “Values of Indian society have considered a woman as the ‘honor’
of the family” and a woman’s honor, lost either voluntarily or involuntarily, has a significant
negative effect on the family’s reputation (p. 1349). Thus, continues Bhattacharyya, sexual
assault is “subject to disapproval” by the community because it “affect[s] the honor of the family
rather than the basic right of a woman to live in dignity” (p. 1349). Talking about young women
working the night shift at Indian call centers, Patel (2010) says, “Anxiety about a woman staying
out all night is not only about risking her physical safety against bodily violence, but also about
risking her social safety in the larger community” (p. 61). Patel continues, women’s “safety [is] a
code word for their reputation” (p. 82). As Amrute (2015) says, “The violence of rape is linked
to a history of protection and its counterpart, the threat of violent appropriation” (p. 351). As
vessels of Indian tradition and family honor, Indian women must constantly guard themselves

30
against sexual threats, not for their own well-being, but for the well-being of their families.
Unfortunately, as Patel notes, “From a geographical standpoint, linking morality to women’s
bodies generally has an immobilizing impact on their lives” (p. 51). Thus, women’s role as honor
of the family has a doubly limiting effect, by constraining their social relations and their physical
mobility.
Associations Between ‘Woman’ and ‘the Home’. During his research, Radhakrishnan’s
(2011) interviewees repeatedly explained that “good families lie at the heart of a reinvented
transnational Indian culture” (p. 11). Because of their association with the family, women are the
primary crafters of these good families, and their abilities to create such a family become key
components of their appeal on the marriage market. Whereas for men on the marriage market,
the primary concern is earning potential, Chiplunkar and Weaver (2019) note, “A girl’s physical
appearance, ‘homely nature’ and more general ability with regard to household work and
management are characteristics which are highly valued on the marriage market” (p. 15).
Similarly, Desai and Andrist (2010) were able to demonstrate “a persistent male preference for
modesty and femininity even under the onslaught of the global culture… young men’s
preference [was] for family-oriented, ‘simple’ wives who ‘respect elders’” (p. 671). This cultural
preference for ‘homely’ women pressures young Indian women and their families to prioritize
homemaking skills over higher education and implicitly tells women that their intellectual
capacities must be worth less than other identifiers such as physical appearance.
After marriage, Indian middle- and upper-class women are expected to not work outside
the home and focus solely on child-rearing. As Gupta (2017) explains, “While the earlier notion
of the ideal woman as homemaker has been replaced by one which idealizes women of
substance, a woman’s role in the family continues to be pivotal and is even viewed as central in

31
defining Indian culture” (p. 255). The woman’s centrality to the family is another manifestation
of women’s roles as vessels of Indian traditional culture. Collins and Abichandani (2016) explain
further: From a young age, girls
are made aware of their familial responsibilities and obligations, both to their parents and
future in-laws. Women are groomed to keep guard of culture through food, nurturing,
caretaking, and homemaking. Indian women’s educational choices are constrained by
physical, social, communal, and institutional access, which are enshrined as matters of
familial and individual reputation and produce and sustain cultural gender bias. (p. 13)

Despite India’s shift towards modernity, ideals of Indian culture continue to revolve around a
woman at the center of the home, who is docile and obedient, serving in her primary roles as
wife and mother (Gupta, 2017). This demand links not only to tradition but also to the role of the
private versus public spheres. Bhattacharyya (2015) says, “Indian women are expected to attend
to the inner world (private space)—household chores and childcare—whereas the outer world
(public space) of ‘material interests’ is constructed by and for men” (p. 1344). Collins and
Abichandani (2016) add,
While some aspects of Indian culture view the male/female binary as complementary
opposition, this model for viewing gender is usually only applied to the familial context
of reproduction; it has not translated into equal participation in household chores for men
or in economic access for women. (pp. 13-14)

This strengthens the association of public-men and private-women and makes women who dare
venture outside the home seem deviant.
Mata et al. (2016) claim, “Personality development is a product, at least in part, of
experience with the characteristics of local ecologies” (p. 235). Assuming this is the case, the
sociological environment of India teaches specific lessons to women. From a young age, Indian
women are raised to be demure and deferential to others. Thakur (2017) states, “Feminine traits
such as self-abnegation and servility are considered laudable among girls, especially in middle
class society” (p. 69). Thakur continues, “Even though women are educated and economically

32
independent, they still find their lives torn asunder between traditionalism and modernity….
Education and economic independence have empowered them, yet they are unable to transcend
social conditioning” (p. 68). Despite decades of progress towards women’s equality, Indian
women continue to have “low autonomy and decision-making power” (Soy & Sahoo, 2016, p.
249). Furthermore, “Suppression of spontaneity in childhood also casts its shadow in adulthood
of girls, making them timid, weak, vulnerable and open to violence after marriage” (Thakur,
2017, p. 69). Mittal and Griskevicius (2016) note that this lack of agency has impacts on future
decision-making: “The lower a person’s sense of control, the more pessimistic they are about
their own future…. The lower a person’s sense of control, the greater their perception of personal
risk” (p. 639).
Women’s lack of agency, their continual subjection to the scrutiny of others, and
society’s lauding of ‘feminine’ traits such as self-sacrifice, modesty/shame, and meekness all
exert pressure on females from the moment they are cognizant through to adulthood to conform
to a particular notion of womanhood. This gender performance is as necessary for social survival
as it is harmful to its actors. Women continually re-learn their own subservience by performing it
at home, in romantic relationships, with in-laws, and in the public sphere. The traits that Indian
society has deemed valuable for women to possess are the same traits that inhibit an individual’s
likelihood of personal achievement outside the domestic sphere.
RQ3: How do traditional notions of Indian femininity impact young female Indian
computer programmers’ ability to work and to succeed in the workplace?
RQ4: How do traditional notions of Indian female chastity impact young female Indian
computer programmers’ ability to work and to succeed in the workplace?

India at Work
This portion of the literature review covers two general topics: the Indian IT workforce
and women working in IT. When discussing the Indian IT workforce, it first provides a brief

33
overview of the development of the Indian IT industry and its relationship to the development of
the IT industry in the United States. Second, it reviews the main ways that the Indian government
and the Indian public have conceptualized this IT development. Third, this section looks at
women in the Indian workforce more generally, and women in the IT sector of the Indian
workforce more specifically. Because women are underrepresented in the Indian workforce, the
first sub-section outlines a variety of barriers to women’s full participation in the Indian IT
workforce and the consequences those barriers have to women’s careers and to the industries
they work in. Finally, the second sub-section compares the US tech workforce with the Indian
tech workforce to investigate rates of women’s participation in each country and offer potential
reasons for those rates.
The Development of the Indian IT Industry
India is a developing nation, with low income levels and significant amounts of poverty
(Venkatanarayana, 2009). Jodhka and Prakesh (2016) state, “India is home to the largest number
of the chronically poor in the world, larger than Sub-Saharan Africa, and nearly one-third of
India’s total population. The poor in India lack the basic facilities for a secure and dignified
human life” (p. 2). The proportion of the Indian population that qualifies as middle class ranges
from just 5% to 30%, meaning that the impoverished equal or outnumber those Indians living a
comfortable middle-class lifestyle (Jodhka & Prakash, 2016). This poverty is locked in a
feedback loop with low education levels. In fact, as Kapur (2010) says, “In 2000, just 3.3 percent
of the 25+ population in India had completed post-secondary education” (p. 64). Despite all this,
Collins and Abichandani (2016) note that “the Indian economy is one of the fastest growing
economies in the world” (p. 11). India also has a young population, with an average age of 29

34
years, as compared to an average age of 37 years in the US, ensuring a robust workforce (Sahni
& Shankar, 2012).
One of the industries that is considered a major avenue of development in India is the
information technology (IT) sector. Investment in IT work began early for India. As Amrute
(2016) explains in her book on Indian IT workers working abroad in Berlin, from the 1950s
onward, Indians were invested in the development of software, i.e., programming and coding
skills, rather than hardware. The Indian government was extremely closed off to foreign
investment until 1990 when the government liberalized, opening its economy and drastically
loosening regulations on international businesses (Amrute, 2016). Amrute continues,
“Liberalization reduced barriers to foreign investment, eliminated certain bureaucratic hurdles of
arcane licenses and prohibitions that were the legacy of both colonial and early national legal
regimes, and opened Indian markets to foreign trade and consumer goods” (p. 118).
Economic liberalization also was indicative of a major shift in Indian policy from
socialism to capitalism. Specifically, the Indian government began to prioritize “techno-scientific
advancement over redistribution of opportunities as the motor which would allow India to ‘catch
up’ with the west” (Amrute, 2016, p. 521). This prioritization of technological development over
investment in India’s public infrastructure or education system has continued to the present day.
In India, “the growth of information technology (IT) industry is seen as a shortcut to rapid
economic growth and development, and the IT industry considered as a vehicle of social and
economic transformation” (Venkatanarayana, 2009, para. 2). In fact, programming jobs are
aspirational careers for the Indian lower classes (Amrute, 2016) despite the fact that India’s IT
industry employs about two million workers—a drop in the bucket (about 0.4 percent) of a vast
workforce of 480 million strong (Radhakrishnan, 2011, p. 8).

35
The economic opening of the early 1990s coincided with the tech boom of the 1990s.
India soon found a place in the new work of IT services, offering cheap labor produced by
workers who were often highly educated (Amrute, 2016). Radhakrishnan (2011) elaborates, “In
the case of Indian/U.S. partnerships, for example, because of a favorable exchange rate, highly
qualified software engineers in India cost roughly one-third of what similar talent would cost in
the United States” (p. 36). Kapur (2010) also notes that “the large demand for information
technology (IT) workers in the United States in the late 1990s led to [a]… wave of young
professional immigrants” (p. 53). As a result, India was able to utilize a multi-pronged approach
to strengthen its business relationship with the United States, with ties created both through the
flow of goods and services and through the flow of people.
These Indian-US ties were much stronger because of something that had happened a half
century before. In 1965 and halfway around the globe, a new US immigration law came into
being. It allowed for “large emigration of highly skilled professionals and students seeking to
study in, and eventually migrate to, the United States” (Kapur, 2010, p. 53). Kapur (2010) notes
that because of this policy change, “the Indian-born population in the United States grew from
around 13,000 in 1960 to nearly one million by 2000 and 1.5 million by 2007” (Kapur, 2010, p.
53). This immigration policy also unintentionally enabled the development of California’s
Silicon Valley, as the best and brightest talent from India traveled to the US in the 1960s and
1970s and “played an active role in bringing the American IT industry to maturity”
(Radhakrishnan, 2011, p. 30). Leslie and Kargon (2006) elaborate: IIT [Indian Institute of
Technology] Kanpur—the highest ranked IIT—sends
up to four-fifths of its computer science graduates on to the United States…. The roster of
IIT alumni reads like a Who’s Who of top American engineers, entrepreneurs, and
venture capitalists. Close to half of all IIT graduates, 125,000 strong and counting, live

36
and work outside of India…. Silicon Valley alone employs an estimated 200,000
nonresident Indians, including the cream of the IITs. (p. 118)

In fact, Radhakrishnan (2011) adds, “graduates of these schools helped to found nearly every
major Silicon Valley firm, including Microsoft, Intel, and Sun” (p. 30). These Indian-born US
professionals forged a wide variety of working relationships with members of their home country
and paved the way for the second wave of skilled Indian immigrants in the 1990s
2
.
Amrute (2016) notes that from the beginning of this partnership, Westerners “devalue[d]
Indian coding as ‘reproductive’ rather than productive labor” (p. 58). Amrute continues, “Indian
programmers figure as problem workers who lack creativity and initiative—as lower-class
workers who are car mechanics, not designers” (p. 66). This belief became a self-fulfilling
prophecy, with Indian programmers often struggling to gain access to careers that necessitated
creativity rather than simple troubleshooting. As one of Amrute’s Indian programmer
participants explained, “He felt stymied by the lack of innovation on the part of Indian
engineers” and claimed that “the Indian computer programmer is diligent but not creative” (p.
65).
In recent years, though, India has begun to transform itself into a productive rather than
reproductive technological space. Radhakrishnan (2011) notes,
Many accounts of India’s software sector characterize IT work in India as being more
like routine production jobs that require routine coding and maintenance and that do not
call for specialized problem-solving skills. More recent accounts argue, however, that
India is moving up the value chain and is no longer simply a low-wage destination. (p.
35)

In other words, India is now producing its own original and creative output, though its workers
often do so under the umbrella of one of the many US-based international tech firms with hubs in
Indian cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai (Takhteyev, 2012).

2
See Amrute (2016) for a thorough history of the development of the IT industry in India.

37
Radhakrishnan (2011) argues that though the US’s Silicon Valley continues to dominate
the global IT industry, and in doing so “continues to attract large numbers of the best Indian
talent to northern California… increasingly, these migrations seem to be short-term, as more and
more Indian immigrant couples decide to return ‘home’ after a long stint in the United States” (p.
30). Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) noted a similar pattern when talking with their Indian
computer-programmer interviewees. One participant, Ravi, is described as having “no desire to
live abroad” because he is “close to his family” and thus wants “to come home to be with his
elderly father” rather than stay in the United States (Fuller & Narasimhan, 2007, p. 129). Amrute
(2016) also had a comparable conversation with one of her Indian programmers, who was
residing in Berlin at the time. Amrute explains, “The contours of this conversation suggested that
the West was clearly ahead technologically but that it was only ahead for now and that perhaps it
was even stagnating” (p. 114). Thus, while their parents immigrated to the United States
permanently, this generation of workers sees a better way of life for themselves in India than in
the United States.
Women in the Indian Workforce
There are clear benefits to Indian women working outside the home. Not only does
women’s employment benefit the nation, it also benefits the individual. For example,
impoverished Indian families are more willing to invest resources in their daughters when they
can expect that the girls will at some point contribute financially to the household. Jensen (2012)
found that “[rural] school-aged girls had increased school enrollment and greater body mass
index (BMI)” when their families were made aware of the existence of local employment
opportunities for young women (p. 755). This implies that poor rural families continue to neglect
girls’ health and educational needs because they do not anticipate labor market returns in the

38
future (Jensen, 2012). Jensen also found that women given job opportunities “report wanting to
have fewer children and to work more steadily throughout their lifetime, consistent with
increased aspirations for a career” (p. 753). As a result, the young rural women Jensen studied
significantly delayed marriage and having children.
Despite the benefits, female participation in the Indian workforce is low. (Sarkar et al.,
2019). In 2019, rates of female participation in the Indian workforce hovered at around 20%
(World Bank Group, 2020). In their article on the challenges of women’s workforce
participation, Misra and Sirohi (2019) note, “India was ranked 120
th
by World Bank from a list
of 131 countries as far as female workforce participation in 2017 is concerned” (p. 108). Collins
and Abichandani (2016) add, “The composition of the workforce in India is gender-imbalanced
and gender-segregated” (p. 13). In fact, from 2005 to 2012, labor force participation by women
age 25-55 declined by over 10% (Sarkar et al., 2019). Reasons for this decline are based in
cultural rather than economic reasoning.
Unlike in many developing nations, increases in education levels for women does not
correlate with an increase in labor force participation (Sarkar et al., 2019). This is culturally
motivated, because achieving a certain level of education improves marriage prospects for
women but working outside the home is traditionally considered inappropriate and does not help
marriage prospects. Due to these cultural factors, women in the lower socio-economic classes are
forced to work outside the home as a matter of survival, while middle- and upper-class women
are encouraged to stay home as a matter of propriety. This is evident in Sarkar et al.’s (2019)
research, which demonstrated that “an increase in wealth and income of other members of the
household leads to lower entry and higher exit probabilities of women in the Indian workforce”
and that “the presence of an adult male [in the household] with higher levels of education

39
significantly discourages women to enter or remain in the labor market” (p. 291-292). The
exception to this linear decline in women’s workforce participation as household income rises
are white-collar job opportunities (Jensen, 2012). Jensen (2012) argues that in developing
nations, “with greater development, and increases in women’s human capital, white-collar
opportunities become available and draw women back into the labor force” (p. 755).
Even if women make it into the workforce, India is an extreme example of what the
World Economic Forum describes as “failing to retain [female] talent up the ladder,” in other
words, employers lose their investments in female workers who enter in junior roles but exit
before achieving senior positions (2016, p. 2). According to Ring (2018), India continues to
struggle to retain women long-term and to promote women to leadership positions. For women,
“There is stagnation at entry and middle-career levels and the gender gap widens over the years
significantly” (Gupta, 2020, para. 11). Misra and Sirohi (2019) also affirm that women are
virtually non-existent in managerial roles in the Indian workforce. Gupta (2017) confirms that
women in the Indian workforce more generally struggle to attain decision-making positions and
leadership roles. Likewise, Indian companies consistently struggle to establish women in
managerial and other senior positions (Gupta, 2020). Gupta (2017) notes, “Even in the IT sector,
which has been at the forefront in leading initiatives for gender inclusivity, there are few women
in leadership roles and they are often relegated to routinized jobs” (p. 259).
There are hierarchies of jobs in technology. When considering geography, at the top are
US jobs and below are Indian jobs. When considering job descriptions, Indian careers are split
between those in the transnational knowledge economy and those in business process
outsourcing (BPO). Employees such as research and development (R&D) workers, engineers,
and technical writers are part of the transnational knowledge economy, whereas employees such

40
as software testers, call center workers, and transcriptionists are part of BPO (Radhakrishnan,
2011; Jensen, 2012). In both hierarchies, the groups at the top get to perform tasks that require
more creativity, are more intellectually challenging, and are more respected in the IT community.
Unsurprisingly, Indian women are more heavily represented in those sub-fields of IT
work that command less respect, such as software testing jobs, which have a 34:66 men—women
ratio (Gupta, 2020). For the more prestigious “hard-core programming roles” the ratio is 75:25
men—women (Gupta, 2020, para. 12). Radhakrishnan (2011) explains the role that family plays
in confining women to lower ranking careers:
Within coding, there is quality and maintenance work on the one hand, and research and
development on the other. Women who remain in the industry beyond the five-year
threshold are much more likely to pursue quality and maintenance work, where the hours
are more predictable and work is less stressful and deadline-driven. (p. 106)

Conversely, Radhakrishnan continues, “Research and development work, the most male segment
of the workforce, [is perceived] to be the most exciting, rewarding, and creative. In this line of
work, deadlines are tight, pressure is high, and the hours are unpredictable,” all of which do not
allow for other priorities such as childcare (p. 106).
In contrast, even if they are low on the hierarchy, there is no doubt that BPO jobs are
good jobs. In 2003, BPO workers were paid on average twice as much as non-BPO workers and
had many more chances for salary increases over time (Jensen, 2012). Though “most middle-
class kids consider BPO jobs to be ‘beneath’ them” these jobs have the capacity to raise lower
class workers out of poverty and provide females with one of the few respectable career options
available for Indian women (Radhakrishnan, 2011, p. 44). However, no highly educated middle-
or upper-class woman would describe a BPO job as prestigious. In fact, many in the middle-class
would see a woman who worked in a BPO as being of questionable sexual morals.
Barriers to Women’s Full Participation in the Indian IT Workforce

41
Masculine Norms. Female workers who enter the Indian IT sector move from the
feminine space of the home into the hyper-masculine space of IT organizations. However,
because masculine behaviors are normal for the workplace, “they seem to be the way things are
done,” thus, “workers deny gender in the workplace” and “often do not see the gendered
structure of their work environment” (Gupta, 2017, p. 258). Gupta (2017) explains,
Literature shows that gender is deeply embedded in organizational thinking and in
general, the idea of a universal/ideal worker in organizations is a male unencumbered by
familial responsibilities…. the ideal worker…. is a masculine concept which assumes
long working hours, continuous availability and complete devotion to work, to the
exclusion of any obligations to care for children or other dependents outside work. It is
premised on the ideology of separate spheres with public sphere as the man’s domain and
the private as the woman’s realm. The concept of ‘ideal worker’ affects the notion of
‘commitment’ at workplace which is constructed in terms of behaviors that prioritize
work over family…. The ‘ideal worker’ is also a prime candidate for leadership positions
(p. 255-257).

Based on this description, Gupta says in the Indian IT workforce, “women are not looked upon
as flexible workers” (p. 266).
Poster (2013) provides an example of the unintentional ‘inflexibility’ of female workers.
Poster notes that in India, women are often excluded from important meetings because the
meetings occur after women are already required to be home due to safety concerns. Gupta
states, “The late held meetings preclude the opportunity for women to be visible, to highlight
their work (self-promotion) and be counted as competent” (p. 263). Women are also unable to
attend international conferences and workshops or travel outside their city to collaborate with
engineers at other companies or at universities (Gupta, 2017). Perceptions of women’s
unsuitability for IT work also impact Indian women’s likelihood of being hired. Fuller and
Narasimhan (2007) found that “the managers of two other small companies—one male and one
female—both admitted to reluctance about recruiting women, precisely because their family
duties take them away from work, which small businesses cannot afford” (p. 139).

42
Gender Segregation. Poster (2013) notes, in Indian workplaces, men and women tend to
self-segregate by gender. This is problematic because IT work—though imagined as a solo
activity—is highly collaborative. Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) state, “Most work is done by
teams of software engineers, together with a few domain specialists, who are supervised by
project managers” (p. 126). Because of a lack of interaction throughout their lives, men and
women tend to split into two groups; because there are far fewer women than men in Indian IT
workplaces, women end up clustered in a group of outliers, not privy to the communications of
the main group. Gupta (2017) explains, “There is a lack of interaction between men and women
workers [that]…. results in information deficit, lack of visibility and contacts, lack of networking
and isolation” (p. 259). This lack of interaction limits cooperative communication and restricts
women’s ability to create diverse social networks and, in time, move up the career ladder. Gupta
continues, “Differences in men’s and women’s social networks create differences in the
opportunity structure and the resources available which affects candidate credibility in hiring
decisions and promotions or further advancements” (p. 257). This disparity is worsened by the
feminine norms that women have been taught to embrace. Gupta explains, “Professional women,
socialized in the Indian patriarchal norms that discourage male-female interaction and value
shyness, docility, and obedience, lose out in public spaces by not making an effort to be visible
or aggressively vocal” (p. 264). These disparities compound, all the while seeming like the
natural order of things.
Balancing Home and Work. The biggest and most obvious obstacle Indian women face
when entering the IT workforce is balancing home life and work responsibilities. Collins and
Abichandani (2016) state, “Traditional Indian culture dictates that women leave their careers

43
after getting married or having children. They are not expected to return” (p. 14). Radhakrishnan
(2011) argues that because of the weight of this tradition, when women work outside the home,
The ‘option’ to stay at home and take care of husband, children, and in-laws is always the
invisible norm that women relate themselves to. Those who reject the conventional
notion of a respectable woman’s place as being in the home reject it explicitly, though
they cannot ignore its potential influence on their choices. (p. 157)

Patel (2010) adds that this invisible norm teaches women “an ideology that no matter how far a
woman goes, her place, her existence, must remain connected to domesticity” (p. 81). As Amrute
(2016) explains, “Their ability to succeed as career women depended on their walking a careful
line between supporting the family and not being reduced to being only a homemaker with
limited rights and freedoms” (p. 190). This is a difficult line to walk, and one that is emotionally,
mentally, and often physically taxing.
Considering the cultural pressure on women to remain at home, Sarkar et al. (2019)
claims, “The decision for a woman to work is a complex issue that involves social norms,
educational attainment, care responsibilities for children and elderly, other household
responsibilities, access to other services, and availability of employment opportunities” (p. 291).
Regardless of whether a woman is working outside the home, she is expected to continue to run
the household, including cooking, cleaning, and caring for any children she might have.
Employment becomes a double burden for married women. They are never released of their
responsibilities as wives and mothers; instead, they can only choose to add to this burden. Sarkar
et al. explain that because of the nature of women’s workload, policies designed to retain women
in the workforce,
need to be multipronged given the role women play in the household economy. On the
one hand, female employment has a direct positive effect on women’s empowerment and
indirect effect on her children’s welfare. On the other hand, employment may pose a
double burden for women as the prevailing social norms make them responsible for the

44
care economy and household chores as well. (p. 292)

There are no indications in the literature that IT companies are succeeding in designing
sufficiently comprehensive policies to protect working wives and mothers nor is there any
evidence that India is making substantial cultural shifts away from this model of womanhood.
Because India is such a patriarchal society, women’s balancing act is not unknown to IT
companies. Instead of creating comprehensive work policies, Radhakrishnan (2011) explains that
companies hire and retain female employees using a different framework: “The IT workplace
seeks to empower women, but it also allows space for women to make choices that prioritize
their families over their careers” (p. 148). Essentially, IT companies ask less of their married
female employees. In fact, Gupta (2017) explains, “Organizations typically assume that a
working woman is placing family before work and the ‘dual burden’ is a woman’s problem….
Due to assumptions of time constraints on women, they are often given tasks lacking in
significance” (p. 259, p. 266). Women’s low output at work becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,
where little is asked of them, therefore less is given by them. The literature agrees on working
Indian women’s priorities once they are married. Radhakrishnan (2011) says, “Women
consistently choose to be career oriented, but rarely at the expense of family life” (p. 149). Sinha
and Sinha (2011) say, “For most women their social responsibilities were as important as their
professional, [therefore] women felt compelled to attend to their social as well as professional
responsibilities with equal dedication” (p. 839). Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) say, “Married
women professionals consistently give their families higher priority than their work” (p. 138). As
further explanation, Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) add,
At present, even women who feel empowered as software professionals and continue to
work after marriage and childbirth invariably regard their responsibilities to their
husbands, children, parents and other close kin as most important…. Furthermore,

45
because men know that women place families first and also believe that this is right, they
do not criticize women for their sense of priorities. (p. 139)

Because these are the assumptions people are operating under,
Any effort on the part of the female employee to curb her working hours cannot be
viewed as an issue of employee rights, but only as a choice between prioritizing work,
understood as ‘global’ and ‘independent,’ or home, understood as ‘Indian’ and
‘traditional’…. To ask for a reduction in hours becomes an indicator of ‘traditional’
values or the inability of women to work hard. (Radhakrishnan, 2011, p. 84)

Married women who want to enter the IT workforce must first overcome intense societal
pressure to remain at home, then they must find a way to balance work and home life while
bearing the full weight of household responsibilities, and finally they must be prepared to receive
tasks with reduced significance or ignored for promotions because management assumes they
cannot handle more responsibility.
The Myth of Meritocracy. The Indian IT industry buys in to the myth of meritocracy, or
the idea that workers succeed or fail purely based on their merits. As Amrute (2016) explains,
“One thing that most managers and programmers explicitly agree on is that background
(nationality, gender, race, and so on) should not matter. All that should matter is that a person
has the skills to get the job done” (p. 62). In fact, in these workplaces there is often “a refusal to
discuss gender issues as they are perceived to be irrelevant and even an insult to the qualified
professionals,” since gender is so clearly not a consideration in assignment of responsibilities or
hiring and promotion decisions (Gupta, 2017, p. 270). And the literature agrees, “Most in the IT
industry view others in the industry as endowed with merit by virtue of having broken into an
extremely competitive industry” (Radhakrishnan, 2011, p. 87-88). However, as was
demonstrated earlier, in India, “women might not encounter discrimination at the workplace
directly but the norms and practices are masculine” (Gupta, 2017, p. 271). As Upadhya (2007)

46
succinctly states, “[The] merit argument ignores the social and economic factors that produce
‘meritorious’ candidates in the first place” (p. 1866).
It is this meritocracy myth that insidiously perpetuates the notion that Indian IT
workplaces—as steeped as they are in masculine norms—do not experience gender
discrimination. As Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) explain in their analysis of IT professionals in
Madras, because this discrimination is indirect, “Both they [women] and their male colleagues
generally insist that there is no gender inequality” (p. 125). In fact, Radhakrishnan (2011) argues
that because women are not experiencing overt discrimination, they express “a newfound sense
of equal opportunity in the workplace and take pride in the ethics of equal opportunity,” and yet,
Radhakrishnan also notes that these women simultaneously “are aware that the pressure of equal
work in the workplace is borne differently by men and women” (p. 84-85). This double vision is
reconciled by the women through the belief that they are simply not as meritorious as their male
colleagues, because they are not willing to prioritize work over home life. Kaushik and Pullen
(2018) note that their female participants “chose to ignore discrimination” and that in Indian IT
organizations, female employees coped with the blatant but unacknowledged gender
discrimination by choosing “passive coping mechanisms such as acceptance as part of work
culture and social expectations” (p. 117, p. 104). Chandra (2014) explains that the woman
worker’s argument tends to unfold as follows:
Since the tech industry is populated by meritocratic rationalists, it would be impossible
for a talented female engineer not to rise to the top. Therefore, if few women are in the
industry, the problem is not sexism but the absence of some innate capacity or interest on
the part of (most) women. In other words, the dearth of women in tech is only natural
(para. 1).

Radhakrishnan (2011) adds,
The rationality of merit is so deeply embedded within the logics of the IT industry that it
especially convinces professional IT women that they work in a gender equitable industry

47
in which each woman advances according to her own merit. While the low percentages of
women in management should provide evidence to women that the industry is not as
equitable as it appears, women consistently explain away those trends through the
language of personal choice (p. 91).

The result is an industry that—despite clear evidence to the contrary—sees itself as a bastion of
gender equality amidst a sea of injustice. The IT sector’s deluded self-perception has serious
consequences for female employees. In order to thrive in this workforce, women must buy into
this meritocracy myth, but to buy into the myth means devaluing oneself and one’s own labor,
since any obstacles to success must be seen as self-inflicted in order for the meritocracy
construct to remain in place. Given that both male and female workers are immersed in this
meritocracy myth, this study asks,
RQ5A: Do young Indian women believe males and females are treated differently in the
tech workplace? RQ5B: If so, what differences do they describe?
RQ6A: Do young Indian men believe males and females are treated differently in the
tech workplace? RQ6B: If so, what differences do they describe?

Low Retention Rates. It is unsurprising that, in the face of these obstacles, women drop
out of the Indian IT workforce at astronomical rates. Collins and Abichandani (2016) state,
“Many Indian women may lose hope that returning to a fulfilling career is possible because the
gender-imbalanced and gender-segregated nature of work in India is superseded by a cultural,
social, and institutional way of thinking” (p. 15). Singh, et al.’s (2017) study on Indian women’s
workforce attrition found that women drop out of the IT workforce for both intrinsic and
extrinsic reasons; intrinsic factors “consist of work life balance and motherhood” and extrinsic
factors “include work pressure, long working hours, faulty appraisal practices, forceful transfers,
and less cooperative colleagues” (p. 1211). As Gupta (2020) explains, women’s departure from
the IT sector tends to follow a pattern. “A large proportion of women tend to exit from the
industry after the first five years of employment” (Gupta, 2020, para. 13). Radhakrishnan (2011)

48
elaborates, women “work for a few years, get married through the conventional arranged-
marriage system, and then leave their IT jobs altogether” (p. 12). To follow this pattern is to
acknowledge the power of Singh et al.’s intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including motherhood
and long working hours. Because India’s patriarchal culture rewards women who devote
themselves entirely to their families and homes, there is little motivation for female IT workers
to remain in the workforce after marriage or children.
Indian women who do choose to return to the workforce after temporarily exiting to have
or raise children face a variety of challenges. Radhakrishnan (2011) says, “Women who leave
their jobs temporarily to have families find themselves less marketable a year or two later
because they are no longer up to date on the latest technology” (p. 95). Some difficulties are as
tangible as falling behind on the latest technological advancements but others are based more on
cultural constraints, namely, other people’s “resistance stemming from attitudes about acceptable
roles for Indian women over the life cycle” (Collins & Abichandani, 2016, p. 12). Because of the
immense pressure on Indian wives to focus fully on child-rearing, it is very difficult for them to
remain a full-time employee after giving birth. In fact, even if a woman’s husband and in-laws
support her decisions to go back to work, Indian mothers tend to be penalized for attempting to
balance work and home life, despite IT companies’ claims to the contrary. Gupta (2017) showed
that mothers in the IT sector “opting for flexibility or part-time work” ended up facing an
“intensification of work” and later endured “adverse consequences for mobility and career
progression” (p. 257). Donnelly (2015) also notes that in India’s IT sector, part-time options are
virtually non-existent; one is either a full-time employee or is unemployed. It is not surprising,
then, that “women’s representation [in the IT sector] was not only segmented but also moderated

49
by age. A range of interventions was in evidence, but domestic, family, and societal pressures
moderated the nature and duration of women’s participation” (Donnelly, 2015, p. 212).
Donnelly (2015) notes that in recent years, some major companies have begun
implementing programs designed to enable women who take time off to care for children to
return to the workforce without falling behind. However, Sinha and Sinha (2011) add, “These
policies probably would have been framed sooner had there been more women among the
policymakers to discuss and explain the diverse types of strategic and practical problems faced
by women scientists” (p. 840). As a result, as Collins and Abichandani (2016) note, “often these
measures fall flat because they do not address systemic gender oppression” (p. 14). For a woman
to remain in the Indian IT workforce long-term, she must be willing to deviate from the tracks
that Indian society sees as natural for women to follow. Research demonstrates the negative
effects of getting married and having children on a woman’s career. On a personal level, a
commitment to remaining in the workforce full-time after having children will have adverse
effects on marriage prospects and foster negative relations with in-laws. No doubt, for many
women in the Indian IT sector, the benefits of working at a job one loves are far outweighed by
the costs.
Fostering Women’s Success in India. As structuration theory argues, the structures in
which women are immersed—including national political structure, educational structure, and
the structure of tech workplaces—are complex and have varied impacts (Giddens, 1979). Though
this literature review has demonstrated the many ways that India hinders women’s participation
in the IT workforce, India also does certain key things in ways that likely have a positive impact
on women’s IT participation. Starting as early as the 1980s, Chanana (2006) notes that India

50
deliberately implemented policies designed to increase female participation in STEM
3
fields.
This process continued during the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, adapting to the
country’s new neoliberal bent by facilitating urban women’s access to non-government higher
education. Gupta (2017) says, “Growing consumerism, improved living standards and high value
placed on education have contributed to the rise in women’s professional education.” (p. 258).
Chanana elaborates, explaining that women’s choices in higher education dramatically shifted,
especially in urban areas, where women could “flock to the new ‘professional’ courses—
management, fashion design, computers and human resource management” (p. 271). This had
dramatic results on the number of women enrolled in engineering courses, as there were only
“3.8 percent in 1980-1981” but “26 percent in 2005” (Gupta, 2017, p. 258). Ring (2018)
concludes, “India now has a large influx of women taking up education and building careers in
the tech sector because the country has encouraged this over a period of time” (para. 9). This
focus on women’s participation has had clear effects.
Another factor in women’s increased participation in IT work is that, unlike in Western
countries such as the United States, the STEM fields are not seen as subjects that men are more
naturally suited for than women (Margolis et al., 2000). Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) state, “In
India men are not thought to be better than women at mathematics, science and technology” (p.
138). Poster (2013) adds that in India “girls are far less fearful of science and engineering
subjects” and “students (of either gender) do not generally view science and engineering as
‘unfeminine,’” instead “girls even express positive attitudes about these subjects” (p. 42).
Adding another layer of advantage is that the Indian educational system is heavily focused on
STEM subjects throughout the K-12 education process and their STEM training is highly

3
STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and medicine.

51
rigorous. STEM fields in general are respected in India and are often seen by parents as some of
the only viable options for careers (Duraisamy & Duraisamy, 2016). Ring (2018) explains, “In
middle-class India, parents continue to expect their sons and daughters to get into engineering or
science because these are the aspirational sectors to work for” (para. 26). Poster notes that
because of this focus from schools and parents, “Indian pre-college students are much more
confident about science and engineering and supportive of women in these fields than in the
United States” (p. 42). Indian culture sees both genders as equally capable in STEM and Indian
education prioritizes STEM subjects throughout childhood.
Because “programming is attached to the developmental discourses of the Indian nation”
it is seen as a respectable, even laudable, career (Amrute, 2010, p. 520). This fact, combined with
the high salary of tech jobs indicates to families that “the path to middle-class success for young
Indians leads to computer programming jobs, which are favored even over disciplines such as
medicine” (Amrute, 2016, p. 116). Radhakrishnan (2011) explains the practical outcome of this
bias: “urban families, especially upper-caste ones, encourage their daughters to study science and
math” (p. 11). Furthermore, as Ring (2018) adds, “Culturally and politically in India there is a
great interest in women doing engineering, where STEM topics are seen as a natural career path
for women and an area where they can shine” (para. 9). Kaushik and Pullen (2018) add, “Indian
society is collectivist in nature with a prominent patriarchy” (p. 118). What parents see as
appropriate for their offspring weighs heavily in young adults’ decision-making about colleges
and careers. For example, Kaushik and Pullen’s female participants reported that their parents
were significant motivators behind their careers in IT. The end result of India’s respect for IT
careers and the influential power of Indian parents on educational and career decisions is many
young women enrolled in STEM subjects and pursuing IT careers.

52
Jensen (2012) notes that in India, technological advancements provide unique
opportunities for women’s employment because the careers related to these new advancements
are not yet associated with any sort of stigma concerning women working outside the home.
Tech careers are so new that they do not have a history linking them to masculine culture.
Poster’s (2013) study corroborates this conclusion, noting that in India, there is an assumption
“that technical work itself has no gender” (p. 46). Though technical work has no gender, blue-
collar work is seen as highly masculine and thus inappropriate for respectable Indian women.
White-collar employment has less of a stigma associated with it for women than does blue-collar
employment because the jobs are considered safer, cleaner, and less physically taxing (Jensen,
2012).
Technical work thus has another advantage for Indian women trying to maintain their
reputations in their communities. Chandra (2014) notes, “The [Indian] IT environment is gender-
neutral and is attractive to women precisely because it functions as a haven from some of the
misogyny outside” (Chandra, 2014, para. 11). Radhakrishnan (2011) elaborates, “By eliminating
the need for mobility or interaction with those outside the office, the IT workplace creates a
seemingly placeless environment rendered safe for middle-class women to enter” (p. 65). As a
result, Radhakrishnan adds, “Their palpable insulation from their surroundings” makes Indian IT
workplaces more appropriate places for women to work (p. 64). Because of the newness of tech
and the relative isolation and safety of its workers, Chandra (2014) says, “In India, women feel at
home in engineering” (para. 4).
Because the Indian IT sector is known to attract women, large Indian IT corporations
often have a wide variety of policies and programs designed to appeal to women, such as self-
defense training, cab services, and extended maternity leave (Donnelly, 2015). IT jobs are also

53
prestigious, much like they are in the United States, except with a more extreme difference
between prestige and poverty. Gupta (2017) says, “The organizations in this sector are elite in
terms of their reputation as the best private research labs in the country, employment of a highly
educated workforce, high salaries, plush organizational setting and international reach” (p. 259).
As an added benefit, “Opportunities to secure posts abroad or to go there temporarily to earn
large sums of money are abundant” (Fuller & Narasimhan, 2007, p. 126). Finally, these jobs give
young women a chance to delay marriage and become financially independent (Amrute, 2016;
Radhakrishnan, 2011). Considering the many and varied influences of the structure of Indian
society on Indian women pursuing careers in the IT sector, this dissertation asks:
RQ7: What factors make computer programming a desirable career for young Indian
women?

RQ8: What latent factors do female Indian computer programmers describe that enable
their success in the IT workforce?

The Computer Programmer in India
This final portion of the literature review delves into traits that are likely to prove
beneficial for actors to possess when operating within the larger structure of Indian society. First,
it discusses soft skills that make for a good computer programmer. It then investigates the Indian
term, jugaad, and its relationship to creativity and risk-taking. Both soft skills and jugaad are
valuable tools for the young female Indian computer programmer.
What Makes a Programmer?
Soft skills are those abilities that fall out of the realm of technical skills such as knowing
many coding languages or having experience operating databases (Robles, 2012). Soft skills are
more difficult to quantify and measure but are equally essential to survive in the workplace
(Robles, 2012). As a sociological, communication study, this dissertation investigates the soft

54
skills programmers see as necessary or desirable for success in the IT workplace. Unfortunately,
researchers do not often ask computer programmers about soft skills; however, people in the IT
industry do provide their opinions about necessary soft skills. Table 2.1 combines the results of
seven studies—a combination of academic works and articles from the IT industry—published in
the last 20 years that investigate which ‘soft’ skills are desirable or necessary to be a good
computer programmer.

55
Table 2.1
Soft Skills Described as Important to Computer Programming

‘Skilled communicator’ and ‘problem-solver’ are the two traits named in studies most frequently,
with six out of seven studies (86%) listing these traits as important to be a successful computer

Sterling &
Brinthaupt, 2003
Bailey &
Mitchell, 2006
Ahmed et. al,
2012
Filiatrault, 2015
KeepCoding,
2017
Pais-Montes
et. al, 2019
Indeed, 2020
Total
Adaptable X X X X X 5
Conscientious X 1
Creative X X 2
Detail-oriented X 1
Eager to learn X X X 3
Good time management X X X 3
Inquisitive X X 2
Mature X 1
Organized X X X 3
Passionate X X 2
Positive attitude X 1
Problem-solver X X X X X X 6
Responsible X X 2
Self-motivated X X X 3
Skilled communicator X X X X X X 6
Skilled writer X 1
Team player X X X X X 5

56
programmer. ‘Team player’ and ‘adaptable’ are the next most named traits, with five out of
seven studies (71%) listing them. There do not appear to be any academic studies comparing the
usefulness of masculine traits or feminine traits to IT labor. The current study functions as the
first to ask Indian computer programmers of both genders what they see as the necessary or
desirable traits to be a good computer programmer and to then compare those traits to those
listed in existing studies.
RQ9: For young Indians, what soft skills define an adept computer programmer? Does
this definition differ across genders?

Jugaad, Risk, and Creativity
Jugaad is a popular word in India, and many Indians see it as reflective of their national
identity—their determination to survive and thrive in what would seem to others to be
impossibly hostile environments. As such, there is an abundance of scholarly literature on
jugaad, covering three general areas. The first area concerns debate around the actual definition
of jugaad, as it has many denotative and connotative meanings, depending on context (Jauregui,
2014). The second area of research concerns the value and appropriateness of using jugaad in
India: in what situations would jugaad be appropriate to use; which people would be most
morally justified in using jugaad; and whether India has outgrown jugaad as it has modernized.
The final stream of research arises from business and management literature; it is focused
on the potential for jugaad to be appropriated by corporations to increases their efficacy and their
profits. For instance, Rai (2015) states that jugaad is a sort of buzzword in Indian managerial and
tech settings, and Singh et al. (2012) note that jugaad “has been recently important into the
management literature” (p. 87). Kaur (2016) points out that jugaad has been commodified as “the
‘Indian system of innovation’ or the ‘Indian way of manufacturing’ that can be branded as
something the West can learn from” (p. 314). See Prabhu and Jain (2015), Goyal and Goyal

57
(2016), Sharda (2017), or the entire book by Bhatti et al. (2018) for examples of the co-option of
jugaad by business. The following sections of the literature review delve deeply into the first two
areas of research, but do not discuss the business and management research any further, as it is of
limited relevance to this dissertation.
The Many Meanings of Jugaad. The Oxford English Dictionary added jugaad in
September of 2017 and provides two definitions for the term; the first is the original meaning: “a
makeshift automobile constructed from inexpensive materials” (“Jugaad”, 2017). The second
definition is figurative, a “flexible problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative
way” (“Jugaad”, 2017). Jauregui (2014) explains the origin of Oxford’s first definition:
It [jugaad] may be linked with the eponymous automobile that is put together with old
spare parts from various vehicles or other mechanical apparatuses (like water pumps) and
that is regularly used by poorer villagers across India as a form of low-cost transport. (p.
1549)

Though the first meaning served as inspiration, it is the second meaning that captures the essence
of a uniquely Indian mindset. Jauregui says, “Jugaad means many things and is difficult to
translate into English…. It connotes actions that involve ‘quick and dirty’ fixes or problem
solving through improvisation, especially in a context of scarce resources” (p. 1549). Singh et al.
(2012) define the term as “a low-cost innovation, a coping mechanism, a quick-fix solution and
sometimes an unethical way of getting anything done” (p. 89). Both definitions claim that jugaad
is a quick fix—implying that the solution is not ready-made or readily at hand—and both
definitions imply that a creative act must take place for jugaad to occur, as one mentions
improvisation while the other mentions innovation. The other element present in both definitions
is a problem to be solved.
Shepherd provides a third explanation et al. (2020) who state, “Jugaad relies on assertive
defiance, trial-and-error experiential learning and the recombination of available resources to

58
improve a frugal quick-fix solution” (p. 87). Shepherd et al. is the first to include an affective
description of the term: “assertive defiance.” Shepherd et al. also contribute the notion of an
iterative process, as the term ‘trial-and-error’ and ‘recombination’ both imply. The three
definitions also have another theme in common: minimal resource use. Jauregui (2014) states
that jugaad is used in the context of scarce resources; Singh et al. (2012) mention that jugaad is
“low-cost”; and Shepherd note that the solution should be frugal.
Badami (2018) adds to jugaad’s complexity by explaining that jugaad is “both verb and
noun” as “it encompasses the labor involved as well as the term for the repaired, repurposed or
re-engineered object itself” (p. 47). Kaur (2016) adds, “Jugaad is, thus, both a process and a
product” (p. 314). Finally, as Kumar and Bhaduri (2014) note, jugaad is appropriate for short-
and medium-term projects, rather than long-term goals. The temporality of jugaad affects its
legitimacy, as true jugaad tends to be bound in time to a very narrow window of opportunity and
use. Jugaad used over a lengthy stretch of time is less desirable or admired. Rai (2015) also notes
that jugaad, when it goes awry, leads to embarrassing or shameful outcomes that can be
damaging to Indians and their reputations. In summation, jugaad can be conceptualized as a
creative, quick fix—potentially achieved through an iterative process—using minimal resources
applied to a pressing problem without consideration of future value. The creator of a jugaad is
one who possesses assertive defiance.
Rai (2015) provides the following classic examples of jugaad in action. “There was the
television antenna created out of metal clothes hangers; the discarded plastic bottle, cross-
sectioned and transformed into a pair of sandals; the bucket with tiny holes that, when hung up
high, turned into a shower” (p. 12). Rai goes on to provide a nuanced description of jugaad: “In
everyday practice, jugaad is performed when conditions of work or life come up against

59
obstacles. In this sense, the affect of jugaad is the capacity to move from a state of relative
inaction or blockage to an improvisational encounter” (p. 986). Of note in this description is that
jugaad is for use in everyday life, and that someone who utilizes jugaad manifests through their
action an ability to transcend or otherwise circumvent obstacles.
Jugaad has many different meanings in different contexts, including bribery and other
forms of corruption, low-level criminal activity, survival strategies of the impoverished, and low-
cost innovations of businesses (Singh et al., 2012). “In practice, one who can apply jugaad in the
most timely and effective way will tend to succeed even over others who may have a greater
legal claim or legitimate ‘right’ to a different desired outcome” (Jauregui, 2014, p. 1549).
Jauregui (2014) continues,
There are many jugaads: One is for the privileged city-slicker who uses it to bend laws or
work around his problems; and the other, more importantly, for the less privileged, where
jugaad is the means to their survival. People in India deploy a variety of euphemisms for
corruption, one of which is jugaad, which refers to goal-oriented improvisation,
especially the use of informal social networks to advance one’s interests. But as often as
it is conflated with corruption, jugaad is also conceived as necessary for ‘getting by’ and
even as virtuous practice. (pp. 1548-1549)

This quote reflects the moral nature of jugaad as well.
The symmetry between opposing moral changes and presumed status inequalities (i.e.,
jugaad is legitimate for those of lower status but illegitimate for those of higher status)
reveals how morality may be mapped onto perceived power, as the actual or potential
capability to impose one’s will on others. (Jauregui, 2014, p. 1549)

For the wealthy, the well-connected, or the elite, jugaad is a negative; for the poor, the weak, or
the desperate, jugaad is a positive, a sign of toughness and will to survive in the face of
insurmountable obstacles. As Badami (2018) says, “Jugaad denotes resilience in the face of
material scarcity” (p. 47).
Jugaad exists and is popular as a concept because of India’s extreme resource scarcity
relative to its massive population. There are never enough resources to meet everyone’s needs, so

60
people must ‘make do’ or improvise to meet their own needs. Rai (2015) explains, “The term
jugaad comes out of subaltern, or ‘nonelite’ strategies of negotiating conditions characterized by
extreme poverty, discrimination, and violence, which, rather than competing or winning, are
experiments in getting over the next hurdle confronting socially and economically disadvantaged
communities” (p. 986). Singh et al. (2012) also point out that jugaad is used out of necessity, not
desire:
These poor people at the BOP [bottom of the economic pyramid] do not have sufficient
resources and infrastructure required for a standard livelihood and thus are forced to opt
for the jugaad ways of development to fulfil their basic needs. Such people consist
mostly of street hawkers, house cleaners, construction workers and many such categories.
(p. 88)

Jugaad is necessary for the lowest classes of people because, as Mehta and Zhu (2015) explain,
“Subsistence consumers living in poverty” must “engage in innovative behaviors with greater
frequency and intensity…. Homeless and subsistence consumers survive through constant
innovation” (p. 768, p. 779). With this in mind, Coban (2019) redefines jugaad as “calculating
with scarcity” (para. 5).
Though jugaad exists as a way for the poorest people to survive, there is no doubt that all
of India has embraced the term. Rai (2015) claims that in India, “Jugaad has become an
important affective atmosphere” (p. 986). As the term has been popularized in recent decades,
the affect of the term has shifted to one that encompasses reformed India’s neoliberal logic.
Now, Rai says, “The reigning popular discourse on jugaad is a moral-individual one, in which
the ideology of agency in the jugaad lies firmly in the moral decisions of the individualized,
impoverished, and frugal tinkerer” (p. 986). Kaur (2016) notes that “the poor now appear as
resourceful, self-reliant indigenous bearers of innovative disruption” (p. 315). People believe that
jugaad innovations occur “in adverse circumstances, or rather precisely because of adverse

61
circumstances” (Kaur, 2016, p. 314). Thus, jugaad becomes a marker of pride in one’s own self-
reliance rather than shame arising from desperation. Kaur elaborates further, and in doing so
highlights the problem with this updated interpretation of jugaad: “The conditions of adversity
and absence of public services for Indian citizens are turned on its head to position India as an
ideal laboratory condition within which a culture of innovation takes birth” (p. 313). Now,
jugaad as a concept has become “a point of pride for Indians of all income levels” (Rai, 2015, p.
13). Kaur argues that jugaad now serves an important role in the Indian collective imagination.
The ability to innovate is portrayed as a natural gift, a deeply ingrained collective Indian
trait that even the unlettered common man possesses…. The new jugaad innovation
narrative offers an uplifting, potentially emancipatory discourse of mobility in a setting
where even after two decades of economic reforms, wealth gap and poverty stubbornly
persist. (p. 313-314)

There is no equivalent to jugaad in the West, though a term like ‘jury-rigged’ or
‘macgyvered’ have similar implications. What these terms are missing is the desperation that
underlays jugaad and the defiance that rises in a jugaaru—a skilled practitioner of jugaad—when
they create a solution to insurmountable obstacles. Mehta and Zhu (2015) theorize that “as the
means of mass production become mastered, people in modern industrialized societies have
moved away from a scarcity mindset and instead take abundance for granted” (p. 780). This
abundance that permeates everyday life for Westerners disconnects them from the continual
underlying sense of uncertainty that comes from existing in a society where there is never
enough. Badami (2018) explains,
While repair has come to denote a broader set of values in Western practices of
consumption, including environmental consciousness, community responsibility and, at
times, a commitment to minimalist lifestyles; jugaad thrives in largely disorganized
contexts of Third World economic scarcity, addressing immediate needs or discomforts.
(p. 47)

62
Despite the current upbeat spin on the term, Birtchnell (2011) notes that “jugaad is a product of
widespread poverty and underpins path dependencies stemming from dilapidated infrastructure,
unsafe transport practices, and resource constraints” (p. 357). Singh et al. (2012) add, “The
jugaad is part of the infrastructural deficit, a robust and cost effective solution to rough roads and
poverty” (p. 89). Because of its very nature, Badami states, “jugaad… can never be truly
legitimized” (p. 54). If it were made legitimate, it would no longer be truly jugaad.
Jauregui (2014) argues,
A diametrical conceptual distinction between powerful elites using euphemisms for their
corruption and powerless subalterns virtuously trying to survive does not reflect the
complex realities of social life in contemporary India and, arguably, elsewhere. Doing
jugaad often entails multiple subjects and types of interactions working over time, with
varying circumstances and intentions and continual shifting of positions. (p. 1550)

With this in mind, this dissertation acknowledges that the participants will come from
backgrounds of privilege relative to the general Indian population, but will still be
disadvantaged, compared to men and Westerners. It therefore asks,
RQ10: What unique role does jugaad play in female Indian computer programmers’
success in the IT workplace?

63
Chapter 3: Methods
This dissertation investigates the perceptions and formative experiences of Indian
computer programmers pursuing a master’s degree in the United States in order to identify
gender-based differences in lived experiences at home, in school, and at the workplace as well as
corresponding notions of what it means to be a good computer programmer. This chapter
addresses the method chosen for study, as well as research design, participant selection and
characteristics, materials used, procedures, and data analysis.
Qualitative methods are well-suited to explorative research of social phenomena and to
understanding the subjective experiences of subjects (Leavy, 2014). Thus, qualitative methods
were utilized in this study to gain a deep understanding of the under-investigated phenomenon of
non-Western computer programmers and the subjective lived experiences of Indian women. The
study used semi-structured individual interviews to gather rich, or “thick descriptions” about the
participants (Latzko-Toth, Bonneau, & Millette, 2017; Geertz, 1973). Semi-structured
interviews, though guided and thus influenced by the researcher, allow the participants to present
what Haraway (1991) describes as situated knowledge, with its “elaborate specificity and
difference” and laden with internal conflicts not well-captured by more structured research
methods (p. 394). Thus, semi-structured interviews were the primary method of data collection.
Research Design
I lack personal experience with Indian culture, but the loose semi-structured interview
format allowed the participants to redirect away from topics that were not relevant to their lived
experiences and to step into an educator role (Lofland, et al., 2006) where they could teach about
their country and its geography, languages, educational system, politics, gender norms, familial
behaviors, and religious traditions, according each topic the significance they believed

64
appropriate. For instance, when the study began, it was assumed that religion would play a major
role for most participants; as the interviews were conducted, it became clear that religion played
a limited role in their day-to-day lives. Participants demonstrated this through their dismissive
and trivializing language, as well as an air of bewilderment that followed questions pertaining to
religion. The beginning of the interview process was thus a steep learning curve where questions
were modified and interview designs updated to align more closely with participants’
experiences.
This adaptive process helped me acknowledge my own positionality (Rose, 1997), and
the notions of India and Indian-ness that I subconsciously held. On the other hand, there is little
doubt that occasionally, my sometimes-fumbling questions and scattered moments of ignorance
negatively impacted my participants’ trust in me, a trust that was already fragile because of my
status as a white American. This was particularly true with questions concerning gender.
When asked about gender roles and sexism in the workplace, female participants often
expressed hesitancy to critique the social systems of their home country. I believe they feared
that, in my positionality as an outsider (Sánchez, 2010), I would stereotype their culture, forcing
it into the tired shape of Asian exoticism and backwardness, in which women are inherently
oppressed. Once I understood the reason behind their hesitancy, I worked to combat this fear by
openly acknowledging those harmful stereotypes and stating that my goal was not to negatively
portray India but instead to present a full picture of the participants’ lives so that their stories
could be heard.
My research approach strives to conceptualize Indian women’s experiences as a complex
web of what Suchman would call situated circumstances (2007). I wrestled with my “values,
assumptions, priorities, and ethics” as a Western feminist scholar and attempted to resist

65
simplistic explanations of my participants’ experiences; I recognize that, as the author, my
representations of my subjects “do not merely reflect social reality but are also constitutive of it”
(Sánchez, 2010, p. 2258).
Participants
In total, this study had 50 participants—35 females and 15 males—with ages ranging
from 21 to 28 years (M = 23.94 years, SD = 1.65). Since this study’s primary goal is to
investigate women’s experience, women were interviewed to the point of saturation (Bowen,
2008), and men were included to provide complementary perspectives. Thus, the two-thirds
female, one-third male split of participant gender is appropriate, and the total number of
participants is sufficient. All participants were required to be at least 18 years of age, of Indian
nationality, fluent in English, and currently enrolled in a master’s program in a computer science
field at one of two United States universities: University of Southern California (USC) and
Arizona State University (ASU). Participants were from 13 different Indian states, with nine
participants (18%) hailing from the state of Maharashtra (see Figure 1), though the majority of
participants (n = 15) originated from South Indian, which includes the states of Karnataka,
Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. Figure 3.1 shows the distribution of participants
across India.

66
Figure 3.1
Heat Map Depicting the Distribution of Participants’ Home States

Of the 44 participants who reported their religion, 100% were Hindu. 14 of the 43 participants
(33%) who shared caste information said they were from the highest caste of Indian society, the
Brahmin caste; however, because caste is difficult to measure, I also queried the participants’
about their category in the reservation system of the Indian central government, and the vast

67
majority—40 participants, or 80%—reported being from the highest category, the General
Category. Untouchables, or the Scheduled Castes, comprise around 15% of India’s population,
but none of the participants identified as such (Chanana, 2006). Table 3.1 displays a more
complete breakdown of demographic information. See the Caste & Sub-caste section, included
in the Demographics portion of the Methods chapter for further information about caste in India.

68
Table 3.1
Participant Demographics

Characteristic
Female Male
n (%) n (%)
Age n = 35 n = 15
21 0 (0) 1 (7)
22 9 (26) 0 (0)
23 8 (23) 5 (33)
24 5 (14) 6 (40)
25 6 (17) 0 (0)
26 6 (17) 1 (7)
27 0 (0) 1 (7)
28 1 (3) 1 (7)
Origin from Indian region
Southern 11 (31) 4 (27)
Central 10 (29) 3 (20)
Western 11 (31) 2 (13)
Northern 1 (3) 4 (27)
Eastern 1 (3) 2 (13)
North Eastern 0 (0) 0 (0)
No response 1 (3) 0 (0)
Reservation category
General category (GC) 30 (86) 10 (67)
Other backwards classes (OBC) 2 (6) 3 (20)
Scheduled tribes (ST) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Schedules castes (SC) 0 (0) 0 (0)
No response 3 (9) 2 (13)
Marital status
Unmarried 33 (94) 14 (93)
Married or divorced 2 (6) 1 (7)
Employed after undergraduate
Yes 24 (69) 13 (87)
No 11 (31) 2 (13)
Current university
USC 32 (91) 0 (0)
ASU 3 (9) 15 (100)
Mother’s occupation (Housewife) 13 (37) 8 (53)

69
A select group of demographic questions was included to gauge participants’ family
wealth, home location, and childhood educational opportunities. 80% of participants self-
reported their family’s socio-economic status (SES) in India as either upper-middle (n = 19) or
middle (n = 21) with no participants from the lower income SES. Extra tutoring for college
entrance exams and private schooling are both factors impacting an Indian child’s likelihood of
career success, and most participants reported having access to both. Concerning geographic
location, a slight majority of participants, 52%, originated from cities with populations greater
than 5,000,000, while only 14% of participants originated from cities with populations of
500,000 or less; in other words, rural Indian populations are not significantly represented in this
study. Because these three interwoven factors of wealth, geographic location, and educational
opportunities heavily impact college and career success, their results are listed in Table 3.2.

70
Table 3.2
Participant Wealth and Educational Opportunities

Indian Computer Programming
As the interviewees repeatedly explained, young Indians face a challenging combination
of factors when pursuing and maintaining a career in computer programming. They must be
raised in a home that values education and has enough funds to pay for a high-quality education.
Characteristic
Females
n (%)
Males
n (%)
Father
n (%)
Mother
n (%)
Parental educational attainment n = 50 n = 50
10
th
grade or less 3 (6) 7 (14)
12
th
grade 7 (14) 3 (6)
Undergraduate degree 19 (28) 24 (48)
Graduate degree 15 (30) 10 (20)
No response 6 (12) 6 (12)
Family’s SES n = 35 n = 15
Upper 2 (6) 1 (7)
Upper-middle 13 (37) 6 (40)
Middle 16 (46) 6 (40)
Lower-middle 1 (3) 2 (13)
Lower 0 (0) 0 (0)
No response 3 (6) 0 (0)
College entrance tests prep
Yes 19 (54) 9 (60)
No 7 (20) 6 (40)
No response 9 (18) 0 (0)
Schooling (K-12)
Private 31 (89) 13 (87)
Public 1 (2) 0 (0)
Both 0 (0) 2 (13)
No response 3 (6) 0 (0)
Population of home city
500,000,001 + 22 (52) 4 (27)
500,001 - 5,000,000 8 (28) 6 (40)
< 500,001 4 (14) 3 (20)
No response 2 (6) 1 (7)

Characteristic
Females
n (%)
Males
n (%)
Father
n (%)
Mother
n (%)
Parental educational attainment n = 50 n = 50
10
th
grade or less 3 (6) 7 (14)
12
th
grade 7 (14) 3 (6)
Undergraduate degree 19 (28) 24 (48)
Graduate degree 15 (30) 10 (20)
No response 6 (12) 6 (12)
Family’s SES n = 35 n = 15
Upper 2 (6) 1 (7)
Upper-middle 13 (37) 6 (40)
Middle 16 (46) 6 (40)
Lower-middle 1 (3) 2 (13)
Lower 0 (0) 0 (0)
No response 3 (6) 0 (0)
College entrance tests prep
Yes 19 (54) 9 (60)
No 7 (20) 6 (40)
No response 9 (18) 0 (0)
Schooling (K-12)
Private 31 (89) 13 (87)
Public 1 (2) 0 (0)
Both 0 (0) 2 (13)
No response 3 (6) 0 (0)
Population of home city
500,000,001 + 22 (52) 4 (27)
500,001 - 5,000,000 8 (28) 6 (40)
< 500,001 4 (14) 3 (20)
No response 2 (6) 1 (7)

71
They need to be exposed to the field by around the age of 16 or 17 to have sufficient time to
study for the college entrance exams. Exposure tends to happen either through an authority
figure such as an encouraging teacher or through more informal means such as friend networks.
These Indians must be good at studying, good at test-taking, and willing to compete against
immense pools of applicants. They often have a passion for problem-solving and puzzles, but
sometimes simply know that computer programming is considered a reputable, stable, well-
paying job. Committing to education in the United States indicates a commitment to the
computer science field, and interviewees imagined themselves having long-term careers in
computer science, in management roles or running their own start-ups, always back in India,
rather than in the United States.
An Indian Education. An Indian education is unlike a Western education in many ways
that impact Indians’ proclivity for computer programming careers. First, Indian culture heavily
prioritizes STEM careers, to the detriment of all others. One participant, Oeshi (F), describes this
fixation,
And if you’re doing fashion designing or something else, they’ll be like, “Okay, but
what’s your job? That’s not a job.” So, that’s the thinking. So, basically, I’ve seen a lot of
people who ended up in engineering just because their parents told them to.

This, combined with the Indian system’s requirement that students choose which track they
would like to pursue at the end of 10
th
grade (a track that locks them into a limited number of
careers and colleges), means that many teenagers in India find themselves choosing a STEM
track simply because this is what their parents are telling them to do or because all of their
friends are in that track. Guneet (M) experienced this firsthand.
I had to make a judgment call, before joining my eleventh grade, so I had to decide what I
wanted to do. So, there are only two options. One was biology, and the other was
computer science…. And most of my friends, they took computer science…. So I
thought, “I'll just stick with that.” I didn't think much of, in the long term, what will

72
happen. I didn't even think about it.

Once a person has selected a track, it is very difficult to go back and choose a different career.
As a result, in modern India there are a disproportionate number of Indian students attempting to
go into medicine, engineering, and computer programming. Because computer programming is
often not taught in high school, computer programming majors will enter the top colleges in
India with no coding experience whatsoever; many participants reported learning their first
coding language as an undergraduate student.
This lopsided interest in just a few fields increases already stiff competition for seats at
universities. To determine who is admitted to college, universities require all applicants to take
entrance exams. Some universities require one type of entrance exam, others require another
type. One of my participants reported taking 11 different entrance exams when she was applying
to college, and she did not think that number was unusual. Seats at universities are determined
entirely by entrance exam rank; GPA does not matter, nor do extracurricular activities or essays.
Because so much is determined by tests, many families pay for their children to be enrolled in
training centers or taught by private tutors. 28 of the 41 interviewees (68%) from whom data
were collected reported receiving special training for the Indian college entrance exams. Indians
in the 11
th
and 12
th
grades often end up going to school during the day and then again at night,
sometimes even moving away from their families to special academies for fully immersive
training.
Though India’s large population is mostly to blame for this fierce competition, the
situation is exacerbated by its reservation system. The reservation system was designed by the
Indian central government as an affirmative action program for people from lower castes in
Indian society, with up to 50% of seats at universities reserved for people of low castes. While

73
the program sounds equitable in theory, in practice it is fraught with problems. There are no
checks in place to ensure that students from formerly low castes whose families have since
obtained wealth and political advantage do not use the reservation system to secure an unearned
spot for themselves. Regardless of the actual rate at which the reservation system is admitting
undeserving applicants, its existence has fostered anger and resentment in the upper castes, with
many interviewees reporting that the reservation system made an already seemingly impossible
task harder. The reservation system quotas continue to be a hot-button issue in India, often
sparking protests and even riots. It is difficult for an American to imagine the level of
competition young Indians face, because there is no American equivalent, except the elusiveness
of fame. For context, it is ten-fold more difficult to be accepted at a top Indian university (i.e.,
one of the Indian Institutes of Technology) than it is to be accepted to Harvard or MIT (Leslie &
Kargon, 2006).
After acceptance at a university, students will attend classes in a schedule that mimics a
full-time job, with eight-hour days, five days a week, not including extra hours to complete
homework. If students survive all of this, they are rewarded with almost guaranteed job
placement. The difficult journey to a programming career in India speaks to the commitment,
determination, and sheer force of will of the men and women who were interviewed. Several
participants noted that even if they were not particularly interested in computer programming,
they had worked far too hard for far too long to change careers. As a result, there is a substantial
portion of top Indian computer programmers who—unlike mythic programmers of Silicon
Valley with their deep love for code—are not particularly passionate about programming and
consider it a career rather than a calling.
Materials

74
Semi-Structured Interview Guide
The semi-structured interview guide was informed by informal conversations I had with
Indian women, research into the concept of jugaad, a pilot study I conducted with Indian
computer science master’s students at USC, and my own knowledge of gender biases in the
workplace. Because this is a unique topic, no questions were taken from existing questionnaires
or measures. The semi-structured interview guide included five substantive sections—
Demographics, Background, Code, Jugaad, and Gender—with a brief final section called Wrap-
up that inquired about future contact and asked, “Is there anything you’d like to say that you
haven’t had a chance to say?” The guide was updated between the first six interviews and the
remaining 44 interviews. Both versions were approved by USC Institutional Review Board. See
Appendix A for the final version of the full guide.
Demographics. I asked around 20 socio-demographic questions, including traditional
demographic markers such as age, gender, and socio-economic status. I also asked about less-
common markers, such as sibling age and gender, and parental employment and education level.
I included many socio-demographic questions because of the immense diversity of Indian
cultures. India’s population is partitioned out by a wide variety of identifiers, all of which have
the capacity to craft an entirely different life experience from one person to the next. I asked
many demographic questions to be able to parse out unique results produced specifically by
gender as opposed to unique results produced by any one of the myriad other possible socio-
demographic conditions. An important inclusion on the demographic list worth further
explanation are questions concerning caste and sub-caste.
Caste and Sub-caste. Caste is a contentious issue in India, and it is seen as impolite or
improper to ask someone to state their caste, since it has been a major source of oppression and

75
discrimination throughout India’s history (Richards, 1947; Jodhka, 2018). Beyond this, it is
confusing. English spellings are many and varied. There are the five classic Hindu castes—
Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and Ati Sudras—with thousands of their own sub-
categories, such as Brahmakshatriya, which falls between the Brahmin and Kshatriya caste, and
Agrawals, which are a subgroup of the Vaishya caste (Jodhka, 2018). Both Hindus and non-
Hindus identify themselves with a specific caste, despite the caste system being exclusively of
Hindu origin. There are also tribal, familial, occupational, and regional castes, as well as
combinations within those. For instance, a person could consider themselves a Kashmiri Pandit,
thus identifying by regional name (Kashmir) and by tribal or familial name (Pandit). Only upon
further investigation on the part of the researcher could the person be categorized as a member of
the Brahmin caste, because this information is assumed rather than stated.
Furthermore, the central Indian government has placed all Indians into one of five
hierarchical categories based on historical privileges afforded different groups (Saxena et. al,
2018). The groups historically afforded the most privileges are placed in the general category,
then next on the hierarchy are other backwards classes, then scheduled tribes, and finally
scheduled castes (Saxena et. al, 2018). These categorizations determine who qualifies for a
variety of educational and employment opportunities and are thus a common way for Indians to
identify themselves when asked about their caste. As a result, many participants would state that
they were a member of the general category rather than provide their caste and would respond
with confusion when I probed further about their position among the five traditional Hindu
castes.
I thus hesitated to include a question concerning caste but chose to ask because, despite
many participants’ claims that caste was an antiquated concept that did not impact a person’s

76
opportunities, caste continues to be a predictor of career success (Upadhya, 2007). Research has
shown that caste is a major predictor of field of employment, with workers in the Indian IT
sector primarily originating from the Brahmin caste (Upadhya, 2007). It was thus important to
investigate. I recorded whatever caste participants provided, and asked participants for their
position in the Indian government’s categorization schema, which was stored in Excel as a
separate demographic category. Because responses were so varied, caste and sub-caste could not
be divided into clean, comparative categories; thus, most discussion concerning these topics uses
an all-inclusive perspective.
Background. Questions concerning background were included to provide a holistic sense
of the participants’ lives. These questions were also important because they provided a more
nuanced picture of participants’ wealth, and thus of their educational opportunities. Questions
such as, “Who is paying for your education? Did they save up for that?” and “What are your
parents’ levels of education?” asked about familial resources in a more circuitous way than the
straightforward question concerning socio-economic status included in the Demographics
section. Because a high-quality Indian education is obtained more through wealth than through
talent, it was important to ascertain which advantages participants had been afforded. For
instance, private schooling through 12
th
grade provides a much higher quality education than the
public schooling system in India, and likelihood of acceptance into a prestigious university is
increased by paid intensive training for the college entrance exams that all Indian students must
take in order to be enrolled at a university. Because gender heavily influences the duration and
quality of a person’s education in India, it was also important to ascertain whether those
advantages were equally granted to male as well as female participants. Thus, some questions
addressed parental support of children’s educational and career plans and others addressed

77
reasons for attending graduate school in the United States rather than India. Concerns of gender
also motivated questions relating to marriage.
Code. Questions concerning computer coding included basic, fact-gathering questions
that enabled follow-ups necessitating narrative responses. The first of the questions on coding
was always, “What was the first coding language you learned?” The narrative around
participants’ first coding languages provided background on the ages at which they began to
develop an interest in programming and revealed whether they primarily learned languages from
parents, friends, or teachers. The next question, “What coding languages do you know now?”
expanded to include, “Do you have a favorite? Why?” This revealed traits programmers look for
in the languages they utilize; these traits reflect the traits that programmers see as necessary for
high quality coding work.
In order to gain a better understanding of what participants perceived to be ideal traits of
a computer programmer, I asked a series of questions, some straightforward, such as, “What are
the necessary personal qualities to be a good coder?” and others more circuitous in their
investigation in order to move past participants’ conscious understanding of programming
practices and delve more into their intuitive understanding of these concepts. I asked questions
such as, “Describe the step-by-step process you go through to solve a coding task,” the narrative
around which revealed participants’ understandings of the proper and improper ways to approach
challenging tasks. Another circuitous question was, “Is your code often part of a collaborative
project?” This question encouraged participants to reflect on the value of teamwork and
collaboration, and the traits necessary to be a good team member.
The final area of questioning concerning computer programming was emotional
experiences while coding. I asked each participant a variant of, “When you produce code, what

78
are the associated emotions you experience?” Because participants were generally unable to
name any emotions they typically experienced, I usually had to ask the participants to remember
a time when they were working on a difficult programming challenge for many hours and had
finally successfully implemented the code. When they could visualize this scene, I had them
describe the emotions they experienced the moment the code properly ran, and tangentially, the
emotions they were experiencing in those moments before the code was working. This tactic was
successful and shed light on the extent to which coding was an emotive process for participants,
as well as revealing and the emotions typically experienced during these memorable moments.
All the coding questions were designed to facilitate comparison across gender in my analysis.
Jugaad. Jugaad, meaning something like “creative hack or workaround,” is a Hindi
word, but not all of India speaks Hindi. According to the Indian 2011 Census, 44% of Indians
speak Hindi as a first language (Jain, 2018) while another 20% of the population speaks Hindi as
a second or third language (Office of the Registrar General, 2018). Most native Hindi speakers
come from North and Central India, as is demonstrated in Figure 3.2.

79
Figure 3.2
Map of Geographic Distribution of Mother Tongues Across India

Though Hindi is the most spoken single language in India, by a wide margin (Office of the
Registrary General, 2018), the study runs the risk of excluding a significant minority of the
Indian population by focusing on a Hindi term; however, this study’s population is Indians who
have traveled to the United States for master’s degrees, not the general Indian population. When
creating these questions, I relied on the knowledge that my participants and the population they
were drawn from—young IT workers—are more highly educated and more cosmopolitan than
the average Indian, increasing the likelihood that they learned Hindi at some point in their
lifetimes, if not as a first language. This assumption proved correct, as 47 of the 50 participants
in my study (94%) reported being fluent in Hindi.
Hindi
Kashmiri
Punjabi
Gujarati
Marathi
Telugu
Tamil
Odia
Bengali
Assamese
Khasi
Mizo
Manipuri
Ao
Nissi
Bhili
Konkani
Malayalam
Kannada
Nepali

80
In order to ensure that my results would include only those people with a pre-existing
knowledge of the term “jugaad”, the first question I asked was, “Do you recognize this word?” as
I showed them the paper with “jugaad” printed on it (see section entitled “Jugaad Prompt” for
more information). A couple of participants did not recognize the word, and when asked, “How
would you define jugaad in English?” a couple more participants were unable to provide a
reasonably correct definition of the term; these participants’ responses relating to jugaad were
removed from analysis. In total, 43 participants (86%) recognized and could properly define the
term, indicating that my line of questioning was appropriate for my study population.
I also wanted to understand how Indian men and women perceive the creative
workarounds necessary for and the risk inherent in jugaad. I attempted to gain this information
through four questions. The first question, “How would you define jugaad in English?” not only
allowed me to verify that the participant had a proper understanding of the term, but it also
provided me with a connotative rather than denotative definition, as the term has no perfect
English equivalent. Many participants provided examples rather than definitions, and the
participant and I would work backwards from the example to define the key traits it highlighted.
These examples were colored with emotive language that also proved valuable. The second
question, “What connotation does jugaad have in India?” was followed by my clarifying,
“Positive, negative, or neutral?” The participants’ ideas of how the term was conceptualized by
the general population were informative, as were the judgements they made about what Indians
thought of the term. Finally, I asked two questions concerning jugaad and work, because I
wanted to understand not just how jugaad was perceived by participants at a general level but
also if those perceptions carried over to the workplace and if the individuals saw themselves as
the kinds of people who used jugaad at their jobs.

81
Gender. The most basic question concerning gender that was asked is, “Do you feel that
gender has impacted your working experiences?” Women received this question while men
received the following: “Can you imagine any ways your working or educational experience
would have been different, had you been a woman instead of a man?” Though it was an option to
keep the question the same for both genders, it became clear in early interviews with men that
they were not able to name any ways that their gender had impacted their work experience; thus,
the line of questioning was not fruitful. Questions about the impact of gender opened the
discussion up to participants’ musings about gender in the IT workforce and provided a good
starting point from which to delve into other gender questions. They also revealed how much
time participants had already spent contemplating issues related to gender in the workplace;
some participants—mostly men—had nothing to say related to gender or had to sit for a while
and contemplate the topic, while others—mostly women—could instantly state their stances on
gender issues and often had stories ready to share without further prompting. Questions that
relate to gender ratios in the workforce and the prevalence of female supervisors or mentors were
asked because existing research has shown that there are few women involved in tech (World
Economic Forum, 2016), and that women in tech struggle in part because of a lack of female
mentors or leadership (Center for Talent Innovation, 2014). Finally, some questions concerning
gender homed in on the experiences unique to Indian women. For instance, questions related to
sexual harassment in the workplace and safety commuting both address the prevalence of sexual
assault and sexual harassment in India (Patel, 2010; Bhattacharyya, 2015), something that
virtually every participant, male or female, spoke about at some point during the interviews.
Though these issues are not unique to India, the centrality of safety to Indian women’s lives
cannot be overstated and warranted special attention.

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Map of India
For the first six interviews, I simply asked participants to answer the question, “Where
are you from in India?” This prompted a wide variety of responses, including overly broad
categorizations such as, “I’m from the central part of India,” as well as names of cities and towns
whose pronunciations have little relation to their spelling. As a result, I was unable to properly
identify where in India these early participants were from and had to email them after the
interview to obtain clarification. Starting with the seventh interview, I gave each participant a
generic copy of a map of India with the states and major cities demarcated (see Appendix B).
The participant wrote on the map with a permanent marker, indicating what city and state they
were from, what state their parents were from, and where they attended undergraduate university.
Some participants also indicated the city or cities where they were employed prior to traveling to
the United States for a master’s degree. These maps provided identifying information as well as
facilitated conversations about the regional geography of India and its impact on culture. This
helped me bind participants’ experiences to geographic space.
Jugaad Prompt
As mentioned in the Semi-Structured Interview Guide section of Methods, at the
beginning of the interview process, I asked participants if they knew the word, “jugaad.” For the
first six interviews the participants expressed confusion. After some back-and-forth, which often
involved me writing out the word, all six participants recognized and were familiar with the
term. They would say, “Oh! You mean jugaad!” and correct my pronunciation. After six failed
attempts at proper pronunciation, I typed up a handout to provide to participants instead. When I
wanted to know how the participants conceptualized jugaad I presented them with a piece of
paper, which, in large letter in the middle of the page, read, “Jugaad (alternatively ‘Jugaadh’ or

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‘Jagaad’) is a colloquial Hindi (Devanagari: जुगाड़), Bengali (!যাগাড়), Marathi जुगाड, Punjabi and
Urdu ( ﺟﮕ ﺎ ڑ ) word” (“Jugaad”, 2020, para. 1). This avoided any confusion around terms. The text
for the paper was pulled directly from the Wikipedia article on jugaad, since Wikipedia is likely
to represent a more colloquial perspective than formal sources; this is appropriate because jugaad
is an idiomatic term.
Recording Devices
I used the SONY PX370 Mono Digital Voice Recorder, a handheld audio recorder with a
micro SD storage chip, to record the interviews. At the end of each interview, I used the built-in
USB port to transfer the audio file to my computer. Once transferred, I deleted the file from the
audio-recorder. I did not collect video recordings of the interviews.
Transcription and Coding Services
The interview files were saved on my personal computer. After all interviews were
complete, I listened to the first portion of each interview—about 20 minutes—and filled out an
Excel spreadsheet with a full list of demographic information for each participant. I then copied
the MP3 files and trimmed the copied files in QuickTime Player so that all the demographic
information was removed. Next, I uploaded the non-identifying trimmed files to rev.com and
used the Rev transcription service to transcribe the remaining portion of each file. Transcribed
files were uploaded to NVivo software, version 12, for coding and analysis.
Procedure
Interview procedures emerged gradually and were informed by Lofland et. al (2006).
Procedural topics include recruitment, interview setting, consent and privacy, and compensation.
Recruitment

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Data collection for this study spanned 21 months, and methods of recruitment changed
over time. The original four interviewees were recruited during a pilot study I was conducting for
an experiment on how computer programmers work together to solve problems. This experiment
recruited participants via a link to a sign-up sheet sent out on USC’s computer science
departmental listserv. During the pilot study, I chatted with female participants about differences
across cultures and how those differences impacted the coding work they did. Several women
expressed a willingness to be contacted in the future and I collected their contact information.
After securing IRB exemption status for semi-structured interviews, I met with the women again,
and they put me in contact with two more women they personally knew. Thus, snowball
sampling was used for two interviews. In total, six interviews took place in this early stage. The
latter 44 interviews were recruited via emails sent out on USC’s computer science departmental
listserv and ASU’s Indian Student Association and Graduate and Professional Student
Association listservs. Students could book appointment slots using the scheduling service,
Calendly. See Appendix C for the text of the recruitment emails.
Setting of Interview
Interviews were conducted at the University of Southern California (USC) and Arizona
State University (ASU). Both USC and ASU are large tier-one research institutes with high-
ranking computer science graduate programs. In part because of their excellent computer science
graduate programs, both schools have a substantial Indian student population. USC is an
expensive, private university whereas ASU is a less-costly public university. Interviewing
students from both schools ensured that responses were not inherent or unique to either setting.
At each university, interviews took place in private, quiet rooms. Once the participants showed
up for the interview, they were asked a wide variety of questions ranging from particulars such

85
as age and languages spoken to broad, philosophical questions such as ones about the role of
jugaad in the average programmer’s life and sexism in India. See Appendix A for the full semi-
structured interview guide. Interviews lasted anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours, with
the average interview lasting around fifty minutes. Because men did not have as much to discuss
concerning issues of gender in the Indian home and workplace, interviews with men tended to be
shorter.
Since the interviews were semi-structured, some pieces of demographic information were
missing from many of the participants’ files. As part of the standard interview questions, I had
obtained permission from each participant to contact them in the future; thus, I was able to email
every participant for whom I had incomplete information and solicited answers to any specific
questions that were unanswered. This was particularly valuable for the first six interviews that
were conducted because the demographics portion of the semi-structured interview guide was
much less developed at that time. Some participants did not respond to these emails; this
discrepancy is reflected throughout the results and in the reported n in the demographics tables,
Table 3.1 and Table 3.2.
Consent and Privacy
Before each interview, I reviewed relevant information concerning data privacy with each
participant and obtained their verbal consent to audio-record the interview. Because the study
was categorized as exempt by the Institutional Review Board of USC, I did not need to solicit
signatures. See Appendix D for a copy of the consent form that I discussed with each participant.
I also asked each interviewee whether they were comfortable with the names of their hometowns
and universities being shared, as those are the two pieces of information in the data that could
compromise the identity of the participants. If participants reported an unwillingness to share this

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information, their preference was noted, and the location information was either left out of the
interview or removed from the transcript file.
Audio files were assigned a random number as an ID. In data coding, each participant—
at this point recognizable only via their random number ID—was assigned a gender-appropriate
Indian name as a pseudonym. Popular Indian names were identified using Gerber India’s
webpages of popular Indian baby names (Pampers, 2019A; Pampers, 2019B). These pseudonyms
have been used throughout the dissertation write-up, as well as in the coding and analysis.
Duplicate copies of the interviews were stored on a password-protected external hard drive. At
the completion of the dissertation, all audio files with identifying information were destroyed, as
well as all paperwork with participants’ names. The de-identified audio files, as well as all
documentation will be kept for up to three years and then destroyed.
Compensation
Interviewees were compensated for their participation at rates that varied depending on
approximate cost of living in Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix, Arizona. Participants at USC
in Los Angeles were paid $20 for every 30 minutes, whereas participants at ASU in Phoenix
were paid $15 for every 30 minutes. Participants were paid with cash or via Venmo immediately
following the conclusion of the interview. All participants signed a form that verified receipt of
payment. This was the only compensation provided; to the best of my knowledge, no participant
suffered undue harm because of participation in the study. Participants were assured that I would
email them with a method to access my full dissertation once it was complete.
Data Analysis
Once the transcripts and demographic spreadsheet were loaded in NVivo, I began coding.
My method for coding was informed by Corbin and Strauss’s grounded approach (2014) as well
as Beterding and Waters’s flexible coding approach (2018). The combination of these two

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approaches enabled me to craft coding themes that closely aligned with my topics of interest
while remaining sufficiently grounded in the text so that topics central to the interviewees could
also be prioritized. My coding process was: 1) Select primary coding themes, based on the semi-
structured interview guide and on my memos, where I noted important topics that emerged
during the course of the interviews, 2) Conduct line-by-line coding of the interviews into the
primary themes, and 3) Review all quotes under a single primary theme, conducting a constant
comparative analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2014), allowing sub-themes to emerge. Figure 3.3
provides an example of this coding process.

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Figure 3.3
Sample of Coding Process for the Topic, “Parental Support”
Primary Theme Quote Sub-theme

Parental support
“I think because she was at
home, she felt like she was
left out compared to her
friends…. Whatever she
couldn’t [do], she wants me
to do it. She’ll be living that
life through me.” -Vansha
“There's a misconception in
India that girls need not
study… and me and my
sister, both of us are girls,
and my dad had no problem
with that [his daughters
studying]. They raised me as
a boy.” -Udyati
Mothers’
sacrifices
for daughters’
successes
“Being a housewife, it has
taken an emotional toll on
her, and she’s lost a huge
part of her confidence.
Because my dad is the
breadwinner now.” -Meher
Daughters raised
as sons
“I was never considered a
girl in my family. All the
things my brother used to do,
I used to do.... My father…
never discriminated between
my brother, my sister, and
me.... I am a boy inside of a
girl.” -Waida

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In total, there were 24 primary themes; 15 primary themes were informed by the questions from
my semi-structured interview guide and another nine primary themes emerged organically from
the interviews. Table 3.3 provides a full list of primary coding themes, divided by origin.
Table 3.3
Primary Coding Themes and their Sources
Informed by Interview Guide Emerged Organically from Interviews
1. Future plans, 10-15 years 1. Communication with men
2. Background to computer coding 2. Competition in India
3. Emotions while coding 3. Gender equality in India
4. Gender ratios 4. Indian educational system
5. How to approach a coding challenge 5. Indian femininity
6. Jugaad when coding 6. Job and internship descriptions
7. Jugaad connotation 7. Long-term planning to return to India
8. Jugaad meaning 8. Men’s perceptions of sexism
9. Marriage 9. Toxic public spaces for women
10. Mentors, bosses, and leaders
11. Parental support
12. Known programming languages
13. Qualities of a good programmer
14. Safety commuting
15. Sexism in the workplace

Not all topics on the semi-structured interview guide warranted their own key theme;
some questions were combined, and others were shown to be unimportant to the participants, as
was evidenced by the minimal time that participants allotted to these topics and the dismissive
language they used. Table 3.4 provides a full list of primary themes and subthemes that emerged.

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Table 3.4
Primary Coding Themes and Their Sub-themes
Primary Theme Sub-themes
Background to computer coding → Coding is a space for innovation or creativity
→ Coding was the best of the handful of mediocre options
available to me
→ Mentor, teacher, or parent encouraged me
→ Passion for programming/ intrigued by computers
→ Seemed like a responsible career choice
Communication with men → Because of sex segregation, communicating with men is
a learned skill
→ Being a woman requires me to fight more for myself
than a man would need to
→ Feminine communicative skills are opposite to those
needed in the workplace
→ I am more comfortable around men than women
→ I am outgoing/opinionated/outspoken/aggressive
→ Men are uncomfortable communicating about ‘women’s
topics’ like bodily functions and emotions
→ No matter how women are treated, they’re never treated
like men, or like the ‘normal’ standard
→ Women teach other women how to speak up for
themselves
→ Women often don’t attempt public communication until
adulthood, i.e., until it really costs them to fail
→ Women should be straightforward, direct, and honest
with men, even if that isn’t their instinct
Competition in India → Competition in India is much greater than in the United
States
→ It is extremely difficult to secure a spot at a highly
ranked undergraduate university in India
→ Indians are hard workers/ go-getters
→ In India, there are too many people competing for too
few jobs/ spots at universities
→ The reservation system for university admission is
unfair
Emotions while coding → Elation, joy, and relief are common emotions when a
coding problem is solved
→ Participants get fixated on problem-solving on an
emotional level
Future plans, 10-15 years → I want to bring more opportunities to my country
→ I want to own my own company
→ India is on an upward trajectory
Gender equality in India → Daughters are a significant financial burden
→ Many Indians do not prioritize women’s education
→ In a variety of ways, women are associated with the
home
→ Menstruation is taboo

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→ No one teaches men to be respectful to women
→ Parents live in fear for their daughters’ safety
→ People assume that a woman’s work in STEM will be
inferior to a man’s work
→ Woman are steered away from blue-collar careers
→ Women’s careers are seen as hobbies
→ Women are encouraged to adopt masculine skills but
men are not encouraged to adopt feminine skills
Gender ratios → Gender ratios in colleges
→ Gender ratios in workplaces
How to approach a coding challenge → Step-by-step process
→ What you should not do
Indian educational system → Indian (K-12) education primarily requires rote
knowledge rather than critical thinking
→ Indian culture prioritizes STEM careers
→ Indian higher education is theoretical, not practical
→ Indian public education (K-12) is subpar
→ Indian secondary education is strenuous and narrowly
focused on just a few subjects
→ Indian universities have curfews for women
→ Tests for college admission require years of prep via
expensive tutors and training centers
→ Wealthy schools are more likely to offer computer
coding courses
Indian femininity → A good Indian woman is not too modern
→ A marriageable Indian woman is college educated
→ For Indian women, reputation is everything
→ Indian women should be modest
→ Indian women should be patient, kind, and caring
→ Indian women should be quiet, shy, and unopinionated
→ Indian parents are overly concerned with the opinions of
others; this limits progress
→ Most Indians believe they have a right to monitor,
discuss, and regulate women’s behavior
→ The ideal Indian woman is delicate and fragile
→ The Indian feminine ideal is rapidly shifting
→ Virtuous Indian women do not drink or smoke
Jugaad connotations → Highly varied responses
→ Generally positive connotations
→ Seen as reflective of the spirit of India
Jugaad meaning → Participants often smiled or laughed when I brought up
the term
→ Common themes included problem-solving, creativity,
limited resources, and determination
Jugaad when coding → Participants seemed equally likely to say jugaad was
appropriate as they were to say it was inappropriate in the
workplace
→ Gender did not seem highly influential on perceptions of
appropriateness

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Known programming languages → List of programming languages
→ Favorite language
Long-term planning to return to India FOR
→ I plan to work in the United States for a couple of years
to pay off my graduate loans
→ The United States provides a prestigious education/
work experience at prestigious companies
→ I can get a better job in India if I am trained in the US/
my Indian job was a dead end w/o this degree.
→ The United States is lonely/ I miss my family
→ I plan to work for a few years at the US branch of an
international corporation, then transfer to the Indian branch
of that corporation
AGAINST
→ My parents are ok with international travel, so I am free
to move away from India
→ If I can get my dream job at an American company, I
will stay in the United States
Marriage → A fundamental part of being an Indian married man is
being able to financially provide for a family
→ After marriage, an Indian woman will move to wherever
her husband lives
→ After marriage, Indian women are often expected to
comply with in-laws wishes re: working outside the home
→ An Indian woman who wants a career has to carefully
consider the impact that will have on her prospects of
marriage, whereas men don’t consider it
→ Child-rearing and cooking are fully the woman’s
responsibility
→ Everyone in India is expected to get married
→ Higher education is used by some women to stall on
their eventual marriage
→ Money saved for a daughter’s wedding is sometimes
used to pay for her graduate education
→ There are a lot of marital double-standards for men and
women
→ Whether caste impacts marriage prospects is highly
dependent on the family
Men’s perceptions of sexism → I cannot think of any differences between the workplace
experiences of a man and a woman
→ I know that commuting is more dangerous for women
than for men
→ People are more protective of women than they are of
men
→ Whether for good or bad, women get a lot more
attention than men in the tech workplace
→ Women do not seem to participate in as many activities
outside of work
→ Women’s bodies limit their ability to work well

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Mentors, bosses, and leaders → A supportive mentor encouraged me to take risks and
learn from my mistakes
→ I felt like my male superiors helped me because I was a
young woman trying to start her career
→ My boss coached me, enabling me to learn many
interpersonal/ leadership skills crucial to my job
→ One toxic/ sexist boss can ruin an entire job
→ Protective treatment of women can quickly become
patronizing/ infantilizing if women take advantage
→ The encouragement of a high school teacher was what
showed me I should pursue computer science
→ There are inspiring women in the field, but not many of
them
Parental support → I am a daughter but was raised like a son
→ Lifelong parental support enabled my success
→ My mother/ father is my strongest advocate
→ My mother/ father sacrificed a lot for my success
→ The contrast between my parents’ behavior and India’s
misogynistic culture makes me thankful that they are my
parents
→ What might seem like excessive parental control ended
up being beneficial to me
Qualities of a good programmer → Able to see things from many perspectives/ out-of-the-
box thinking
→ Always seeking out new knowledge/ eager to learn/ lots
of curiosity
→ Can shift from working in a team to working alone/ can
work collaboratively
→ Coding doesn’t take special skills/ anyone can code
→ Creativity
→ Logical/ algorithmic thinking
→ Loves puzzle-solving/ problem-solving
→ Open to feedback or criticism
→ Passionate about their work
→ Perseveres/ persists
→ Self-motivated
→ Systematic working process/ thorough/ detail-oriented
→ Willing to fail many times/ to make mistakes
Safety commuting → Each major city has its own reputation re: safety
→ Crowded public spaces are an acceptable type of unsafe
whereas empty or isolated public spaces are unacceptably
unsafe for women
→ Men are used to protect women from other men
→ Money is used to craft safe spaces in which women can
move freely after dark, but those spaces are the exceptions
rather than the norm (safe havens)
→ Night is a time when it is inappropriate for women to be
outside the home
→ The greater your wealth, the more you are insulated
from commuting dangers
→ The police are not to be trusted

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→ Women are excused from certain workplace events and
tasks in order to avoid a dangerous commute
→ Women are forced by these circumstances to spend less
time at the office than men; this hurts their careers
→ Women have the choice to stay after hours or to go
home on time, whereas men do not
Sexism in the workplace → I am often underestimated
→ It is a necessary risk for a woman to speak up for herself
in the workplace
→ I wonder if people think I got this job just because I am
a woman
→ I felt like everything was equal in my workplace
between women and men
→ The cultural belief in male superiority infects school and
the workplace as well
Toxic public spaces for women → An Indian woman’s virtue is worth protecting above
almost all other aspects of her person
→ Because Indian women are taught to be quiet and
respectful, it is difficult for them to protest when bad things
happen to them; “I don’t want to be a bother”
→ Even if a woman hasn’t experienced anything
threatening, she knows women who have, and that informs
her decisions
→ Indian society is very judgmental of women
→ Indian men harass because they are uneducated
→ The Indian news media perpetuates the notion that
women are never safe/ always in danger
→ Sexual harassment is not worth prosecuting
→ The onus is on Indian women to protect themselves
→ Women learn not to draw attention to themselves in
public
→ Women should learn how to make themselves as
believable as possible when their morals are questioned

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Chapter 4: Results Concerning Cultural Influences on Young Indian Women
The results of this study are grouped into three main categories: cultural influences on
young women’s work; workplace sexism; and women who program. Chapter 4 covers the first of
the three categories while Chapter 5 covers the latter two topics. Chapter 4 begins with Table
4.1, which establishes the links between each topic and its corresponding research questions.
Table 4.1
Study Research Questions Sorted by Topic
Topic Research Questions
Cultural Influences on
Young Woman’s Work
• In what ways do Indian cultural norms that concern gender
impact young women’s likelihood of success in the tech
workplace?
• Do young female Indian computer programmers identify
the threat of violence against women in the public sphere
as a factor inhibiting their ability to work and to advance in
their careers?
• How do traditional notions of Indian femininity impact
young female Indian computer programmers’ ability to
work and to succeed in the workplace?
• How do traditional notions of Indian female chastity
impact young female Indian computer programmers’
ability to work and to succeed in the workplace?
Gender Ratios and
Reported Sexism in the
Workplace
• Do young Indian women believe that males and females
are treated differently in the tech workplace? If so, what
differences do they describe?
• Do young Indian men believe that males and females are
treated differently in the tech workplace? If so, what
differences do they describe?
Traits of an Adept
Programmer and
Working Women’s Traits
• What motivates young Indian women to pursue and
maintain a career in computer programming? Does the
motivation differ across genders?
• What latent factors do female Indian computer
programmers describe that enable their success in the IT
workforce?
• For young Indians, what soft skills define an adept
computer programmer? Does this definition differ across
genders?
• What unique role does jugaad play in female Indian
computer programmers’ success in the IT workplace?

96
Chapter 4 explores cultural influences on young Indian women’s work to identify what
situational circumstances have impacted young women’s likelihood of becoming (successful)
computer programmers. This portion is divided into four parts: the role of reputation; women’s
safety; formative childhood experiences; and marriage. These are four major topical areas that
female participants consistently brought into the discussion as impactful to their development
and mindsets. The first area deals with the importance of reputation and the traits that an ideal
Indian woman possesses. The second area explores concepts and experiences connected to
women’s safety, or lack thereof, in public spaces. The third area traces women’s personal
histories—memories of their families and their childhoods. The fourth and final area deals with
the concept of marriage and the ways that young Indian career-women imagine themselves
cultivating balance between home and work.
Though many of the experiences described in the following sections may seem distant
from the workplace, they all play a role in the formation of a sense of self. Much of what
determines whether an Indian woman will become a successful programmer is decided before
she sits down in her first college class or walks in the door at her first job. Issues concerning
reputation, safety, and marriage all are built on a foundation constructed of limitations on
women’s agency. Indian culture is a powerful structure that not only defines a woman’s
limitations but also embeds concepts of constraint into women’s minds, pre-emptively regulating
their behaviors in all spheres of life, including the workplace.
The Ideal Indian Woman
Young women in India live in a time of flux, with socio-economic structures and
industries modernizing rapidly, and culture and tradition being dragged along, unwilling, in the
wake of what many Indians consider to be essential progress in national development. In India,

97
as in various developing nations, women have become vessels for national identity and national
pride. While men slough off the raiment of outdated India-ness and work to bring their nation
forward into modernity, women are asked to become both guardians and manifestations of
traditional Indian values and practices, so the nation can rest assured that key elements of its
identity remain intact.
Because young women have become public symbols of national identity, the unique
intricacies of their bodies and behaviors are loaded down with cues that serve as markers of
conformity to or deviance from traditional Indian values. Members of the public feel as if it their
right to censure women’s bodies and behaviors. In a sense, women’s bodies have become public
property; in these forms loaded with layered meanings, women find themselves the subjects of
public discourse and censure. The value of reputation reaches a premium in this environment and
young Indian women are painfully aware of the many conflicting traits considered necessary to
be an ideal Indian woman. Many of the traits this amalgamation manifests reflect values from the
India of twenty or thirty years in the past, while others require her to be a truly modern woman.
Even as the young careerwoman strides confidently forward into the workplace, she finds herself
being yanked backwards, back into the confines of the home and into a body imagined existing
entirely to serve as a support for others.
One major way that public scrutiny impacts Indian women’s lived experiences is through
the central role of reputation. For Indian women, reputation is vitally important. Female
participants report that Indian parents are extremely concerned with the opinions of others. This
focus on community opinions can limit progress, as everyone is afraid to deviate from

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misogynistic traditions for fear of being gossiped about and seen as inappropriate. Zuri (F)
4

frustratedly said that her parents are
just in this phase of their life where they are not even modern because society is forcing
them to not be modern even though they want to be modern. They know that [being
modern] is right, somehow, their concerns tell them that it's right.

Her parents are not irrationally concerned about protecting their reputations. Indian communities
discuss topics that might be seen in Western countries as ‘none of their business’ and these
community discussions can impact marriage prospects and career opportunities. Manthan (M)
explained, “You cannot be an outlier in a group of people that follow the culture…. Sometimes
due to cultural things you have to just not bring friction. You just try to abide it, in that
situation.” Even trivial behaviors can warrant critique; Omaja (F) explained, “Women who go
and get into sports, people she knows are like, ‘Oh, I don't know who will want to marry you.’
That's what is said.” It is difficult not to internalize this surveillance, as is evident from Deepa’s
(F) sense of relief at being in the United States.
Interviewer: Did you feel comfortable around men at your job after going to a girl's
college?
Deepa: The only constraint I had in my mind, with men being around, is how my parents
will feel, how the society will feel. What comments are they going to make about me?
Being here [in the United States] is definitely very different because I don't have to worry
about the kind of clothes I'm wearing or the kind of people I'm walking around with,
because no one is here to judge me. Back in India, even if I'm with good company, there
are always suspicions about, “What are those two doing? They're roaming together, are
they dating? Is something going on between them?” Here, you don't feel that way. You
don't feel that people are judging you.

Participants, both male and female, consistently reported that Indians believe they have the right
to monitor, discuss, and regulate women’s behavior, particularly behaviors which take place in

4
Participant gender is denoted by an F for female and an M for male, provided in parentheses after their names.
Gender is listed for each participant the first time his or her name appears in a new paragraph.

99
public. Indian society feel justified in being judgmental of women and this impacts women’s
sense of self.
Even though several participants reported the Indian feminine ideal as in flux, and rapidly
modernizing as India itself modernizes, Indians’ fear of social censure leaves a clear and rigid set
of standards for women firmly in place. One good summation was provided by Omaja (F) who
said,
The ideal Indian women, I think, she goes to college. She will be educated, but she gets
married at an early age, and then supports her husband. She doesn't work after marriage.
She takes care of the house and her husband and raises kids.

Omaja’s description presents a generic life plan for a ‘good’ Indian woman to follow. Yashica’s
(F) description of the ideal female was more explicit about women’s value in the Indian familial
hierarchy.
Yashica: ‘Woman’ means not talking back, taking care of the home. If a man goes out
and does all the work to get money, the woman should make sure that the family is good,
that's it. Whether she has dreams or not, it doesn't matter. The family should be good.
Everyone should be happy. Whether she is happy or not doesn't matter.
Interviewer: Like her first priority should be-
Yashica: Yeah, her first priority should be her husband and children and then in-laws-
Interviewer: And then her?
Yashica: I don't think she's on that list.
Yashica’s cutting assessment is indicative of the resentment many participants felt at the
subservient roles they are being asked to fill. Though the participants’ parents were unlikely to
suggest these kinds of restrictions for their own children, the ideal Indian women’s selflessness
remains a pervasive trope in Indian society and impacts marital expectations.
The ideal woman’s personality traits and behaviors are also clearly dictated by society.
As described by the study participants, both male and female, the ideal Indian woman is as
follows: modest of dress and attitude; patient, kind, and caring; quiet, shy, and unopinionated;

100
physically delicate and fragile; a non-smoker and a teetotaler. Emphasis on personality traits
such as being shy and unopinionated have a direct negative impact on women’s communication
in the workplace, as will become apparent later in the results section. The physical aspects,
which are out of the individual’s control, also manifest in behavioral regulation, dictating
whether women can participate in physical fitness. Omaja (F) says,
Men are [considered to be] stronger than women, so they get to do all those physical
activities, like going to a gym. Only now in Bangalore can you see a few women going to
the gym, but before in Bangalore, they wouldn’t even go the gym. Only men would go.

The behavioral aspects are a clear double-standard between men and women, as Chandran (M)
notes,
It's okay for guys to go out at night and go party in clubs but not for girls. It’s not allowed
for girls to smoke cigarettes or drink…. Certain things are not considered good for girls,
but maybe if a guy does it, it's okay.

This double-standard also creates dilemmas for the working woman who must decide whether it
is worth the risk to her reputation to go and network at that informal get-together at a bar after
work. Yashica (F) explained why she had stopped drinking at social events.
You go out for a social outing, a guy drinks, no one looks at him. But the moment a girl
sips, everyone will give some kind of look. I don't know what that look is, but I observed
it and I never go for a drink at social parties anymore. I just drink within my home and
with my friends, that's it. And that's something that even one of my mentors told me,
‘Never drink in social parties because they'll judge you. They'll say that they don't, but
they will.’
Another telling feature of the ideal Indian woman is that she is not too modern.
Participants mentioned the concept of the modern woman several times, always in an
unfavorable light. “It doesn't have a positive tone to it,” says Netra (F). Indian female modernity
is contrasted against traditionalism; participants made it clear that woman can be “too modern,” a
state where they have become unmoored from the rich tapestry of traditions that form the
backdrop to life in India. For example, Zuri’s (F) older male cousin heard a rumor that Zuri was

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determined to marry a man outside her caste, a man from the United States. He called her up to
tell her to behave properly.
You wouldn't believe, my cousin is quite elder to me, he was the one who was telling me,
“You are not going to marry somebody in the U.S., and you're not going to do this and
that.” It's my personal choice! You don't have any right to tell me whom I should marry
or whom I should not. It's very sad but that's how things work in India.
Being too modern is associated with being too Western, or too influenced by United States
culture and values. Netra gives another example, “Thinking that sleeping around casually is
okay, that kind of modern… is too modern.” Netra goes on to explain that being labeled as too
modern gives members of the public an excuse to treat you poorly.
Netra: Delhi girls are considered like that [too modern]. A person could think that
everyone who belongs to Delhi might be too okay with everything. So that's why you just
feel like it's okay to do anything to them, to say anything to them.
Interviewer: If you can imagine Delhi girls as being promiscuous, then it's easy to treat
them as bad as you want?
Netra: Yeah. I think that's how people think over there.

Netra’s example helps demonstrate how the Indian public feels justified in penalizing women
who are perceived to deviate from the ways their bodies are supposed to represent traditional
India. As Raveena (F) explained, Indians “bring women's freedom into a bubble called culture.
They use culture and tradition to restrict women.” Indian women uniquely bear the burden of
carrying India’s cultural legacy forward into a shiny new future, full of technological innovation
and neoliberal capitalism, and participants’ responses reflected the reality of this burden.
Female participants explained that in this paternalistic culture, fixated as it is on women’s
virtue and safety, young women who work outside the home need to learn how to make
themselves as believable as possible when their morals are questioned. In other words, it is a
woman’s responsibility not only to protect herself from harm but also to persuasively articulate
her own innocence when challenged by others. Jhalak (F) says that women will start to doubt

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themselves when others tell them they have been doing something wrong and claims that the best
remedy in those situations is to respond to the questioner with complete confidence in one’s own
choices.
We can just be confident enough and we can say that, “I know what I have done in that
particular evening, and I don't want anyone standing there and asking me for the
justifications. I know I was working late hours. I know I am committed to my work. You
are no one to ask me.” If my parents are not asking, who's the third person who's asking
me that? If I know it, my people know it, then it's good.

Jhalak argues that though women should be believed, though others should assume that she is
doing something proper rather than improper, this is not how India works. As a result, the burden
falls on the woman—especially the working woman who is outside of the home much more
frequently—to eloquently defend herself when others question her morals.
During her time employed at a tech company, Lakshmi (F) attended an out-of-office
work event at an amusement park. In the middle of the event, she was pulled aside by her male
boss and chastised for allowing one of her male co-workers to briefly rest his hand on her
shoulder—something she had not even noticed when it occurred. Her boss informed her that
though he was sure the gesture was innocent, the picture it presented risked making Lakshmi
look like the wrong kind of woman, and in turn it could make the company look bad. This is an
example of women’s bodies being policed by the public and an example of non-family members
feeling as if they have a right to censure women’s public behavior, even the most trivial of
gestures, such as an arm resting on a shoulder.
Lakshmi was incredibly embarrassed by the incident. “I felt very bad about that. I think I
cried for two, three hours after that. I just wanted to go back home. I went to the washroom and
cried.” Later, she explained, she became angry with her boss.
First thing first, there was also an HR there who was female. If you had a problem, you
should have told her and come through her to me…. If I'm not doing anything wrong, I

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don't owe explanation to anybody except my parents…. And that guy, I wasn't putting my
shoulder on that guy's arm. He was putting his arm on me. The one who should behave—
if you find it inappropriate, the one who should behave is him, not me!

A woman who deviates from traditional behaviors will be challenged or questioned by others,
whether it be her own parents, her fellow employees or students, her boss, or even random
strangers or community members. She is expected to justify herself to anyone who would cast
doubt on her reputation. As Lakshmi’s story demonstrates, this shaming is a powerful form of
social control and a reminder to women that while in public, they are beholden to their
community, obligated to constantly perform.
Women’s Safety
“My father used to say,
‘Girls are like flowers… to be taken care of.’”
-Yashica

India is fixated on women’s safety. Stories about attacks on women dominate the
headlines; there are countless restrictions and protections put in place by central, state, and local
governments to try and reduce rates of harassment and assault against women; parents such as
Meher’s (F) father will often isolate their daughters when they hit puberty, trying to keep them
either at home, school, or another controlled space. These restrictions are important steps to
protect women, even as they are also oppressive regulations that limit women’s agency. One of
the most liberal women in the interviews, Zuri (F), conceded, “I will say, one cannot handle
safety in India in any other way. There's no other way to handle it. There are so many rapes
happening in India.” Women learn to be fearful at a young age, because their parents are so
concerned for their safety.
Interviewer: So. your dad's very protective.
Pahal (F): Yes, of course. All dads are protective, no?

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Interviewer: I'm getting a feeling in India... I mean, it just sounds like there's a lot of
fixation on women's safety and your daughter's safety and protection growing up.
Pahal: Yes.
Interviewer: It sounds like the parents are scared all the time about their daughters.
Pahal: Yes. They are.

Interviewer: Are they [parents] very protective?
Yashica: Yeah, they are.
Interviewer: They're more protective of girls than boys?
Yashica: Yeah, a lot.
Interviewer: Why?
Yashica: I would say it's because of the way they were brought up. Because girls, they
had a lot of restrictions. Guys, they can do anything they want. That's how my parents
were brought up. I'm sure some of the people who you've interviewed, they would say
they had to actually fight with their parents to come here…. If I was a guy, my parents
wouldn't have bothered with anything. They would be like, “Okay, you can take care of
yourself.” Like that. But girls, their parents always have that thing going on in their mind,
“Okay, what is she doing? What is happening to her? Is she all right?” I get five to six
phone calls daily. Just to make sure that I'm all right, if I need something.

Women being perceived as naturally more delicate than men further justifies society’s
heightened control over women’s behaviors.
Fixation on women’s safety is interwoven with a fixation on women’s chastity. Extra-
marital sex is taboo, and women bear the brunt of the shame when it occurs, even if it was non-
consensual. Participants report that any hint of impropriety, including rumors that a woman has
reported a sexual assault to the police, can damage her marriage prospects. As a result, most
sexual assaults are deemed too minor to report because of the immense social cost it could have
for the victim. India’s fixation on chastity and safety manifests as an environment which
implicitly says that an Indian woman’s virtue is worth protecting above all other aspects of her
person.

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Women working to minimize bodily harm while also protecting their reputations perceive
significant differences between crowded and empty public spaces. Crowded public spaces were
seen by the women as an acceptable type of unsafe, whereas isolated or empty public spaces
were seen by the women as an unacceptable type of unsafe. This is evident in the following
exchange with Deepa (F):
Interviewer: If you left during the day, would you feel safe going home by yourself?
Deepa: If I'm not going through unknown route, if I'm going through a busy road, yes, I
will feel safe. Yeah.
Interviewer: So, having a lot of people around essentially.
Deepa: Yeah, exactly.

Unfortunately, as Raveena (F) detailed, in crowded spaces, women are much more likely to be
groped or catcalled.
Raveena: The first year I traveled by train which is pretty unsafe and then I switched to a
bus, which was again, not very comfortable so I decided to…
Interviewer: What's happening that's making it unsafe or uncomfortable?
Raveena: Buses especially because there are a lot of people and they keep pushing you
and touching you inappropriately and then pass it off as-
Interviewer: An accident.
Raveena: An accident because of the crowd and you know it's not okay. You know it's
not the case [an accident].
Interviewer: There's really nothing you can do about it?
Raveena: No. You cannot do anything.
Interviewer: It's not like you can yell at the bus driver and the bus driver will kick the guy
out or something?
Raveena: (exasperated) How many times can you do that?
Interviewer: It's just very frequent?
Raveena: It's frequent. Yeah.
When a space is empty, there is a physical distance between a woman and others, which should
make things feel safer. Instead, empty spaces represent danger, because women lose their

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witnesses. It is so important to have a crowd of witnesses who can affirm a woman’s chaste
behavior and who can potentially constrain the extremes of male aggression towards women, that
it is better for her to take a crowded street where she is likely to be sexually harassed than to risk
an empty one where she could be raped or murdered.
Raveena (F) reflected on this issue of protection and blame during the interview.
Women are restricted from going out at night and they say it's for their safety. I don't
completely agree with it. We come across a lot of rape cases in our country; it happens
every single day. The worst part about all of that is that they blame the victim. They
always say that she shouldn't have gone out at that hour or wearing a short dress or with
or without a male partner. It always comes down to how a woman behaves. It always
comes down to a women's ‘character.’ They try to define how a woman should and
shouldn't be and they excuse it with culture. That's the problem.

Even when the interviewees did not report personally feeling unsafe in certain cities or at
certain jobs, they recognized that their sense of safety was tenuous, because the danger of public
spaces is so pervasive and so unique to women.
Raveena (F): I've heard of a lot of people who were forced to leave the office soon
because they have to go back early because they stay far away.
Interviewer: They don't want to be out after dark?
Raveena: Yes.
Interviewer: When you say people, do you mean women?
Raveena: Women. Obviously women.
Netra (F), described her commute.
Interviewer: How did you get to and from the college?
Netra (F): Through metro.
Interviewer: Did you ever use the metro after dark?
Netra: Yes. Yes, I did.
Interviewer: Did you feel safe doing so?
Netra: Once I'm inside the metro station, then I was safe. But getting from the metro
station to my home, always my dad used to pick me up, because metro station from home
was still a short five-minute walk. So even that, my dad-

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Interviewer: Even five minutes, you're not going to walk on your own?
Netra: No. No.
Interviewer: Would you walk on your own during midday?
Netra: Yeah.
Interviewer: So it's totally different at night?
Netra: Yeah, after dark it's totally different.
Interviewer: Is it that way for women and men? Or just women?
Netra: Just women.

The woman is associated with the home in India. This is where she belongs, and thus
where she can best be kept safe. Public spaces do not belong to women; they belong to men. One
participant described how she was made to feel out-of-place, like an intruder, when she was on
the streets alone. In the same way that public spaces do not belong to women, participants
describe how nighttime does not belong to women either. Krishna (F) described commuting in
Bangalore: “By night, nope, not safe. But day, I guess it's fine.” In India, night is conceptualized
as a time when women should be inside the home, a traditional space of confinement that women
remain bound to, even as the country modernizes. This concept is particularly unfortunate for the
working woman, because the very act of venturing outside the home for work marks the woman
as deviant. Being categorized as already breaking the rules places the onus back on working
women to ensure their own protection.
Working women report heavy self-regulation to protect themselves. Each major city in
India has its own informal reputation for women’s safety, or lack thereof, and women described
being unwilling to accept jobs in certain locations because of the reputation of the city. One
participant said she would never work in the north-central Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, because
of its reputation for poor treatment of women. When asked about safety in Delhi, Jhalak (F)
interrupted in her haste to say, “It was not safe. Not safe at all. Delhi is the most unsafe city in

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entire India. People can stare at you from... I really had a couple of bad experiences in Delhi.”
Other female participants would spend time the interviews rating the respective safety of cities
such as Mumbai (moderately safe), Bangalore (very safe), and Delhi (very unsafe). The female
participants in this study almost always had a story to share of someone they knew who had been
harassed or assaulted, even though most of the women did not themselves report experiencing
these things (likely in part because of the societal pressure placed on them to prevent such things
from happening). For example, Zuri (F) told me about her experience volunteering as a math
teacher in a rural village; during her tenure there a female 5
th
grade student of another teacher
was raped by her rickshaw driver on her way home from school. This event was common
knowledge in the community and several girls were pulled out of school by their parents for fear
that the same thing would happen to them. This word-of-mouth promotes a culture of fear, where
women pre-emptively constrain their own agency because of the threatening things others have
experienced.
One of the ways women self-regulate is by dressing, walking, and talking in ways that
make them as invisible as possible while in public. To draw attention to oneself is seen by Indian
culture as asking for trouble and anything deemed to be ‘attention-grabbing’ is used against
victims as evidence that they were also to blame for what happened to them. Even when they are
being assaulted, women still must self-monitor.
Interviewer: If a woman is in public on a bus, and a man starts groping her because she's
stuck at the fifth row of the woman seats, what is the appropriate response for her?
Omaja (F): She usually gets up and goes in the front and stands.
Interviewer: She doesn't yell at him, draw attention to it?
Omaja: No, normally they wouldn't.
Interviewer: She doesn't punch him? I guess that's not appropriate, either. She just
moves?
Omaja: She just moves or gets thrown off the bus.

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Interviewer: There's no reporting it to the police?
Omaja: No.
Interviewer: What would happen if you tried?
Omaja: The police or the system they don't act much or fast. They just take an account,
and would be like, “Okay.”

One of the consequences of strategically blending in, however, is that eventually one can forget
how to stand out. Women reported having to adopt two different mannerisms—one for the street
and one for work. Their natural inclination at work was to shy away from attention, and they
would have to actively work against this impulse in order to ensure that they were making
themselves heard, taking full credit for their work, and demonstrating that they were engaged in
team efforts.
Regardless of whether they are international or local, tiny start-ups or major corporations,
Indian IT workplaces always implement policies designed to protect their female employees.
Women are often forbidden from remaining at work past sundown. Ishita (F) explains,
With males you can take that liberty but no, you can't ask a female to work till two
o'clock at night, three o'clock at night…. You can't ask a female to work that long
because of security issues. If anything happens to her when going back home, then it is
the company who is responsible for it. Whereas with the male employee, it's not the case.
Even if he goes back home at two o'clock it's fine. There is no security issue as such.

Many companies that allow their female employees to work after dark provide a car service to
get them home safely. Naveen (M) noted that women at his company
would take public transit home, but the office also had a separate clause for women
working after 8:00 pm, as far as I remember. So, if they were supposed to leave after 8:00
pm it would be the responsibility of the office to call a cab for them and make sure that
they get home.

In place of a cab service, many larger companies run their own bus service. Krishna (F), who
worked at an international bank in Bangalore explained her company’s safety strategies.

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Krishna: The organization had their own facilities, so they had their own kind of buses,
tons of buses, that came like probably half a mile from my house. I walked for half a
mile, then got onto the bus and they dropped me to work. That wasn't much of an issue.
Interviewer: Okay, so did you ever work long hours at [company name]?
Krishna: Sometimes until 11:00 pm.
Interviewer: And you felt safe taking the bus and then walking to your home?
Krishna: Yup. They have their own transportation, so yeah. And if it's after 8:00 pm, they
drop us right in front of our houses…. That's pretty safe because it's completely trapped
[enclosed]. I can send a tracking ID to my parents or a friend and they know that I'm safe.

In the rare instance where a woman ends up at work late and does not have access to a car
service, a male co-worker will be asked to accompany her as she travels home to ensure her
safety. This is self-serving for companies, as protecting women really means protecting women’s
reputations, and in turn protecting the reputation of the company.
A Girl Growing up in India

Meher’s (F) mother used to be a computer programming developer and a teacher at a
computer science training institute. When Meher was around two years old, her mother quit her
job and became a full-time housewife. Meher describes the impact this had on her mother,
Being a housewife, it has taken an emotional toll on her, and she’s lost a huge part of her
confidence. Because my dad is the breadwinner now. My dad is always like, ‘You’re not
doing anything, so you can just do this, right?’ He’s not a person who’s like—who bullies
or something—he’s a very good person, but then that automatically happens. The extra
work that will be in the family, he’s always going to feel like, ‘You’re not doing
anything, I’m the bread-earner, you can just take it up.’ But that hurts her in other ways. I
saw that happening over the years and now I know for a fact she would have been in a far
better mental state if she kept her job.

When asked what specifically motivated her mom to finally quit her job, since she had stayed
employed for Meher’s first two years of life, Meher, becoming agitated, replied, “I know exactly
what happened because I kept asking her the question, ‘Why did you leave it for me?’”

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It was a variety of factors that motivated Meher’s mother to quit. People in the
community freely offered their unhappy opinions about her choices; her husband had an
increasingly difficult commute to the city where he worked; and Meher’s grandfather, whom her
mother trusted and respected more than anyone else, told her, “Maybe you should reconsider.
She needs someone. Your daughter needs someone to be there.” What Meher focused on most,
however, is the part she unwittingly played in pushing her mother out of her career.
“As a kid, I used to actually cry a lot when both of them would go to the office. I would
stand by the window the whole day. Not want to eat anything. I used to pull that off, which
angers me now.” Then, Meher looked down at the table and said, only to herself, “Why did I do
that?” She looked up at me and for the first time in the interview, her eyes were a little bit sad.
“Why did I?” she said again, and then sighed, “But I did that.”
As frustrated as Meher was with the circumstances that drove her mom out of the
workforce, there is no doubt that Meher’s mother being home had a positive impact. Meher
struggled in school when she was young, and her dad had no patience for helping her with
homework; her mom would sit with her for hours and help her learn. While Meher had a natural
inclination for the visual arts and loved to draw, she hated science and math. Her mom bridged
the gap between Meher’s interests and those STEM subjects that form the backbone of the Indian
educational system by teaching Meher her first programming language—LOGO—when she was
around eight years old. LOGO is unique because its purpose is to use coding language to enable
the user to draw shapes on a computer: a perfect programming language for an artistic child.
“After that,” she said, “I was biased towards computer science.” Meher paused, and then smiled.
“I'm very much grateful to my mom. Whatever I am, wherever I am, whatever thought process I
have, or understanding I have is because of everything she taught me.”

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Meher’s story contains themes that are common with many of the women in this study.
First, parents, especially mothers, sacrificed many things either so they could succeed or so their
daughters could succeed, and the daughters, in turn, acknowledge those sacrifices. Only the
women described the trials endured or the sacrifices made by their parents as motivating or
enabling them to succeed. Second, parental support from a young age was fundamental to these
women’s pursuit of careers in computer science. Though the men who were interviewed all
spoke of their families as being very supportive of their careers, only the women described this
support as pivotal to their success. Parental support manifested as unconditional love, imagining
daughters as sons, and heavy-handed parental control. This sacrifice and support were often
contrasted against India’s misogynistic culture, with participants noting how grateful they were
that their parents were not like other Indian parents. Parental support and parental sacrifice are
two of the ways that, while growing up, an Indian computer programmer’s experience differs
based on gender.
Her Sacrifice, My Success
The stories of Bimala (F) and her mother, Aparna, best capture the depth of sacrifice that
mothers often made and the impact those sacrifices had on their daughters’ successes. Despite
never working outside the home, Aparna has a law degree. She was able to earn this degree
because she had something rare: a male relative who believed in her education. Bimala’s great-
uncle was Aparna’s constant advocate. When Aparna finished 10th grade, her father told her it
was time to get married, but her uncle convinced him to wait until she had finished high school.
After high school, Aparna and her uncle talked his brother into letting her complete an
undergraduate degree. When Bimala’s mother got her bachelor’s degree and began hinting about
perhaps getting more education, Bimala’s grandfather became angry and insisted she get

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married, but Aparna and her uncle begged him to let her attend law school, and they promised
that as soon as she was finished, she would stop her education and get married. With her uncle’s
help, Aparna could attend law school and obtain her degree; she married within a couple of
months of her graduation. Since it was considered unattractive for a woman to be more educated
than her suitor, Bimala’s grandparents lied to prospective suitors about Aparna’s education level,
saying she had a bachelor’s degree. It was only after she was married that Bimala’s mother
revealed her law degree to her in-laws. Aparna was so passionate about learning that she did all
this knowing full well that she would never be allowed to work outside the home after she was
married. The intrinsic value of education to Bimala’s mother is clear because of what she fought
for in her teens and twenties.
Aparna has been the impetus pushing Bimala forward at pivotal moments in her
schooling and her career, even when other guiding figures in her life told her to quit. Bimala’s
mother was the reason Bimala switched from an all-girls school with a low quality of education
to a much higher quality co-ed school. Aparna was right to invest in her daughter’s education;
Bimala was accepted for her undergraduate degree at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology
(IITs), the most prestigious Indian centers for higher learning. Unfortunately for Bimala, the
institute was on the other side of India, and her family thought it was unsafe for a young woman
to be so far from home. She was also accepted to a National Institute of Technology (NIT),
which are the universities second only to IITs. The NIT was in Bhopal, two hours away from her
hometown, and this distance was also considered unacceptable to Bimala’s extended family, who
said she should attend a lower ranked local university instead, so she could continue to live at
home. I struggled to understand her family’s logic, until Bimala said, “My entire family, except
my mom, everybody, all the relatives, everybody is against girls' education.” However, because

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her mother thought going to the NIT would give Bimala the best odds of success, she fought all
her in-laws to ensure that Bimala would attend. Aparna could not convince the family to let
Bimala attend the IIT on the other side of India, but she did convince them to let her attend NIT,
Bhopal.
When Bimala graduated with a bachelor’s degree from this high-ranking school, she was
unsure of what career path she should pursue and ended up unemployed, sitting around her house
“for a few months thinking of what needs to be done.” Her father eventually lost patience and
told her, “Okay, education is complete. Get married.” Her mother, on the other hand, told her,
“Go do a job. Shut up and go. Otherwise you’ll get married.” Bimala applied for a job. It was not
a perfect fit, not something she would have pursued had her mom not encouraged her, but, “It
was something new that I hadn’t explored so I was open to it.” She got the job and decided to put
off getting married.
The job was based in Mumbai, a city even further from her hometown than the NIT.
Bimala explains,
My mom fought to first send me to Bhopal, then when I got the job in Mumbai, it was a
clear “No!” from everybody, including my grandparents, and my mom can’t argue with
her father-in-law. That’s a very wrong thing to do in India.

But Bimala’s mother fought anyway; Aparna told her in-laws, “No, I want her [Bimala] to do a
job, to be independent. That’s safety for her future.” Bimala’s mom succeeded in sending her to
Mumbai but paid a price. Bimala explains, “My mom, she was the ideal daughter-in-law till
then…. She lost that ideal daughter-in-law tag.”
After a few years at her job in Mumbai, Bimala had settled into her role at the company,
and her family again became eager for her to marry. Bimala, however, had become complacent
in her job and desired a new challenge. Her mom realized that the best way for Bimala’s career

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to move forward was for her to attend a prestigious master’s program in the United States.
Bhopal had been a skirmish, Mumbai was a battle, but getting Bimala’s family to agree to allow
her to attend university in the United States was a war. With each new move, safety had been a
concern—a young woman, alone, in cities far from home, was too much of a liability—but
allowing her to travel to an entirely different continent was quite literally unheard of in her
family. Even Bimala herself did not want to go to the US; she was intimidated and not sure if it
would be worth the cost. Yet again, Bimala’s mother was her lone advocate in a house full of in-
laws all convinced they knew what was best for Bimala; Aparna pitted herself against her
community, her own husband, and even Bimala. “She's fighting for it even though I'm telling
her, ‘No, I don't want to do it. No, I don't want to go.’ But she's like, ‘This is right for you. You'll
thank me later. Go.’” In a tone of faint amazement, Bimala continued, “She's fighting with
everyone for me and she's fighting with me also for me.” Bimala’s mom was right; she did thank
her later.
Other women reported similar parental histories where mothers struggled to get an
education or to work outside the home. Tanvi (F) said that both her parents placed a priority on
education, but that it has always been particularly important to her mother because she was
unable to finish high school. Like most of the mothers in this study, Vansha’s (F) mother is a
stay-at-home mom. Vansha believed this has impacted her approach to Vansha’s career. She
said, “I think because she was at home, she felt like she was left out compared to her friends….
Whatever she couldn’t [do], she wants me to do it. She’ll be living that life through me.” Where
Vansha’s mother faced barriers, Vansha will face opportunities.
She’s been always supportive of every decision of mine, even if my dad feels sometimes
like, “We should not send our daughter so far away,” my mom was like, “No, if it’s good
for her career, then we should do it.”

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Vansha’s mother wants more for her daughter than what she had, and this motivates her to push
back and speak out against her husband when he tries to limit Vansha’s options.
Unconditional Love
Participants’ belief in their parents’ unconditional love gave them confidence to take
risks, secure in the knowledge that their families would be there to support them, regardless of
the outcomes of their endeavors. Meher (F) described her relationship with her parents and
extended family as ultimately supportive, regardless of their differing personal beliefs.
So, for my family… even if they are orthodox, for them, love and sustaining the
relationship comes before those things, I think. That's what I have felt all these 25 years.
If it's a fight of being orthodox or losing me, I think they'll choose me over it.

When Parul (F) was in the 5th grade, she and her parents met with her teacher to discuss
her performance. He was upset with her behavior in his class.
Parul: My teacher was like, ‘You should transfer her to an all-boys school or something.
She has a very different kind of personality. I just feel that a girl shouldn’t be this way.’
Interviewer: What did your parents say?
Parul: They were like, ‘I know how my child is.’
Interviewer: That's a very neutral statement. ‘I know. I know how they are. That's just
how they are.’ And they didn't, they obviously didn't ask you to change.
Parul: No, they know how I am.
A few years after this parent-teacher conference, Parul’s parents began pushing her towards the
field of computer science, even though she was intimidated and felt that she was not good with
computers. They kept saying, “Take up computer science, [and] what will happen, at max?
You’ll fail. Don’t worry about those things. You just take it up.” Yashica (F) also felt
apprehensive about pursuing computer science in the United States, but she said,
They [her parents] were the ones who pushed me to come here. Because I wasn't very
keen on coming out… because my parents were alone and I'm a single child. So, I was
quite apprehensive about it, but my dad was like, “It's okay. You can just go and always
come back.”

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While Yashica’s parents made it clear to her that her highest priority should be her own
education rather than caring for her parents’ needs, Parul’s close relationship with her parents
gave her the courage to face those difficult challenges the field presented without fear of failure.
Parul explained, “When I have them having my back then that releases that pressure and stress
automatically. That whatever happens I’ll fall back to them.” Parul and Yashica are free to
achieve great things, secure in a lifetime of experiential knowledge that their parents will
unconditionally love and support them.
Waida’s (F) father was at first reluctant to support her continued education. Waida
describes the turning point where he began to support her career goals more fully.
I just told him, “Look Dad, I want to do this…. I am not born just to get married and have
children. I will have that, for sure, but that is not my priority. That can be priority for a
girl who belongs to, some, you know, some thirty-years-back time, but not for me.” So I
told him, “Look, I was born once, I will live once, so I want to make it big.” I don't know
how he understood, but from the next day on, he was the one encouraging me all the
time. “You should go. You should go. You should go.”
Waida’s father demonstrated to her then that his first concern was not family reputation or even
his own vision for her life, but instead supporting her in her efforts to achieve the life she
imagined for herself. Consistently, the women of this study reported that their parents were their
strongest advocates in their pursuit of education and a career.
“My Daughters—They are My Sons”
Several women described themselves as being more like a boy than a girl, or as being
raised like a son instead of a daughter. This was seen by them as very positive because it gave
them greater access to educational resources. Udyati (F) laughingly said, “There's a
misconception in India that girls need not study… and me and my sister, both of us are girls, and

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my dad had no problem with that [his daughters studying]. They raised me as a boy.” Likewise,
Harita (F) said,
My parents are incredibly supportive. They have two daughters. Back in India, back in
Asia, we have this orthodox mentality, like women are not supposed to...be in STEM and
blah blah blah, but my parents are like, “No! Why should my daughters—they are my
sons—why shouldn’t they learn and why shouldn’t they get a chance to realize their
dreams?”

These quotes obliquely reflect existing research which notes Indians’ preference for sons rather
than daughters. Rather than simply stating that parents valued these women and invested in their
education, the participants consistently presented a daughter’s worth in the context of a son’s
worth; treatment of the male child was used as the ultimate standard for parental love and
support.
Participants were also thankful for this gender-bender because it enabled them to embrace
traditionally masculine communicative and lifestyle traits that have proven valuable to their
success. Meher (F) described her upbringing as one which emphasized establishing a career first
and focusing on marriage second—an attitude that is unique to males in India. “I have always
treated myself growing up as a guy… I have to earn before I get married…. That has always
been my thought process and my mom has always increased it hugely.”
Waida (F) said,
My upbringing was not like a girl…. I was always a tomboy. I am still a tomboy. I use
most of the language, uh syntaxes, which are being used by the guys. I don't talk like a
girl. So, I was raised like a boy. I was never considered a girl in my family. All the things
my brother used to do, I used to do. I used to lift heavy weights and all.... I was involved
in my father's business since I was in 7th standard.... Girls are supposed to be delicate.
But my father and luckily also my grandfather, they both never discriminated between
my brother, my sister, and me.... I am a boy inside of a girl.

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When participants were encouraged to embrace masculine traits and were treated by their parents
as having the same value as sons, their education and career became more central to their lives,
enabling their success as computer programmers.
Control
Indian parents have a heavy-handed approach to child-rearing, and this is compounded by
the fact that most Indian children will not move out of their parents’ houses until they are
married. This parent-child dynamic impacts the sense of independence that young Indian women
feel in their early twenties. Myra (F) explained, “When you’re 18, you cannot leave everything
behind… you do not have that much guts in you and you’re not independent. Especially in India,
you’re not independent at 18 at all.” Myra was interested in a more male-dominated field,
considered in India to be less appropriate for women, but she chose computer science instead, in
part because her parents pushed her toward this career: “I’m not saying that I didn’t have the
brains, but I was not much of a risk-taker at the time. So that is why I chose this [career].” Some
participants, such as Bimala (F), Tanvi (F), and Parul (F), described this control as beneficial for
them.
Bimala negatively described the heavy restrictions on her when she was a teenager and
said she remembered thinking, “It’s my life. Let me live. Who are you to decide for me?” but
noted, “That is not how it works in India. They [parents] are the ones who’ll decide. And
honestly, I feel that if they would have given me freedom then, I wouldn't have grown this
much.” Tanvi, who loves computer science and is happy to have it as a career, described how she
ended up in the field.
Interviewer: Why did you choose to go into computer science?
Tanvi: It's what—to be honest—it's not my decision.
Interviewer: Your brother had already done that, right? He did the same thing?

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Tanvi: He did electronics and communication....
Interviewer: Did they [Tanvi’s parents] pick for him too?
Tanvi: No.

Likewise, Parul’s parents stepped in to guide her career in what Parul described as “an
intervention” where they told her, “you need to be in computer science.” Parul continued,
“Whenever I tell the story to any of my friends it is so difficult for them to relate because parents
are not that strong a backbone for everyone. Or their families are not supportive at all.” While
parents dictating careers to adult children may seem overbearing, the participants saw this heavy
parental guidance as reasonable, or something to be grateful for. Parul finished talking about her
parents by saying, “I just feel so blessed and so lucky. Had it not been for them I wouldn't have
come so far.” Parental support in the form of parental control enabled success for these women
by overriding their own inhibitions and even their personal desires in a way that proved
beneficial.
Grateful for What I’ve Got
Whatever hardships the female participants faced, those trials were contrasted against the
more severe hardships women of India face every day. Parental support was often contrasted
against the innate sexism of Indian cultural beliefs and values. Having supportive parents became
something to be even more grateful for because it was clear to the women that a high level of
support for girls’ education was rare. Tanvi (F) said, “Getting studies was itself because of my
parents. If they hadn't chosen to educate me no one is going to ask. It was their decision.”
Oeshi’s (F) parents are both professors and she said, “They want me to study as much as I can,
because – I think they understand the importance of education.” In stark contrast to their
valuation of Oeshi’s education is a professor at their university who, when asked whether Oeshi
should travel to the United States for a master’s degree, responded with genuine bewilderment,

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saying, “But why do you want to waste money on your girl’s education? Instead you can just
marry her off.” Oeshi said that this sentiment is not uncommon and hearing these comments has
an impact on one’s self-perception. “When you grow up in this culture, and you see people de-
motivating you, [then] you know education is not for you.” If Oeshi’s parents had not held values
directly contradicting those present in India, Oeshi would have been unable to attend higher
education of any kind.
Waida (F) described the barriers to education another way, saying,
Fortunately, I have an educated father, because it's very difficult to make somebody
understand your situation who is not on the same level. I have seen my friends struggling,
whose parents are just farmers, you know, less educated, because they don't
understand…. Generally, if you don't have family support, it's very tough.

Harita (F) said about her parents, “They have always had that thing in them, since they were
children, like, ‘I wanna learn, I wanna educated myself.’” This devotion to education enabled
them to see the value in Harita’s education, regardless of her gender. In contrast to this, Harita
told me about a friend she knew in undergraduate who once lamented to her, “You know what,
Harita, I want to go to the US and learn this technology too, but my parents, my community
doesn’t support it at all. Girls aren’t meant to go abroad and take education.” Harita’s friend is
from an Indian village where Harita says the mindset around women’s education is, “What will
you do? Getting a degree… we [the parents] are going to invest so much and what’s going to be
the outcome?” So now, Harita’s friend, “She’s back in India, working.”
The female participants’ childhood experiences profoundly impacted their success and
happiness. Examining their notable childhood memories provides insight into the important role
of parents as mentors, cheerleaders, commanding officers, and advocates. Without parents such
as these, who shielding their daughters from the outside world whenever they could and fought

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back against this world when they could not, it is unlikely that any of the female participants
would be obtaining a master’s education in the United States or in India.
Labor of Love

Tensions between an education, a career, and a marriage are central factors impeding a
woman’s ability to succeed as a computer programmer in India. Educational and career
compromises made on behalf of marriages have a magnified negative impact on a female
individual’s likelihood of success. In contrast, virtually no shifts in behavior are required of
Indian men. Because gender-based marital norms have not modernized at the same rate as the
technological and infrastructural parts of India, career-women such as those in this study find
themselves trying to straddle two worlds—one old and one new—in the hopes that they can
create a marriage that fulfills their desire for a family while also fueling their drive to succeed in
the workplace.
Not If but When
The first thing to understand about marriage in India is that every young person is
expected to marry. Upon a child’s birth, parents save as aggressively for a future wedding
ceremony as they do for an education. Marriage, like education, is of vital importance for both
men and women. Joining together with a spouse and creating a family to share one’s life with is
a fundamental part of being human. As Hitesh (M) said, “Every Indian family would be bummed
if you didn’t get married…. They feel that it [marriage] is the progression of life…. They’ve
never known any other kind of living.” Virtually every person in this study was married or
planning to be married in the next five to 10 years; participants consistently knew at what age
they were expected to be married. Only one woman reported that it was unlikely she would ever
marry, and this decision was something she and her parents had worked through together.

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The women interviewed were all psychologically preparing for the inevitability of
marriage and the impact this would have on their lives. These women had parents who were
extremely supportive of their educations and thus tended to be willing to postpone marriage until
studies were complete. Part of why parents were so supportive of education is that they saw it to
ensure their daughters’ safety and security.
Interviewer: Eventually [you’ll] get married, but there's no rush, is that-
Jhalak (F): Yeah, there's no rush. Like I told you, people in my state and nearby states are
more into education… [They believe that] you should stand on your own feet, and one
day if your husband just leaves you, you are supposed to be taking care of yourself.

Tanvi (F): I actually told them (my parents), if you want to spend some amount on my
marriage, it's just for one day…. All the money they have saved in their entire life
working so hard, they spend on one day so I told them, “If you are planning to spend the
money on my marriage, please spend it on my education so that I at least have a degree.”
Interviewer: So you have something out of it.
Tanvi: Yeah. This degree, it will support me whether they are with me or not. Whether
my husband wants to help me or not, this degree will help me.
Interviewer: So, the dowry originally was to help the woman be self-sufficient in a
marriage and you're arguing, “A degree helps me be self-sufficient now.”
Tanvi: Yeah, I told them, “If you want to spend some amount on my marriage, please just
spend it on my education.”

Like Tanvi, Aditi (F) specifically requested that all the money her parents had saved up for her
wedding be re-routed to fund her graduate education. Yashica (F) also tried Aditi’s tactic but her
parents made her take out a loan rather than dip into the marriage fund.
Several women, such as Deepa (F), reported using their graduate education to stall on
marriage, since no one would expect them to get married in the middle of their master’s degrees.
Those women who had not intended to use a graduate education as a delaying tactic still
frequently reported a sense of relief to be away from all the familial and community pressure to
marry. Several female participants noted, with chagrin, that the pressure to marry before a certain

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‘cut-off’ age (the cut-off age varies across castes and clans) has a particularly frenetic quality
when directed toward women. Deepa’s cut-off age had already passed by the time she sat down
for her interview. She explained,
My parents didn't know that I had another semester left because I didn't tell them. So,
when I got back home this time, they were sort of pressuring me that we should start
looking for a guy…. I was like, “Okay, we'll deal with this later.” I gave some excuses. I
told them that I have still one semester to go. I'm not starting my job yet, so let me start
my job, let me achieve what I want to first, and then maybe we can think about it.

Males reported the same essentiality to marriage but did not feel the same sense of urgency;
however, for young Indians of either gender, marriage is not a matter of if, but of when.
The Married Man, the Married Woman
What is necessary to be a good husband in India is simple. The primary expectations for
an Indian man entering marriage are that he is able to conceive children (unstated, untested, but
required and if unfulfilled, grounds for divorce) and that he is able to provide financially for his
family. As several women explained, the most significant consideration for arranged marriages
other than of caste is the man’s earning potential.
Interviewer: The man has the responsibility for providing for the family. And that comes
into play with marriage, right? Earning potential is part of the calculation?
Krishna (F): Yup. When people marry, parents are concerned about, “Is my daughter
marrying a guy who's settled enough? Does he have a good job?” They really don't know
if I'm going to continue working, so they just want to make sure that he's good enough.
He doesn't have to be really rich. Probably makes enough to feed a family.

Meher (F): If you hear two people talking, one guy and one girl, the guy – guys often say,
“Hey, you have the option to marry! Who's going to marry me if I don't have a good pay
[salary]?” Because that's a big part of picking a husband is that they provide for the
family.

Oeshi (F): When you marry… parents find people who they think are good enough to
take care of their daughters. So, they should have money for the future, and they should
have either a stable job or their family should be super rich so that they can take care of

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their daughter…. They won't marry her to a person who is not good enough to earn
something.

Times have changed very rapidly in India but a man’s responsibilities in marriage have remained
stubbornly fixed. There are a lot of marital double-standards that result from this lopsided
modernization. As Chandani (F) says, “Everyone in India is progressing towards, you know,
opening their mind so that even girls can work and even the men need to start doing more of
household work, but we're not quite there yet.” As a result, for an already employed Indian man,
marriage could theoretically result in no changes to his day-to-day life. He would remain in his
parents’ house, continue working at his job, continue to rely on the women in his life to cook for
him, and continue to be beholden only to himself and his parents; when his children are born he
will again experience minimal upheaval, taking on virtually no share of child-rearing
responsibilities. This is not an Indian man who would be looked down upon by his community;
this is a decent married man.
For a woman it is a virtual impossibility to get married without experiencing drastic shifts
in day-to-day life. Once married, she will move away from her family home to wherever her
husband lives. Because of the selective nature of arranged marriages, often the only marriageable
candidates live far away, and so it is unlikely that a woman will end up paired with someone
from nearby. As Myra (F) explained, if a woman’s future husband is employed overseas, she will
be expected to move abroad.
Myra: I mean of course I'm not saying that supportive males are not out there, but if a
male has to move, it's understood that the girl would also have to move around with him.
Interviewer: Wherever he goes, she'll go too?
Myra: Yeah, for example… it is unusual for a girl like me, as a non-resident alien in the
United States, [to] marry a guy based in India and… have him come with me to where I
am.

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Interviewer: Would his family feel sort of like he was being a little mistreated? That he
would have to uproot his whole life to come to you?
Myra: It's separating him from his parents.
Interviewer: And that's very bad.
Myra: (nodding) “You are doing that, my daughter-in-law.”
Interviewer: That's a great relationship with your mother-in-law. “You're separating my
son from me.”
Myra: Yeah. But that is being done to girls around the world. Like, you're doing that to
every girl. She's being separated from her parents after marriage. So, isn't that a valid
thing? If you're fine with that, if you're fine with separating me from my parents, then
why shouldn't your son be separated from you?

Women like Myra recognize the injustice of the situation but have no real recourse to fight
against it.
When this new bride arrives in her new home, she will need to find a way to integrate her
ways of being with those of her new family. If she did not enter the marriage with significant
financial savings or a large dowry, she becomes a burden on her husband and his parents, since
all her purchases deplete her new family’s resources. Though this dependent relationship is
ideally a supportive one, where the daughter-in-law’s expenses are undifferentiated from the
expenses of the rest of the household, there is no guarantee that even the best dynamic will
remain so forever. As Zuri (F) pointed out, “If you are independent, then it's equal. If you are not
independent and if you are depending on someone, you are always a burden. It’s not love there, I
think.” This new wife will now be beholden to both her husband and his parents via finances.
She will also likely be required to receive approval from her in-laws before making any
significant life decisions, including whether she can continue to work outside the home. The first
assumption concerning employment is that if a woman must move for the marriage and she is
currently employed, she will quit her job. Second, it is not uncommon for in-laws to consider it
inappropriate for a woman to work outside the home as a matter of tradition.

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Because of companies’ fears that women will quit work as soon as they get married or get
pregnant, hiring and promotion becomes even more difficult to navigate for the young career
woman. Omaja (F), who eventually served as a team lead at a start-up, said she felt she was
treated no differently because of her gender and that her leadership was respected rather than
resented. However, she noted that in more established companies, it would have been more
difficult for her to get a promotion. In big corporations, “All the upper management will be
mainly men.” A female employee would need to put in more work to achieve the same outcome
as a male employee. “You need to put an extra effort in, then you’ll get that promotion. Men,
with much less effort, they’ll get the promotions.”
Interviewer: If the boss is going to be worried that you’re just going to quit, can you tell
them, “I plan to work after I am married, after I have kids?”
Omaja: Even if we tell them, they don’t believe us. They don’t believe us until we
actually do [what we claimed].
Interviewer: But why? Why don’t they trust you?
Omaja: After we get married, the mother-in-law in the family will tell us not to work, not
to go out. She puts all these conditions on us. We have to dress appropriately, wear only
the custom dresses, the traditional dresses, not wear Western jeans. They tell us not to
work. Even if we work, we have to come home by 6:00. All these conditions they put on
us, so based on all that, we quit working.
Interviewer: Because, essentially, even if the woman plans on working, if the mother-in-
law or father-in-law says differently…
Omaja: Yeah. Exactly.

While discussing her eventual marriage, Deepa (F) demonstrated the tension she feels
around this necessary deference to in-laws.
Deepa: My parents are planning to marry me to someone, but I am not planning to get
married real soon, to be frank. Because, I have high aspirations for my career. So...
Interviewer: And that gets harder once you're married?
Deepa: I feel yes…. To do marriage right… there are multiple things. You have to meet
your relatives, you have to listen to your in-laws. What if they don't want me to pursue
my job?

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Interviewer: And you're expected to honor what they would want for you?
Deepa: Somewhere down the line I am, I think. But I don't want to face that so soon.
Although, I know I am so—what should I say—stubborn, that I won't leave my job, no
matter what. I leave my husband, but not my job because I have worked hard to reach
here. And I've struggled all my life to get what I have right now. It’s not been easy for
me. The journey was not easy, so I'm not going to let it go so easily.

Even if the in-laws are less traditional, they might see a new bride’s employment as a poor
reflection on their family, since it implies that her husband is unable to sufficiently meet their
financial needs. This work prohibition from in-laws is something many of the female participants
had struggled with. Jhalak (F) and Tanvi (F) both explained why they are determined to keep
working after marriage.
Interviewer: So, no matter what, you get married in India, you're still planning on
working?
Jhalak: Nowadays, all my female friends, we are all committed to working and
developing our own career because there's no difference between me and a boy right
now. We all are learning at the same pace. Maybe I am even going further, more than
him, than his career. Why should I stop?
Interviewer: And your parents are fully in support of that?
Jhalak: Yeah. My parents are fully supporting that.

Tanvi: What I feel is that both [husband and wife] can go to work, both can have their
own career options, both can take care of the family together. That's a good life.
Compared to one person staying at home. Staying at home is not a bad thing but if you
are staying at home whom will you interact with? Only your kids and your husband. This
world is so big, right? You can interact with others also.

Many women are expected to stop their educations once they are married, and it is hard
to be certain in advance what kind of stance in-laws will take on the issue. While talking about
female mentors who helped her at her job, Raveena (F) off-handedly mentioned this problematic
marital tradition.
Interviewer: As for the female mentors you found helpful, were they suggesting that you
get a master's degree or was that just something you came up with on your own?

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Raveena: That was my own. They all were pretty supportive… They asked me not to get
married.
Interviewer: They asked you not to get married?
Raveena: Yeah, they did.
Interviewer: Why?
Raveena: They seem to think, with reason, that you cannot really pursue a master’s after
you get married.
Interviewer: People from your generation don't see it like that? Your friends, as they get
married, will keep working?
Raveena: Yeah. Yeah.

A woman, then, is unable to self-finance her own higher degree while she is unmarried because
of the prohibitive cost and then must gamble being forbidden from seeking a higher degree once
she is married. Reflected in this dialogue is the massive shift in mindsets between Raveena’s
parents’ generation and her own. There are two different sets of marital expectations that these
young women must grapple with to have both a successful marriage and a successful career.
The marital expectations continue past the logistics and into the day-to-day tasks of
marriage. When this now-married Indian woman lived at home, her mother cooked for her; now
the cooking is her responsibility and something she is supposed to be good at. Raveena (F) noted
that she had been eating very poorly since arriving in the United States because she deliberately
avoided learning to cook when she was growing up, as it was a task she negatively associated
with women’s confinement in the home and subservience to men. A male participant listed ‘good
cook’ as one of just a handful of significant desirable traits that his parents and other Indian
parents would look for in a spouse for their son. Unprompted, Meher (F) mentioned the wife
cooking as one of the markers of an Indian marriage.
In USA, Euro, people are very independent… even in families, I've seen that. Even the
guys cook, and like, it's expected of them, like both are equal in everything. But back in
India, if a guy gets in the kitchen, the mother-in-law is going to give an eye to the

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daughter-in-law. Like, “What are you doing? Why is my son getting into the kitchen
suddenly?” So, there's that imbalance there.

Once she has children, child-rearing will be entirely the wife’s domain, unless her in-laws decide
to help her out by babysitting. If she can remain employed after marriage, her job will be
expected to come second to her motherly responsibilities.
Interviewer: I know there's been huge changes in Indian culture and everything in the last
30 years or so, but is it just still a cultural assumption that a man would never take care of
kids?
Raveena (F): It is, unfortunately. It’s very, very sad. But it is…. When women come out
to work… they do both roles. That's the problem. When you say both the man and the
woman work in a household, it means that the woman is doing all of the work and raising
the child. This is changing right about now, but not fast enough.
Interviewer: In your household when you get married and have kids, I'm guessing you’re
going to have a different arrangement than that? That's just something you'll work out
with your husband in advance?
Raveena: Yeah.

With a tone of defiance, Ishita (F) explains her child-rearing plans.
Interviewer: So if you eventually get married, are you planning on keeping working
throughout your life?
Ishita: Yes.
Interviewer: Even when you have kids?
Ishita: Yeah… [if you didn’t work] you would be taking care of your kids, but you have
an individual life of your own as well. If you have studied all your life, if you are
passionate about something, I don't feel that your marriage or kids should stop you from
doing that. Otherwise, you... I don't... later on in my life I don't want to have that guilt
[thinking], “Okay I should have worked, I lost out on so many opportunities.” I don't
want to have that guilt later on in. Why have it?... You get only one life. If you want to do
something and you are passionate about it, why not do it?

The newlywed’s husband and in-laws will expect the child-first-career-second order of
priorities, as well as her employers, who are less likely to hire, invest resources in, or promote a
newly married woman, since they predict that because of her split responsibilities, she will do

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low-quality work and perhaps quit after a couple of years once she becomes pregnant. Raveena
(F) said,
At least in my workspace… they seem to think that once you get married, you
immediately have children and you won’t be able to work as much. They hesitate in
taking people who are about to get married or recently married. That’s something that
men don’t ever, ever face.

Krishna (F) says,
The male partner works, and the female usually doesn't. And even if she does, she does
only with her own personal interest because she's got everything at home too. The
mentality is, “Okay, you got to still do the housework, no matter what.” If you want to
work, it's up to you, it's your time. But you still got to do the housework, take care of the
kids and stuff.

Aditi’s (F) sister-in-law switched jobs before she got married because she knew how difficult it
would be for her to get hired anywhere after she was married. As Aditi (F) said, the result of
these factors is that in India, “a woman’s career is treated like a hobby.” Shravya (F) was
encouraged by the many proactive policies she witnessed at her company, all designed to protect
and assist women. “I saw that men and women can be in the same position in the office.” Despite
all those supportive policies, however, all the women she knew had stopped working after their
marriages. Regardless of the work environment, “If you don’t have a supportive partner, usually
you don’t work after [marriage].”
One can see this attitude reflected in the opinions of many of the men and a few of the
women in this study.
Interviewer: When you are married, will your wife still work?
Manthan (M): If she wants to.
Interviewer: If she wants to?
Manthan: Or, yeah, I would prefer if she works because you get good perspective and
you can give back to your society, community or your children. Just for perspective.

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Interviewer: Why do you think that there are less women going into computer
programming than men in India?
Ishita (F): In some households, people do get married very early on. Many of my
classmates are already married and after marriage they choose not to work. If they're
married to businessmen or something, it's like they would just stop working because they
feel that, what is the need? There is already money coming in the house so there's no
need for them to work. Whereas, that will never happen with a man. If he is married to a
businesswoman, he will never think, “I should stay at home” or in some cases the guy's
family wouldn't be okay with that.

Pahal (F): I think most of the women who are pursuing computer science do not end up
doing a job for the long term. They might do it for a couple of years and then they get
married. But the things have changed and I want things to change more.

Manthan values women’s employment not because it provides income for the family or because
it fulfills his future wife’s dreams, but because it can provide a broader and more educated
perspective. Ishita claims many women also see employment as pointless, if the man has a good
paying job. It is for all these reasons that the women of this study report having carefully
considered the impact marriage will have on her career, whereas no man in the study reported
similar concerns.
A modern Indian woman’s role in marriage is far more complicated than a man’s role.
Where twenty or thirty years ago, traits like attractiveness and homemaking were of central
importance, today a woman’s education level is more significant. Unfortunately, the traits of
yesterday have merged with ideal traits of a more modern Indian woman, creating a long and
often internally conflicted list of requirements to be a good wife. These double standards are
variants on a theme: Indian women are now encouraged to adopt traditionally masculine skills,
whereas men are not expected to adopt traditionally feminine skills.
Throughout their life spans, Indian women experience a different reality than the one men
experience. This chapter has demonstrated some of the impactful experiences participants

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described concerning gender. These experiences pertained to reputation, safety, childhood
experiences, and marriage. Looking at the big picture, some themes emerge. Women’s behaviors
are heavily scrutinized and critiqued in every facet of life, creating in them a sense of being
continually surveilled. They find themselves standing in for traditional India, even as they try to
drag their country forward into a less misogynistic future. Their bodies are continually in danger,
and by simply having bodies that can be ‘violated’ they are forced to bear the burden of family
reputation embedded in their physical forms. Marriage is a heavy burden for women, much more
than for men, and women’s identity is wrapped up in her ability to be a good homemaker. To
navigate life in India as a middle-class woman is to craft a pleasing persona for others to see; as
the next chapter discusses, to succeed in the workforce as an Indian woman is to retain a strong
sense of one’s own identity, even as one wears the mask.

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Chapter 5: Results Concerning Workplace Sexism and Women Who Program
While Chapter 4 discussed the impact of women’s backgrounds on their development,
Chapter 5 delves into the experiences of women in their workplaces. First, in Gender Ratios, it
briefly presents a breakdown of gender representation in participants’ schools and workplaces. It
then explores the widely varying responses women provided when asked if they had experienced
or witnessed sexism in the workplace. These responses provide a rich contrast to the more
limited responses men were able to provide about gender inequality in the workplace.
Gender Ratios

The most straightforward measurement of equality in a school or workplace is simple
numbers—the ratio of women to men. Participants reported experiencing unequal gender ratios
both in college and at jobs and internships. Several study participants defended the lower number
of women in tech; for example, two different women claimed that fewer women were going into
computer science because there are literally fewer women in the world than men, which is
technically a true statement, but cannot possibly account for the drastically lower proportion of
women in the IT workplace.
On average, only 35% of undergraduate cohorts were composed of women, 29% of
fellow employees at jobs and internships were women, and 23% of members of teams at jobs or
internships were women. The results were identical when split by gender of the study participant.
These results were calculated from limited data as much of the participant data on this topic were
not collected. Results concerning undergraduate cohorts were collected from 36 participants;
results concerning jobs and internships were collected from 28 participants; results concerning
teams were collected from 18 participants. Regardless, these results indicate deep gender

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imbalances at school and in work; this aligns with existing research from both the United States
and India.
Indian Women’s Perceptions of Sexism

“They doubt your skills in India. Even if you're good enough.
They'll be like, ‘Oh, but you’re a girl.’
In India, people will be like, ‘Oh, we'll see.’
You'll have to prove yourself at every point.
And boys don't have to prove themselves,
at any point.”
-Oeshi (F)

Women reported a diversity of experiences in school and the workplace, some diverging
widely from others. While most women reported facing some form of sexism or sexual
harassment in these environments, a significant minority reported that they had only experienced
equality between men and women in their careers. For those who did experience sexism, their
notable experiences fell into three categories: assumptions of male superiority, poor
representations, and safety restrictions. Women also noted that no matter how they are treated in
professional settings—for better or worse—they are never truly treated like men, or like the
‘normal’ or standard person.
Interviewer: So, you've worked, you've been in three different regions of India. Do you
feel that gender has impacted your work experience in any way?
Ishita (F): No, not really. In fact, in the last company that I worked in, I was the only girl
in the team, so I was always pampered. I sort of feel, it is like if, due to the gender issues
there are laws and all these different companies have regulations. So, I feel that people
make it a point that they treat a female with respect.

Ishita and several other participants described being treated better because they were women.
They were all grateful for the extra support they received but understood that there was never an
option for them to be treated like their male colleagues.
Experiences of Equality

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A substantial minority of women reported experiencing equality in the workplace and at
school. Bimala, Chandani, Farisha, Jhalak, Lakshmi, Meher, Myra, Pahal, Parul, Vansha, Yahvi,
Yashica, and Zarna all reported experiencing no sexism in the workplace. Parul, for instance,
said she always felt safe and comfortable with the people she worked with, while other women
addressed issues of respect.
Farisha: I think the ratio of women to men is, compared to other fields like mechanical or
electrical engineering, is good; it's probably one of the best in India. And in my
experience, I was not treated differently in my college or in my internships or job. Yes, I
had a pretty positive experience overall.

Zarna: I just feel in India if you are doing good work, you do get good recognition.

Jhalak: I was in an IIT. In IITs, they know that if a person is here, he is capable and
intelligent.

Vansha: My company was really nice, so I never felt any discrimination based on
gender…. Even if it’s a female supervisor, everybody has respect for the position. It’s not
based on your gender…. Two, three generations back, people used to stop working when
they got married or when they had a kid. But right now, people don’t do that…. If they
are discriminating against you, that is only based on your performance, that’s it.

Yashica (F), whose workplace had a ratio of around seven men for every one woman, said that
she felt she had not experienced sexism in the workplace, noting that she preferred to work with
men than with women. She had experienced a lot of systemic sexism at her college, including
women being forbidden from going outside the walls of the campus while men were free to
travel into the local community, being locked in their dormitory at 6:00 pm while men enjoyed a
curfew several hours later, and being forced to wear impractical traditional Indian garments to
ensure modesty, in particular that “their chests were not exposed.” Like Yashica, Bimala (F)
experienced sexism in college, but felt that in the start-up where she worked, “It didn’t make a
difference whether you were a girl or a guy.”

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Assumptions of Male Superiority
Female participants who did report experiencing sexism noted that assumptions of male
superiority are present in schools and workplaces. Oeshi (F) says, “In India… it's the culture that
the boys or the males will be thinking that they are superior to the females.” As research has
shown, in general, Indian men are valued more than Indian women, and this starts when they are
very young. Indian parents often show blatant favoritism for male children, showering them with
many more opportunities than female children and letting them break the rules with fewer
consequences.
Interviewer: I've heard some people say that male children are very desired and they’re
treated like little princes. Would you agree with that?
Raveena (F): Yes. I completely agree.
Interviewer: That seems like that sort of privilege is just going to breed entitlement when
then they grow up. And then how will they treat women?
Raveena: Yep. It's true. It happens. I've seen it.

Pahal (F): [Because their parents would not pay] many of my [female] friends did not
even go to a good university for undergrad. It's just the Indian mentality that they do not
want to spend more on a girl's education, but they want to spend more on a boy's
education and they want to do things for them.
Interviewer: But why?
Pahal: Because basically in the end the guy will take care of the family, and the girls will
go get married and join another family.

This pervasive mentality led one early female participant to say, “In India, a son is an asset while
a daughter is a liability.”
In schools and workplaces, the bias towards men grows even stronger because, like in the
United States, people assume women are less likely to be naturally gifted in STEM fields, such
as computer science. This finding deviates from existing literature, which claims India is free of

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this gender bias against women in STEM. Women in this study reported feeling that they are
often underestimated by others because of their gender.
Oeshi (F): I created a really beautiful website because I wasn't doing much. I had time.
And then all my friends who were male, they were like, “Oh my god this is so beautiful,”
and, “Oh, I really thought before that girls can't code but you're doing that really nice.” I
think it is a mentality. I've seen it a lot of times. Even some people in the college will be
like, “Oh you’re a girl, but you're coding really well” and they'll be shocked.

Netra (F): They [women] are just not given a chance, and nobody thinks that any task,
women can do better. Equal is fine—they can think about that—but better, no. No one
can think about it. Even the boys that I considered my friends, who are very normal, from
upper-middle class society, even they have mentioned in some conversation, “Oh, I can
do it better.” So somewhere… almost every guy has this. At least in tech, I have felt so.
This assumption that women will produce inferior work combines with male entitlement
to produce nasty outcomes. When asked if she developed any special skills to communicate with
men in the workplace, Watika quickly said yes. The special skills she described, however, were
all just various ways of convincing men that she was likeable enough and legitimate enough to
be listened to.
Watika: Even though I said discrimination and harassment are completely frowned upon,
there are some men who are very egoistic. Especially older men, they think that they
know a lot. …. The chances of them actually listening to what I say, even though it might
be right, are pretty low. If I’m being too arrogant in order to get my point across, that’s
not going to work. I’ve had to put it across very politely. I’ve had to substantiate what I
say with loads and loads of examples and be very persistent and confident in what I’m
saying. I have to make them see.
Interviewer: So, essentially, you have to prove yourself before they’ll believe you?
Watika: Correct.
Other participants described the various other ways this male entitlement manifested itself in
their work-related interactions.
Zuri (F): My colleague was a male, even though I had better skillsets than him, even
though I worked on a project, he was promoted.

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Oeshi (F): One of my friends, he was my childhood friend, and I told him, I'm going to
USC and he was…kind of jealous. Like, “Okay, why is a girl doing that?”
Women also mentioned this male entitlement as motivating a lot of the sexual harassment and
sexual assault that women experience in public spaces.
Another consequence of the assumption of male superiority is a constant grinding away
at women’s confidence, leading women to wonder how much they really had earned their
accomplishments. Women worried that people thought they had only been hired at a job or
accepted into a college because of their gender.
Interviewer: So, you didn't experience any difference in treatment from your classmates
at university because of your gender?
Farisha (F): Not explicitly. No, I've never. But you just some...sometimes you pass by
and you hear random people talking. I remember I was in a line in a bank and they were
talking about this girl and how she got in [got a job] only because she was a girl…none of
my friends have ever made me feel this thing-
Interviewer: But it was still there.
Farisha: Yeah... I didn’t have the background [on the situation] or anything, but it was
still there. I can see it was there, but not with the people I was close with. I never faced
anything like that. But I could see some people did think that way. “She got in only
because she was a girl. They wanted diversity.”

Raveena (F): There are a lot of companies in India and that just go on hiring sprees and
then they hire just women. I call myself a feminist. I stand for equality, but the companies
that do that, I want to know if they make sure that they don't compromise quality in their
efforts to balance the male-female ratio. I personally, if I go out to give an interview and I
get a job, I don't want to be thinking they hired me just because I'm a woman. I want to
be hired for the characteristics or the talent that I have, and not just because I'm a woman.
Having said that, I also think that centuries of suppression, women also need a little push
to get to a place where they can compete with men.
Interviewer: What would be a good way of giving them a little push?
Raveena: Like what the companies are doing right now. Sometimes they just go out and
they hire all women and they compromise on the quality. As long as they don't
compromise on the quality.

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In a similar vein, Yashica (F) expressed concern that big international corporations were only
hiring women to fulfill diversity quotas, and that men were being denied opportunities because
of the preference for women. She clarified, though, that the women being selected were no less
able or qualified than the men, just that if companies selected the equally qualified but more
desirable female candidates, more men would lose spots at companies for no reason other than
their gender. Women worried this could cause resentment among the men and further fuel doubts
about women’s abilities.
These apocryphal tales of unqualified women being hired at tech companies were
mentioned by many female participants, indicating that the rumors must circulate quite
frequently. It is likely that the hiring sprees Raveena (F) talked about and Yashica’s (F) story—
“I guess it was PayPal or Amazon who didn't get any male students for the final round. They
took only females”—are far less common than the communal fixation on them would make it
seem. Research clearly indicates a consistent preference for male tech workers, but the stories
that are embedding themselves in these women’s consciousnesses would lead one to believe that
women have become unfairly dominant over men in the Indian IT world. This is a reflection not
only of male entitlement but also of people’s uneven perceptions of social situations, where they
imagine there to be more women in a room than there are and imagine women to be dominating
the conversation whenever they talk as much as men.
Poor Representations
Because there are so few other women in STEM fields in India, the individual impact of
each woman’s behavior is magnified. It becomes easier for men to generalize about all females
in the tech workforce when they see one behaving poorly. A few women felt their reputation as a
woman had been harmed by other women’s performances at their jobs. These other women had

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slacked off, or otherwise taken advantage of the protective treatment often available to female
employees. Ladli (F) explained,
In India, I feel it's ok for women to make mistakes on the job, but when you’re a guy,
then your manager will get angry…. People have to be careful when speaking to a
woman because you would not want to hurt her feelings. People believe that women get
stressed out more than men…. If you’re a woman, you’re not considered to be that
intelligent. People just think women are not good enough in India. So, women themselves
don’t put in a lot of effort to grow…. [For a woman] just working is already a big thing.

In response to this, I asked Ladli, “Is it ever tempting? I know you work really hard and you love
what you do, but you do get a free pass. Is it ever tempting to use it?” Ladli replied, “Sometimes
it is. But no, I wouldn’t want to use something like that. It’s just not cool.” However, Ladli did
believe that many Indian women do use this free pass at their jobs, which just creates a feedback
loop that further damages women’s reputations.
Some women in the study, such as Ishita (F), recognized this because they had personal
experience with a person whose behavior seemed to be damaging the reputation of all women.
Participants argued that one woman’s behavior can change how male co-workers see all female
employees and can lead to infantilizing or patronizing behavior from the men, where women are
seen as so delicate and fragile that they cannot handle honest critiques of their work or new and
challenging assignments.
Ishita: Let's say you have made a mistake or something, your higher authority would not
hesitate to scold a male employee, but they would hesitate to scold a female employee
because, well, you never know….I think there is a mutual understanding between guys
that even if somebody abuses you, it's not in a literal sense that they do, it's just out of...
it's just a frustrated outburst. Whereas the same understanding is not there on the females’
side. So, I feel that's why the higher authorities, they are much more conscious about how
they treat females.
Interviewer: Like the women are more emotionally fragile?
Ishita: Yeah, sort of. In my office in a different team there was a girl, if she was ever
scolded, not scolded, even if she was...even if mistakes were pointed out in her code, she
used to go and start crying and then the manager was very scared… “What should I do?

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If she... what if she complains?” So after one incident he never bothered to tell her
anything again.
Interviewer: Do you think that a boss not being able to tell a female employee, “You've
done something wrong,” would that affect your credibility?
Ishita: Yes, of course. I think it does. It's based on how you react whether they will do it
in future; as in, if you don't take it very positively, then of course your employer won't
really bother to tell it to you in future….It could go to a point where they don't give you
feedback and then eventually if they are not okay with your work, they will fire you in
future…. But then of course you yourself are to be blamed for that because that's how
you reacted when they pointed out mistakes. But I think if you take it positively, then
they realize that you are open to feedback…I think it depends on how you react. That's
how they will treat you.

Here, Ishita demonstrates another important theme in female participants’ perceptions of sexism.
Even when they recognize gender-based limitations, they imagine ways to surmount those
obstacles. Most of the time, they perceive themselves as having enough agency to not be bound
by the sexist behavior they witnessed or experienced. The women of this study have a strong
internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966).
Safety Restrictions
As was touched upon in the safety commuting section of Chapter 4, Indian women face
significant risks when outside the home after dark. As a result, many companies do not allow
women to stay at work past 5:00 or 6:00 pm. This restriction can impact company’s willingness
to hire women.
Udyati (F): At that time it was difficult to travel to work, and I used to travel around 40
kilometers from my home to my office. That’s too difficult. I lived at home and
sometimes my grandma and grandfather used to be at home. They were like, “What is she
working so much time?” And they're still old-minded people, old-fashioned. And they
were like, “For a girl, why do you want to stand out so much?” And they were like, “First
get her married and put her at home.” This is what used to happen. And then my TL
[team lead] used to tell me, “This is why we won't take girls in our team.” But still, I
unfortunately fell in that team and I had to manage.
Interviewer: So how did you get home on those late nights?

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Udyati: Like sometimes the company used to provide the cab service. But still my TL
used to tell me like, “Don't just go on the cab service. It's not that safe.” So sometimes my
dad or my team leader used to drop me at home. This happened. And my sister used to
stay like 15 kilometers away from my office, so he used to drop me there or something
like that. He was like, “Don't just depend on cabs.”
Interviewer: So even cabs aren't trustworthy?
Udyati: Yeah.

As Ishita (F) notes, “Some companies do also tend to take into consideration the criteria that if
you hire a female employee, then you can't ask them to work overtime.” Even when hired, this
safety issue creates an impossible dilemma for the working woman. On a day-to-day level,
bodily presence in the office impacts one’s reputation with superiors.
Netra: I used to come by 8:00 and leave by 5:00. The one guy who I was working on the
project with, he just stayed two doors next, like an apartment right next to the office. So
he used to stay late and then my mentor also used to stay late. My manager also used to
stay late. At the end of the day, he's going and showing them, “This is what we got done
in the day.” I think all the credit in their head was, like, “He has done all the job.” But I
used to do my part—everything perfectly—by 5:00, and just get it done and then go. I
think that did affect me, because they thought that I am not taking initiative and I'm not
putting in more work, but he is. But… he used to come to the office at noon, and then
leave by 8:00. I was there from 8:00 in the morning.
Interviewer: It's just because what they saw was him in the evenings, showing up, like
presenting things?
Netra: Yes, or working overtime, because that's overtime hours.
Interviewer: Did you have a good relationship with him?
Netra: Yeah.
Interviewer: You think he gave you credit when credit was due?
Netra: Yes, yes.
Interviewer: But that's just not what registered for them?
Netra: For my manager and my mentor, I think they did not see it that way. But for him,
whenever they used to ask like “Who [did this?]” Whenever, this question came that,
“Who did this?” “Who did that?” then obviously, he used to give me complete credit for
the things I did. But sometimes they don't ask, [and] they think that he's got it done.
Interviewer: Yeah, and there's no way for you to defend yourself, because you're gone?
Netra: Yeah.

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As Netra explained, being forced to go home by 5:00 pm places women at a disadvantage
because it made the women seem less reliable and caused them to miss out on opportunities to
connect with their superiors and claim credit for their work.
Just as these restrictions have a gradual, creeping sort of effect, they also can have large
and sudden effects. If a female programmer is part of a team project that faces an unexpected,
urgent deadline—a common situation for IT companies—she may not be able to contribute to
meeting this deadline, because she has been sent home. Where many of her male colleagues will
be pulling all-nighters to get the job done, she cannot even work extra hours at the end of the
day. Zuri (F) experienced a variant of this at her job.
Zuri: Safety was taken care of very, very seriously. At my workplace, safety was never an
issue…. First of all, they didn't allow girls to stay after 6:00 PM.
Interviewer: Even if you wanted to?
Zuri: Even if you wanted to, you are not just allowed, you have to go home. That is how
they took care of the safety.
Interviewer: If you can't stay late, what if there's an emergency deadline, all the men are
staying and working on it?
Zuri: We work from home.
Interviewer: Is that a disadvantage at all for you?
Zuri: Obviously, it is a disadvantage because, see, the thing is, if a female boss is there,
she will be at home too so that's fine, but if you have a male boss, he is allowed to stay at
the place after 6 o'clock, he will obviously prefer another male who is able to stay after 6
o'clock and work in front of him. Why would he prefer a woman who will have to go
home and then you will have these calls one after another? Why would he do that? He
has another option. So even if I'm better at a skillset and another guy doesn't have
skillsets that are matching my level but, he gets to code…. Yeah. That's fine, go with
him, he'll be promoted, he will get the job.

Because the heroes of any project are those people who can stay all night and write the code that
meets an urgent deadline, Indian women are often disqualified from the race for recognition for
outstanding or essential programming. You cannot compete if you are not even allowed in the

145
building. The man who writes this last-minute code saves the day and gains a reputation as a
problem solver. The woman who cannot be present when her team needs her becomes a problem
to be solved.
The cumulative impact of these safety issues is that even though Indian women are hired
in programming and engineering jobs, they are less likely than men to be promoted or achieve
recognition for their work. This dilemma also highlights the impracticality for the company of
promoting a woman to a leadership role. A potential leader of a major project who is unable to
be at work during some of the most crucial moments is far less viable, regardless of
qualifications. Women are thus denied access to advancement, not because of a lack of
qualifications, but because of the physical bodies they inhabit.
Indian Men’s Perceptions of Sexism

Most men interviewed in this study saw no significant differences in workplace
experiences between the sexes. Some even claimed that the computer programming workplace
was a space of equality, where treatment was based on merit rather than arbitrary features like
gender. The question of whether there were any differences in the experiences of men and
women perplexed most male participants. Even those male participants who were unwilling to
whole-heartedly declare the tech workplace a space of equality were nonetheless baffled by the
question and had obviously never contemplated potential differences in experience before. In
total 13 of the 15 men interviewed (87%) claimed there were no differences in treatment of men
and women in any of their tech jobs or internships. When prompted further by the researcher,
only two of the 13 men were able to come up with some kind of example of unequal treatment
for women in the average Indian tech workplace, lowering the number of men who perceived no
differences between treatment of the two genders to 11 out of 15 men (73%). These numbers are

146
contrasted against the 22 of 35 women (63%) who reported experiencing differences based on
gender in the workplace. To compensate for differences in sample size between men and women,
a chi-square test of independence was performed. The relation between these variables was
significant, X
2
(1, N = 50) = 8.4, p = .0037. Women were more likely than men to have witnessed
or experienced differential treatment in the workplace due to gender. Figure 5.1 provides a visual
of participants’ perceptions of differential treatment for men and women in the tech workplace.
Figure 5.1
Rates of Perceived Differential Treatment Between Genders in Tech
“Can you think of any ways that men and women are treated differently in the tech workplace?”

13%
63%
87%
37%
Men Women
Yes No

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The reasons given for men’s belief that the tech workplace treated women the same as
men are varied; some provided no reason at all. When the interviewer asked, “Can you think of
any ways—positive or negative or neutral—that being a woman would affect one’s experience at
a tech job?” some people responded with a simple no, such as Onkar (M) who said, “No. Not in
our organization,” Manthan (M) who said, “I don’t think there would have been any difference,”
Hitesh (M) who said, “My workplace experience? I don't think so. Maybe some people might
have had [a difference experience] but amongst my peers, I didn't feel that,” and Naveen, who
said, “No, I don’t really think so. I don’t think so.” Others provided more nuanced reasoning for
their claim that their tech workplace was equal, claiming that skill outweighs gender as a
consideration or that their tech workplace was forward-thinking and deliberately strove for
equality.
Balhaar (M): I don't think there was any differentiation between a boy and a girl, because
I've seen… girls [who were] working with me. They were really good at what they did
and I was good at what I did too. In these labs there is no comparison because most of the
people who work there are one of the top in what they do, that's why.
Faraj (M): No, I don't think so. It would be the same thing because in the tech job, it's
something that depends on your skills. Not just in tech jobs, in any job it’s something
that, if you're capable of doing this thing you will be treated the same. If I can write a
good Java code, even she can write it, there's nothing that you can do about it [to stop
her].
Ikbal (M): Not really because [company name] was a very open culture and they were
really supportive to women. So, I wouldn't have felt any difference working there…. And
they did have a lot of women empowerment kind of programs…. And you know,
nowadays all the corporate companies, they are trying to bring a gender balance and
things like that. They do hire women and they do treat everyone equally, actually.
Pranav (M): I don't think so. In MNCs (multi-national corporations), there is no partiality
between men and women. It's all same. I even know a woman who is working with me
and who is earning same as me. We did our undergrad from different colleges, and...
[our] colleges placed us into [company name], and we're earning same. It was all same.
We got same kind of work and everything was same to us.

Identified Sources of Inequal Treatment

148
There were two men who, without further prompting from the researcher, claimed that
there were differences in the treatment of men and women in the tech workplace. Jai (M)
explained that at his internship, “the boss there was really biased, so he didn't want to give more
responsibility to the females there… even though they had more experience than me.” He
followed up by noting that though the internship was a negative example, the job he had after it
was the opposite. There, the company was proactive about implementing and adhering to
policies that protected women. A man at his job had been reported for making “inappropriate
comments towards a woman” and in response, “the person got blacklisted, fired and blacklisted.”
Jai emphasized, “If they [his company] even get a minor report from someone, it's really going to
be bad for the person who's reported.”
The other man who reported sexual inequality in the workplace was Guneet (M), who
presented dual perspectives: his own and that of his female friends. As for himself, Guneet
claimed he had worked at an equitable company.
The company I worked with, the culture was very good. That's the best thing about the
company…. They don't form… a hierarchical management…. Like, I can talk to my
manager, like he's friends with me. So, they were very open minded, almost all the people
in the company…. There is no gender bias there, they don't treat women differently and
men differently.

However, Guneet explained, the women in his life told him different stories about the place he
worked. “My female colleagues, my friends who have worked there, they keep telling me… [that
the company is] biased in the salary. That’s what they [the women] say.” According to his
female friends, this bias was because Guneet’s bosses believed that
most of the female colleagues, they, after some point of time, they get married, and they
don't work in the company [so] there’s no point in giving them more benefits or more
salary, more bonus. The management may not be sure if they [the women] will continue,
or [if] they'll move. They can't be sure.

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Because management assumed that for a woman, getting married meant quitting her job, the
company did not want to invest resources in young, unmarried women. Guneet finished by
saying, “I don’t know if their work, it goes unnoticed or something. I’m not sure about that. But
they used to tell me that these were the factors.”
Dev (M) and Naveen (M) who, when prompted further, thought of differences between
the experiences of men and women in the tech workplace provided an eclectic mix of potential
inequalities, including less participation in extra-curricular (outside of work) activities and a lack
of female mentors. Dev noted that co-workers might have a potentially negative bias towards
women’s output. “Let's say there is a woman who is better than… a male who is really good at
coding, then the woman would face a lot of criticism and everybody will try to put her down.”
Both the lack of female mentors and the bias against women’s work are complaints that were
voiced by women in this study.
A couple of participants perceived the female body itself to be a source of inequality. The
only difference that Aadi (M) was able to name between the workplace experiences of men and
women was that women had to deal with periods and pregnancy.
Aadi: Maybe if the woman is on her period. I've heard it pains a lot, so maybe if it's
during that period of time… a woman actually goes through a lot of stuff. I've also seen
my girlfriend go through a lot of mood swings and it pains a lot and you need to get
sanitary pads, keep changing them. So sometimes maybe they feel uneasy in office where
they're surrounded by males. It might feel a little awkward. A lot of my coworkers who
are females, they used to take work from home during that period. So, that's one thing
maybe I could think of. And even during pregnancy, I think a lot of them take maternal
leaves for a month or two during the last phase, or two to three months, maybe. Yeah,
that's different.
Interviewer: Nothing else?
Aadi: What else? Nothing really, apart from that.
In a similar vein, Guneet (M) mused that his female supervisor had a young child while he was
working there and that as a result, “sometimes she’s very moody.” These two comments align

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with female participants’ claims that Indian men in the workplace were uncomfortable talking
about or accurately understanding women’s bodily functions, as well as the emotions that women
experienced, which men categorized as more volatile or extreme. Raveena (F) explained,
If I talk about menstruation or other women's problems to my male friends, that is [the
first time] when they actually know that such things happen, because these men have
been put on a pedestal of privilege all their life. They're not even aware. Sometimes it’s
lack of awareness, sometimes it’s intentional ignorance.

Zuri (F) described how periods are considered shameful.
In India you should not speak on periods. We have all these weird names for periods.
They call it a problem and it's not a problem, it's something natural. Treat it as something
natural, why do you have to make an issue out of it and it's not an issue at all. And then,
they have these various rules that, oh, you should not touch God [go to temple or pray]
during that time and such gross things.

Women reported that the features that made their bodies unique were taboo topics in the
workplace and that this willful ignorance excused men from having to, in any way, adapt the
workplace environment around those needs. For example, Myra (F) points out, “At workplaces
they do not give you enough maternity leave and there's nothing called a paternity leave for the
dads. So again, more of the burden falls on the women.” Krishna said that a key communication
lesson she had learned for the workplace was avoiding personal topics when talking to male co-
workers, for fear of being unprofessional. “I wouldn’t talk too much about my family. But, if
there’s another co-worker who’s a female, I would tell her, ‘I have issues at home. My husband’s
this, my friend did this, my sister did that.’” Not all workplaces were equally hostile to women’s
needs. Omaja’s job became a lifeline for her in a difficult time. Omaja (F) was the only
participant in the study who had been divorced. The process of getting divorced was agonizingly
slow and emotionally taxing. Omaja notes that it was the friends, both male and female, that she
made at her job who helped her through such a difficult time. Omaja’s example is indicative of a

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work culture that enables women to bring their personal lives into the workspace, rather than
segregating them to make the workplace ‘professional.’
Another type of difference that men observed in the workplace experiences of women did
not originate in the workplace at all. Chandran (M) and Rayaan (M) both claimed that any
differences that existed in the workplace were differences in the gender ratio that stemmed from
inequality originating long before their jobs began. Chandran offered this reasoning as to why a
woman would have a different workplace experience,
Maybe not a lot of women pursue higher studies or maybe parents are kind of restrictive
about women going to work and some parents like to keep their child home. They are
insecure… some families in India, and maybe in smaller villages, they're not open in their
way. They're closed about all those things.

Chandran noted that he personally believes in equal representation of both genders in the
workforce because “everyone has their own mindset” and everyone has something to contribute.
Rayaan said something like Chandran: The poor gender ratio is a result of parents who are often
restrictive of daughters’ careers and of women never being given the opportunity to explore
computer science as a viable job. Rayaan’s knowledge was pulled from personal experience.
That is a question who's answer I have seen in front of me in my life, actually, as my
girlfriend's family is very conservative. They have restricted her from many different
things for many different reasons. So, sometimes we [he and his girlfriend] do have an
argument once in a while … because I don't even consider that it is a problem for her to
go in that field or to do something. But she cannot do it with her parents…. When we
were choosing a career… I opted for computer science, but my brother opted for history.
I think if a girl would have been born into our family, she would not have had any kind of
restriction, but in my girlfriend's family what happened is that her parents wanted her to
get a government job. Government jobs are very... they're very privileged. The
government pays for everything and [you have] a lot of job security. But the private
sector, which my girlfriend was interested in, it didn't have much job security. So, that
was a problem [for her parents].

Rayaan and Chandran both recognized that familial and cultural norms have a large impact on a
woman’s ability to pursue the career of her choice, and that this will, in turn, reduce the number

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of women employed in the field of computer science. A number of women pointed these trends
out, such as Krishna (F) who noted that she felt “people were eager to hire women and it's not
like colleges or jobs are actively not hiring women, it's that the women aren't there to hire
because they're not getting sent to college.” The men were unaware of there being any other
elements that would contribute to women’s disempowerment in the Indian tech workplace.
Awareness of Commuting Dangers
Data about commuting were collected from only 10 of the 15 men who participated in
this study. Of those 10 men, five (50%) recognized commuting as a danger to women. Thus, of
all the issues Indian working women face, this issue is the one the male participants were most
aware of. This awareness is because there are dangers while commuting for men as well. For
instance, Hitesh (M) noted that he had felt unsafe at times while traveling home after work
because his company was in a more remote part of the city. Onkar (M) noted that late at night all
employees, not just the women, used the company-provided cab service to get home safely. Two
other men remained neutral, explaining how they commuted to work and noting that they always
felt safe while in transit but did not have any opinion about women in the same situation. At the
opposite extreme, some men did not recognize commuting as a danger, with a few even
defending public transit as a safe option for men and women. Rayaan (M) said he felt safe while
commuting and described positive experiences he had with random strangers at times when he
was in need. Faraj (M), who also claimed that the tech workplace is equal for men and women,
stated that he traveled home on public transit late at night and felt perfectly safe, and that he
knew women who also felt perfectly safe traveling on public transit at all hours in Mumbai; this
strong claim is contradicted by almost all of the women interviewed in this study.

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Others recognized and acknowledged that women faced greater danger traveling to and
from work than men would. Jai (M), who took the company shuttle at his last job, said that when
he took public transit, he felt safe, even after dark but said that he would “maybe” be concerned
about a woman in the same situation. Hitesh (M), who earlier had confessed to only an
occasional fear while commuting, noted that he would be very concerned for the welfare of any
female coworker who went home without a male escort after dark. Guneet (M) said, “As a guy I
don’t feel unsafe [taking public transit]. But usually girls, they feel unsafe.” Chandran (M) noted
that he would stay at work until 9:00 pm most nights and that he always felt safe traveling home.
He noted, however, that women who worked the same hours as him would be forced to travel by
cab and even then, “they weren't allowed to travel alone with the cab drivers. One security guard
would accompany the cab if the woman is alone.” Like Chandran, Manthan (M) felt safe making
his own way home on his motorbike, even late at night, while any woman in his place would use
“a cab facility” including male escort to take her home.
This information was never presented to the interviewer like it was alarming or upsetting;
instead, the details of commutes were considered mundane. Similarly, the existence of a special
curfew for women at universities that required them to be locked inside of their dormitories,
sometimes as early at 6:00 pm, did not seem to register as problematic for the male participants.
Though men, when queried, were able to quickly inform the interviewer of their former
university’s curfew for women versus men, few men saw the disparate curfews as alarming or
unfair. Variants of the following exchange with Balhaar (M) were repeated with other
participants:
Interviewer: Can you think of any ways that where you grew up in India, any ways that a
girl's experience would be different than a guy's experience?
Balhaar: No, probably the only difference I remember at least is the curfew thing. That is
kind of bad. At least bad for them.

154

Conversations like these demonstrated that the men were aware of differences between genders
in issues of public safety but that the differences were so normalized, they were not worth
mentioning unless specifically asked. No men connected the dangers of commuting or the
disparate curfews with an unequal work experience for women.
Characteristics of an Adept Programmer

Despite many participants claiming that coding does not take any special skills or that
anyone can learn to code, the participants were also able to name a consistent set of traits that
adept programmers possess. The intellectual processes considered most important for
programmers to implement include logical or algorithmic thinking—as Ikbal (M) put it, “You
just need to think the way a computer thinks”—and a step-by-step method for approaching
problems. Participants, regardless of gender, consistently named logical thinking as the key trait
that enables successful programming. It was only when prompted further that participants were
able to name soft skills.
When prompted, participants named a wide variety of soft skills that could be valuable to
a programmer, but only named a total of 10 soft skills more than 10% of the time. The soft skills
that programmers named most frequently included persistence (32 people referenced it, or 65%)
and a knack for problem solving (28 people referenced it, or 57%). Figure 5.2 provides a chart
displaying how frequently the top traits were mentioned.

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Figure 5.2
Most Named Computer Programming Soft Skills, by Total Number of Citations

Some traits were mentioned less frequently—between 8% and 10% of the time—and thus not
included in the chart. These included being detail-oriented, being hardworking, and practicing a
lot. Tamanna (F), for example, said “It’s just practice, practice, practice,” while Shravya (F) said,
“I think you just need to be hardworking. You don’t really have to be smart to be a computer
science student. But hard work does matter.” Interestingly, only one woman—Chandani—and
none of the men mentioned empathy or any similar terms as being relevant to computer
programming. In fact, one man actively spoke against the need for empathy, saying, "I don't
think you need to be empathetic…what is your final expectation of what the output should be?
Then [if you know this] it doesn't matter how the problem is communicated to you." Chandani’s
response, “You just have to take into consideration other humans,” shows a very different
approach to programming, one which prioritizes human needs as part of the process of writing
good code.
7
6
12
28
32
11
7
22
14
12
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
"Work smarter, not harder"
Skilled communicator
Self-motivated
Problem solver
Persistent
Passionate
Inquisitive
Eager to learn
Creative
Adaptible

156
There were differences across gender in the amount certain traits were mentioned.
Women had more diverse answers while men mentioned fewer traits more often. Men were more
likely to mention persistence and problem solving than other traits; 80% of men mentioned
persistence and 73% of men mentioned problem solving, whereas the next most frequently
mentioned category, eagerness to learn, was only referenced by 33% of the men. This indicates a
focus on a few select characteristics.
Absolutely no men said that programmers needed to be adaptable, whereas 35% of
women said programmers needed to be adaptable. To ensure that perceptions of the importance
of adaptability was significantly difference across genders, a Fisher’s Exact test was conducted.
Results indicated that women were significantly more likely than men to see adaptability as
important for workplace success (p = .0099). Women also saw creativity as more important to
the programming process than men, with 32% of women and only 20% of men mentioning it;
Fisher’s Exact test revealed that this difference was not significant (p = .5067). Similarly, though
eagerness to learn was important to both men and women, women mentioned it 50% of the time
as opposed to men’s 33% of the time. A chi-square test of independence showed that this result
was also not significant, X
2
(1, N = 50) = 0.5, p = .4941. Figure 5.3 provides a breakdown of
most mentioned traits by gender.

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Figure 5.3
Most Named Computer Programming Soft Skills, by Percent per Gender

Should you be a Jugaaru?

The Indian concept of jugaad is one that cannot be translated perfectly into English.
Participants struggled to define the term, often resorting to providing examples. Participants
defined jugaad as a clever or creative shortcut or temporary fix to solve a problem. Only one
participant, Zarna (F), said that one should know jugaad to be a successful computer
programmer. All the words participants used to define jugaad were put into the word cloud in
Figure 5.4.

35%
32%
50%
12%
24%
59%
50%
24%
9%
15%
0%
20%
33%
20% 20%
80%
73%
27%
20%
13%
Adaptible
Creative
Eager to learn
Inquisitive
Passionate
Persistent
Problem solver
Self-motivated
Skilled comm.
"W.S.N.H."
Most Named Computer Programming Soft Skills, by Percent per Gender
Women
Men

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Figure 5.4
Most Frequently Used Words When Defining Jugaad

*All words used by participants more than once and that contain at least three letters are included in the
word cloud.

The most frequently used words included “working”, “resources”, “solution”, “done”, “just”, and
“getting”. These words reflect the active nature of jugaad, as well as its use in situations with
limited resources. The last three words in the list reflect participants’ tendency to say some
variant of “just get it done,” which emphasizes jugaad’s focus on outcome rather than process.
There were no notable differences in definition across gender.
get
way
working
done
resources
solution
just
problem
make
shortcut
want
solve
fix
best
limited
somehow
around
hacks
possible
trick
whatever
creative
rules
coming
finding
innovation
take
think
use
quick
temporary
alternative
approach box
care
certain
complete
cost crook
different
exact
fit
follow
happen
hook job
kind
less
little
low
makeshift
mean
money
need
one
permanent
proper
right
situation
smart
sort
still
trying
workable

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In a near perfect split, 51% of participants thought using jugaad in the IT workplace was
appropriate while 49% thought it was inappropriate. When the participants were split by gender,
males leaned more in favor of jugaad while females remained divided. Only 38% of men thought
using jugaad at work was inappropriate, while the remaining 62% saw it as appropriate. Women
were evenly split; 54% thought using jugaad at work was inappropriate while 46% saw it as
appropriate. A chi-square test of independence revealed that these differences were not
significant, X
2
(1, N = 39) = 0.3, p = .5712. In other words, though women and men did have
differing perceptions about the appropriateness of jugaad in the workplace, the differences were
not large enough to be significant. When previous work experience was taken into consideration,
women’s responses shifted dramatically. Of the women who had not worked after their
bachelor’s degree, 78% saw the use of jugaad in the workplace as never appropriate. Of women
who had worked after their bachelor’s degree, only 41% saw the use of jugaad in the workplace
as never appropriate, indicating that work experience impacts women’s perceptions of jugaad.
Because the sample was so small, a Fisher’s Exact test revealed that these differences were not
significant (p = .1100). Figure 5.5 displays pie graphs of this difference.

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Figure 5.5
Impact of Work Experience on Women’s Valuation of Jugaad in the Workplace

Men had no significant differences based on work experience.
Reasons for avoiding jugaad in the workplace tended to revolve around the temporary or
makeshift nature of jugaad versus the wide-ranging and long-lasting reliability of a corporation’s
Can be appropriate,
59%
Never appropriate,
41%
Women with Previous Work Experience: Perceptions of Jugaad in the Workplace
Can be appropriate,
22%
Never appropriate,
78%
Women with NO Previous Work Experience: Perceptions of Jugaad in the Workplace

161
computer code. Corporate code is often heavily standardized, with a multi-step review process so
that multiple pairs of eyes verify the appropriateness of every line of code before it becomes part
of the company’s software. Cobbling together makeshift code, in the style of jugaad, would only
reflect poorly on the creator, giving them a reputation for writing sloppy or poorly thought out
code. Those who were in favor of using jugaad in the workplace often noted that jugaad could be
used responsibly, as needed. These participants believed there will always be situations that arise
for which one is insufficiently prepared, either in terms of the resource of knowledge or the
resource of time. In these situations, jugaad becomes necessary to make a client happy, patch up
a glitch, or meet an impossible deadline. In these moments, the jugaaru—the person with a
knack for coming up with jugaad fixes— becomes essential to a company’s success, at least in
the short-term.
Choosing Computers

For many programmers interviewed, particularly the women, computer coding was
reported to be a space of innovation and creativity. Coding was something that they were
passionate about, or they had always been intrigued by computers. Lakshmi (F), for example,
said,
I started liking it because it's the satisfaction that comes after I solve some problem,
basically. It's the feeling of proudness that comes attached with it. That's what motivates
me for attempting another problem.

Many participants also noted that they loved mathematics in school or loved logical puzzles.
Participants who had passion for the subject often reported having a high school teacher, parent,
or other authority figure tell them that they had an aptitude for computer science and should
pursue it as a career. This guidance from an authority figure who believed in their potential was
particularly important for women.

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Women who identified themselves as computer engineers described how as teenagers,
they found themselves being shepherded away from other engineering fields they were interested
in, such as electrical or mechanical engineering. This steering is because most engineering fields
are seen in India as inappropriate for women; for instance, mechanical and electrical engineering
are considered blue-collar jobs, something that women—being both physically weaker than men
and vulnerable to sexual assault—are not suited for. Myra (F) said,
Earlier when I was pursuing engineering, I wanted to go into aerospace and not computer
science…. But there's this gender notion that women are physically or anatomically lesser
in strength as compared to men. So, if you're a mechanic or if you are into aerospace…
you really need to go on the field to do some parts of your job. That's why the society and
also the families, in the name of being protective, they don't send a lot of…women [into
those fields].

In contrast, computer engineering is considered a good job for women because it is a white-collar
job. Computer engineering jobs are also seen as more readily facilitating pregnancy and child-
rearing, as those jobs require almost no travel or long hours in the office.
On the flip side, some of the programmers interviewed—particularly the male
programmers—described computer coding as a responsible career path. Aadi (M) described it as
“a practical choice.” Because the Indian educational system is so narrowly focused on a limited
number of subjects, coding was described as the best of the handful of mediocre options that
were available. Many of the interviewees picked the science and mathematics track because
authority figures told them it was the best choice; it was only when on the track that they realized
they had no passion for any of the careers the track offered. Almost no one said they regretted
choosing computer science, but some did report wishing they had been given more choices or
been allowed to make the decision when they were older rather than at 16 years of age.
Women’s Communication

163
Participants’ reflections on women’s communication in the Indian IT workplace revolved
around two related concepts: timidity and confidence. In this section, sex segregation is explored
to examine the role it plays in shaping women’s communication to be rigidly feminine. Sex
segregation is linked to women’s timidity in many of life’s arenas, including the office. Next, the
chapter develops the concept of timidity and examines how societal pressures on women push
them to embrace a collection of communicative traits that can best be grouped under the label
timid and the social cost from deviating from this norm. The women’s communication section
finishes by discussing how participants learned to successfully communicate in the Indian IT
workplace, despite these obstacles. Much of their success hinges on confidence that is held with
conviction and is wielded like a weapon against the innate misogyny of these workplaces.
Effects of Sex Segregation
“If a girl wants to go out of the comfort zone,
they are pulling her back and putting her in it again.
Your real life is somewhere outside of your comfort zone.
If you are not used to going outside of your comfort zone,
then you’ll have to live and die in it.” -Tanvi (F)

Separating boys and girls is a common Indian practice, with roots both in purdah and the
strictures of British colonialism. Krishna (F) noted that in rural areas, versions of purdah are still
practiced, with females having very few opportunities to speak with strangers because women
are discouraged from leaving the house to interact with any men other than family. Aditi (F)
notes,
There were girls in my college who were not coming from these metro cities and who had
always stayed home and had not interacted with this many people outside of the home, so
they were not used to having that many guys around.

Even if strict purdah is not practiced, women are often required to have a male chaperone
whenever venturing off their properties; this severely restricts their mobility, as well as the

164
activities they can participate in, since each individual event requires coordination with a male
chaperone. Several female participants mentioned being unable to participate in any
extracurricular activities that required consistent attendance while growing up, such as sports,
because there was no one available to accompany them to every practice.
Though purdah is less common in urban areas and in the south of India, its legacy lives
on in a variety of restrictions that divide children by gender. A significant minority of the female
participants reported attending all-girls schools for K-12, and one attended an all-girls
engineering college. Chandran (M), who grew up in the western Indian state of Odisha,
explained that even though he was in a co-ed K-12 school, the genders were segregated. Boys sat
in one room for instruction, and girls sat in another. During the interview, I asked him, “Would
this be considered odd? Just the two of us in a room?” He looked uncomfortable for a second and
replied, “Yeah, it would be considered odd. If some friend of ours is sitting with girls, everybody
would stare at him.” Deepa (F), who went to a co-ed school and thus had both girl and guy
friends growing up, still adhered to many rules segregating the genders. “My parents would not
allow me to roam around with guys alone after dark. It would not be considered good practice….
if I’m calling my guy friends to… come over just to chill or for a group study.” When I asked,
“And you going to their houses, would that also…?” I was cut off by Deepa in her haste to say
“No. No, no, no, no, no.” Not all participants had experienced such divides between genders.
Farisha (F) said she talks to men and women the same, with no changes in communicative style,
and notes that it has always been like this for her, because she grew up with a big group of
friends, both girls and boys, without any differences between them; however, the majority of the
participants had experienced some kind of sex segregation while growing up.

165
As a result of this segregation and of omnipresent safety concerns, women often have
limited experience interacting with non-familial men. Because of whom they are (not) exposed
to, this partitioning also normalizes only one mode of communication for women: the feminine
style. The limitations on physical movement also train women to look to men for permission
before taking any action, robbing them of both their physical independence and a portion of their
independent wills. Conversely, removing women from the public sphere allows only the
masculine style of communication to dominate public discourse. Men have become accustomed
to inhabiting public spaces with only a few women present, women who are actively working to
make themselves as unnoticeable as possible.
Then suddenly, both genders enter an IT workplace and find themselves intermingling.
What should have been normal workplace communication becomes uncomfortable and
awkward, and because they are outnumbered, women tend to be on the losing end of interactions.
Tanvi (F) described a more trivial example of this tension.
Tanvi: Guys [at work] used to go and play cricket. I have asked many girls, “Let's make a
team and we shall play.” No one was interested, and so I asked the guys, “Can you please
let me join your team,” and they said, “How can we let a girl in our team?”
Interviewer: You never got to play cricket?
Tanvi: Nope.
Interviewer: So, your organization would have activities for fun, activities outside of
work, and the women didn't really participate in those?
Tanvi: No, not much. My company was organizing events for both boys and girls but,
voluntarily, girls were not interested in joining them. It's because from the beginning
these girls were not allowed to do anything. How will they come and do things now?
People will not let girls out of their homes. If only they’d let girls out of their homes, the
girls would have gone out, they would have played somewhere else. And then, when they
grew up and came to the office, they’d be interested in playing.

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This example demonstrates the magnified impact of non-participation for women; Tanvi just
wanted to play cricket, but women voluntarily removing themselves from casual interactions
with co-workers restricts networking and hinders the development of relationships.
Bimala (F) provided a more serious example of what can go wrong when women have
limited experience speaking up outside the home. Though many female participants describe
themselves as extroverted or outgoing, Bimala is an introvert, shy and reserved. Before job
interviews during her senior year, she had no public speaking experience and very limited
experience interacting professionally with men. Though she had been given some chances in
undergraduate courses to speak as team lead, she had always asked another student to speak on
her behalf. In part because she was a ‘delicate’ woman, teachers had mercy on her and allowed
her to avoid what, for men, would be mandatory public speaking. This inexperience cost her. She
was so terrified in her first job interview—her top-pick company—that she was utterly
unsuccessful. “I couldn’t even introduce myself. I was so numb. And, like, I told them, ‘Okay. I
don’t know. Where am I? I want to go back. Don’t interview me. Thanks.’” She froze up in her
next two interviews as well, eliminating “the three companies I was really counting on.” Bimala
was one of the top scholars at one of the best schools in India, and for this, she should have had
her pick of jobs at the best companies. Instead, because she was terrified of public speaking and
had no practical experience, she ended up being accepted at a company that she disliked so
much, she refused the offer and spent the next six months unemployed.
Pahal (F) is unique among the female participants; she was isolated as a child, but as an
adult, she deliberately trained herself to become more confident and outspoken. She selected her
undergraduate university in part because of the extracurricular activities it offered. These
activities gave her the chance to lead press briefings and interact with the media. When she was

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younger, she participated in locution competitions and dance recitals. All these experiences
empowered her to feel confident speaking in front of crowds and leading small groups. At her
job, she soon found herself in the role of team leader.
In her interview, Pahal (F) noted that everybody, whether male or female, is somewhat
uncomfortable in public speaking situations, but that “at some point, we have to make a decision
to come out and speak, to inculcate things that will help us grow in a balanced way.” Public
speaking is one of humanity’s most universal fears, striking both genders equally; however,
Indian women’s experiences are not like Pahal’s. Whereas Indian boys are actively encouraged
to develop their public speaking skills as they grow, Indian girls are actively discouraged from
speaking up in public, and so receive far fewer chances to develop those public speaking skills
than end up being so valuable in the workplace. For the general populace, women not speaking
in public is normal, just the way things are. Not only must new careerwomen wrestle with
unconquered fears of public speaking, they must also reconcile feelings of guilt and shame that
come from breaking the societal taboo of speaking out, as a woman, in a public place. These
women fail in high-stakes situations because they were never given the opportunity to practice
public communication in safer, low-stakes environments.
Trained to be Timid
“My mom says it's a compromise that one should make,
but it's always a woman who makes the compromise.” -Yashica (F)

Over their lifetimes and in all kinds of spaces, Indian women are trained to be timid.
When such a trait is taught in the home, at school, and in public, a constant sense of surveillance
begins to pervade women’s lives. Oeshi (F) described standing at a bus stop and asking the bus
driver if there were any seats available. The driver said there were, and she climbed onboard,
only to realize after the bus had begun moving that the driver had lied and there were no seats.

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When she pointed this out, the driver told her to sit in a cramped space on the floor instead. At
this point, she said, “Stop the bus. This is a one-and-a-half-hour journey. I’m not going to sit in
that small space.” Oeshi described the other passengers’ reactions.
Everybody started looking at me as if I’m being rude. But what was the rude part? You
told me there’s a seat and there’s no seat. I just asked you to stop the bus so I can board
another bus. But people think, “Oh, girls speaking back, saying things loudly. This is
wrong…. How mannerless this girl is.” But I don’t think—if boys can do that, why can’t
girls do that?

I pointed out that the other passengers’ reactions indicate that her behavior is unusual for Indian
women. Oeshi replied, “I am kind of different. I’m kind of rebellious. I’ll do whatever…. I’ll just
speak up, if I feel wrong, I’ll speak up. I try to. Sometimes you just can’t, and sometimes you’ll
be scared, but I try to.” Oeshi’s example highlights the sense of being surveilled that women feel,
and the corresponding difficulty they have in pushing back against this judgment and censure to
still speak their minds.
Oeshi (F) also described differences between working in Indian and the United States by
noting,
There is this culture in India of giving respect to your elders, even if they’re doing wrong,
whatever, you won’t be speaking up. Here [in the United States] you really are friends
[with your boss] and you can actually correct your boss, and he won’t even mind, he’ll
say thank you, he’ll actually appreciate you for the work you’re doing. My manager was
telling us [women]… you don’t have to be shy here.

Chandani (F) noted that she would feel more comfortable disagreeing with or correcting a
manager in the United States than she would in India. This is both because things are more
hierarchical in India and because of gender norms where “women are expected to stay quiet and
keep their opinions to themselves and not speak up when a lot of guys are talking or discussing
something.” When asked if she would be willing to move back to her home state in north India to
work at a start-up, Deepa (F) said no because “I can’t go back to that environment…. There are

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too many restrictions… I am not shy; I do not have that kind of personality that can be
suppressed. I am not like that.” These examples indicate that female participants were aware of
the behaviors they were being asked to perform, and that they were eager and able to discard this
forced timidity when given the opportunity to do so.
Yashica’s (F) opinion on confidence also demonstrated both the detrimental nature and
the societal value of timidity.
Interviewer: You seem pretty confident and outspoken. Do you think that was an
advantage to you?
Yashica: In the dating world, no. Some of my guy friends will say, “That’s what we like
in a girl, to be quiet.” They will say that they are not living in the old era, but still when
they choose a girl, they’ll make sure that they choose a girl who’s quiet. But in the
workplace, it’s actually a very positive thing. It does a lot of good things for me. In one
case, there were people who were actually fighting over me, to get me on their teams.

In a world where marriage is of central importance to every young person, Yashica’s casual
recognition that her refusal to embrace timidity has harmed her romantic prospects is no small
thing. Even one generation back, the prejudice against confident and outspoken women was so
strong that it could ruin marriage prospects. In a clear demonstration of internalized confidence,
the women in this study were not very concerned with how their temperaments would affect their
prospects, focusing instead on ensuring their own career success before focusing on the
intricacies of arranging a marriage.
Costs of Timidity. Traditionally feminine communicative skills are virtually all opposite
those communication skills most valuable in a tech workplace. Because of this trained timidity,
the personality traits that lead to recognition and success in the IT workplace, such as
assertiveness and self-promotion, feel unnatural to Indian women. Female participants had
experienced this disconnect in a variety of ways—as lessons learned by their mothers, through
humiliating experiences in university, or in moments of frustration in the workplace. Various

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participants described how being so agreeable, restrained, and humble make it difficult for
women to be heard in groups of men.
Aditi (F) sums up the dilemma: “Don’t talk out of turn, be polite, be very coy or shy and
that’s the way a girl is supposed to behave, but that does not work in the workplace.” Participants
described many examples of what this clash of communication styles looks like. The lone
woman on a team might be seen as uninterested because she politely waits for others to finish
speaking before she talks, but then never gets a chance to speak. Her agreeable temperament
leads her to concur with everyone else’s thoughts without aggressively presenting or defending
her own, convincing others that she has no original ideas. Because of her learned humility she
does not call attention to her successes but then it appears that she is not doing anything to
contribute. The men, who prioritize self-promotion over humility, take credit for her work; her
boss then believes she contributed little to the project and assumes she cannot handle much
responsibility.
It is difficult but necessary to switch to more aggressive, outspoken, self-promoting
behaviors once a woman enters the Indian workforce. Several women, such as Zuri (F), noted
this challenge. “I used to be this shy girl who used to come, sit, study, go.” Zuri had to unlearn
this behavior to be successful in the world outside of the feminine sphere. Many women had to
adapt in some way or another to function properly in the workplace.
Interviewer: So, it’s not going to be intuitive for a woman who is just entering the field to
make herself heard? That’s something she has to learn?
Aditi (F): I think so, yeah. It depends on the girl. I’ve always been very outspoken and
very social, like I can talk. But sometimes girls are very shy and quiet, and it’s just in
their nature to be quiet, and because they’re like that, they’ll be further suppressed and
not allowed to talk. In a meeting they will be waiting for everyone to talk before they
talk. I’m like, “You can’t do that! You have to get your point out,” because the manager
starts thinking that they don’t have any views or they’re not that involved in the project,
which is not true. That’s the way it works. You have to find your voice because if not

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people think you’re not doing any work when actually you are doing all the work, but
you have to show it. I know a couple of my friends who were like that when they entered
college and they have become more outspoken, more confident, but even now they tell
me that at work it’s kind of difficult for them.

Sudden immersion into the drastically different environment of college or the tech
workplace does not necessarily facilitate learning the necessary communicative skills to succeed.
Instead, women flounder, struggling to understand why they do not seem to be doing as well as
their male co-workers and unsure of which feminine communicative skills to keep unaltered and
which to modify. Here again, women save other women. Jhalak (F) went to college with some
women who were very reserved and introverted, “but, after a year or two they got mixed up with
us, and they felt more comfortable. They developed more confidence.” It is the other women in a
workplace or a classroom, those who have been around longer or had a more cosmopolitan
childhood, who teach the new recruits how to speak up for themselves without losing their
uniquely female identities.
Training women to be timid leads to another norm that Chandani (F) describes, one
which negatively impacts women in the workplace. “It’s a popular opinion, you know, that men
have more confidence. If there’s a new task, and you have a boy or a girl to do it, you pick the
boy.” Women are thus less likely to be selected for new and challenging projects in the
workplace. What is almost worse than this disparity is, as Oeshi (F) describes, how women buy
into it. “That's the sad part. So many girls don't understand that it's not the case that boys are
superior, and they won't push back.” When I asked her if she was different from other Indian
career women she knew, Jalsa (F) thought for a moment and then replied.
Jalsa: Slightly different, I guess. Because I am always- I grab opportunities and I am
always proactive. And they [other women] are like, “What if I’m not fit for this? What
if?”
Interviewer: What if I’m not qualified, essentially?

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Jalsa: Yes. So, one of my friends, she got an internship along with me and then she
looked at everyone and she said, “These people are from Berkeley. They are from
Stanford. How are we going to fit in?” I was like, “No, we’ll manage. We’ll learn a lot.”
Interviewer: “We’ll figure it out.”
Jalsa: We’ll figure it out, yes.
Interviewer: So, the women you know are less confident and less willing to take risks?
Jalsa: Yes, you could say that. Women are not confident with their technical skills, for
god knows what reason. They’re always like, “No, I won’t be able to do this.”
Interviewer: Even though they’ve already gotten this far-
Jalsa: Yes, they have. They know how to do it, but it’s still [hard]. At least the friends
that I have, they do that.

Indian women doubt their own skills and abilities, even when they have every reason to trust
them.
When asked what she wanted Indians to learn about women, Harita (F) replied,
Women have equal or even more intellect that you males have; we should be given a
chance to voice our opinions. Some women have inhibitions, they don’t feel comfortable
coming out their shell because of their male-dominated world. These women should be
given a chance to voice their opinions. They should be given a chance.

Confidence, or, “What Kind of Girl ARE You?”
“[If you don’t do what men want] then they say, ‘What kind of girl are you?’
I’m a girl. I’m impatient. I have a short temper. Am I allowed to do that?” -Raveena (F)

The women in the study had widely varying experiences concerning sex segregation at
work and school and widely varying ways that they, in turn, adapted to the co-ed, male
dominated IT workspace. The one theme for success that emerged in over two-thirds of the
female participants was confidence. The most valuable trait the women possessed for succeeding
in the workplace, the virtue they wanted to pass on to other Indian women trying to enter the IT
workforce was visible, undeniable, obvious confidence. Confidence has clear value in a
workplace for any persons but has value for Indian women. Even when entering the most
equitable workplace, Indian women are likely to possess more feminine communication styles

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where being quiet, selfless, and humble are prioritized. In less equitable workspaces, they are
typically outnumbered, tend to not fit in as well as men, are less likely to be given opportunities
such as promotions, and are more likely to be talked down to, ignored, or assigned menial or
repetitive tasks. Confidence is essential if women hope to succeed in such hostile climates.
Female participants developed their confidence in many ways, often in their formative
years. Nitara (F) credits her confidence to being independent at a young age. In a move that is
extremely uncommon for Indian girls, Nitara left home and attended a boarding school starting
in 6th grade. Isolated from her familial support system, Nitara was forced to advocate for her
own needs. Zuri (F) traveled a lot as a teenager and says that her confidence comes from the time
she spent traveling.
For some female participants, a male authority figure or role model was an important part
of learning confidence. Waida (F) has always been closer to her father than her mother and she
feels that spending so much time with him has embedded in her certain masculine traits. These
traits have given her a lot of confidence in her day-to-day life and at work. Indian women were
supposed to behave like they are delicate, but Waida could never be bothered. Raveena’s (F)
father was a similarly influential figure in her life and Raveena has seen how different she is
from many other women in the IT workforce because of his influence.
Interviewer: Have you had to use any strategies deliberately or maybe you realize later
you’re sort of doing it unconsciously, to be taken seriously by others in the workplace?
Raveena: No.
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself a pretty confident person?
Raveena: Yes.
Interviewer: Where do you think that confidence came from?
Raveena: I guess it’s something that I have my dad to thank for because that’s how he
raised me.

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Interviewer: Do you think that kind of confidence is common both among the males and
the females that you’ve seen in the profession?
Raveena: No. Unfortunately, no. I’ve had female co-workers who hardly speak.

Meher (F) is one of the female participants who attended an all-girls school for K-10, and then
moved to a co-ed school for junior college. Despite this early segregation, she is more
comfortable around men than women, and she still developed a masculine communicative style,
in large part because her closest childhood companion was a male relative.
Growing up actually, I told you about my cousin-brother who is eight years older than
me? I used to imitate him my entire childhood. And he was the only young person in my
childhood. So, I was more comfortable talking to guys I think, at a certain point in my
life…. Which is why I’ve never felt the problem of communicating [with men].

Though Aditi also had an older brother whom she emulated, she can credit her mother with
ensuring her confidence when communicating with men. Aditi’s mother was extremely timid,
and it inhibited her ability to work outside the home, despite having an engineering degree. Aditi
explained that her mom fit the stereotype of a traditional Indian female.
My mom was like that, a lot like that, and she was very sure that I should not be like that.
I think that’s why she made sure I knew how to behave around guys, how to talk to them
and not be intimidated by them. She didn’t know how to do it, but she made sure I
learned it somehow.

Aditi’s mother may have been timid, but she was also determined that feminine norms should not
dictate her daughter’s life.
Parul’s journey to developing confidence is ironic because it actually relied on Parul’s
isolation from men outside her family.
Parul: I studied in an all-girls school [until class 10] and then went from that place to
eventually be the only girl in the team and in the entire company.
Interviewer: It sounds like maybe you developed a lot of confidence interacting with
other people when you were in an all-girls school because there wasn't this sort of toxic
environment teaching women to be quiet.
Parul: Right, yeah. I think till class 10 I was in my own bubble. The world outside the
school was very different. I transferred schools in 10 plus one [11
th
grade] and I was

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taken aback when the girls in that school behaved very differently from the way girls in
my all-girls school behaved. In the all-girls school, people had been so outspoken and I
had been so outspoken, but at the new school, girls were the minority and it really felt
like they were the minority—the girls were not striving to the occasion, not speaking up,
and not participating in sports. And I was really wonderstruck, thinking, “What is wrong
with these girls?” They were already a minority and then they were so shy and they didn't
speak at all.
Interviewer: But luckily, at that point [when you entered a co-ed school] you had already
formed a lot of your perceptions of the world, whereas before then, you're a lot more
vulnerable, I think, to someone saying that you shouldn't speak up.
Parul: Right.
Interviewer: So, then you just learned how to transfer those skills.

For Parul, it was more beneficial to develop confidence first, and learn communication skills
later. Krishna also learned confidence first and communicative skills second. She has, over time,
adopted specific communicative habits to work well alongside men. She said she learned things
“mostly on the go” in college and her job. “I learned body language, how to talk, how far to
stand, where to look.” One of the main lessons she shared was the importance of being
straightforward when talking to men. “Not beating around the bush. Not trying to be subtle,”
especially when stating something that one needs.
Some women had to learn confidence later in life, often during undergraduate school or
at their first job. Krishna (F) did not grow up with brothers or cousin-brothers, but she had many
male friends in college, and has always felt comfortable around either gender, despite limited
exposure to men while growing up. She said it was easier communicating with women rather
than men, but at this point she felt she was equally skilled at talking to both. Tanvi (F) confessed
that her journey to confidence was still ongoing, but that the only way for anyone to develop
confidence was to be independent and self-motivated.
Interviewer: You have to fight for it?
Tanvi: Yeah. It's difficult to get permission, it's difficult to read for the exams, do this
process, everything. I didn't go to any consultancy [for college entrance exams]; I did

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everything on my own. I'm doing my master's now just for doing master's. I want to
improve myself; I want to make myself different. I think the entire process of preparing
on your own, that matters. You should do everything on your own. Only then will you
develop. What's the use if someone else does for you?
Interviewer: So that's a way that you developed confidence in your own abilities?
Tanvi: Yeah. I think I should develop more. I'm not feeling confident enough. I'm just
developing. I even used to feel like, “Oh I know they are superior to me.” Even after
getting an internship what I feel is, “No, my undergraduate school is not popular or not as
high standard as theirs.” I've seen people who are coming from very good institutions, so
they'll be more talented than me. This is my thought. Maybe after doing my master's I'll
develop [more confidence].

Tamanna (F) explains that working out solutions to difficult coding challenges is part of what
has built up her confidence. She can now offer advice to co-workers, even those who might be
higher in rank than her. “It gives me more confidence in telling other people [what to do],
whoever, no matter who is superior to me or who is junior to me…. That is the appealing factor,
I would say, in solving these problems.”
When You’re the Only One. Women in IT workplaces must learn to be confident when
they are outnumbered. Participants described how it can be both isolating and discouraging to
have no one to speak with who understands one’s day-to-day experiences. Parul (F), who was the
only woman not only in her team but in her entire company, said,
It's really a different transition. And initially getting around that takes time because
there's nobody to talk to and there are fewer interaction outside of work. But I just... I
learned my way through that because now I can confidently talk to anyone about
anything that I feel like. I have never felt that my opinion is less than anyone else's or that
it's not taken into account.

Jalsa (F) does not believe she changes her communicative style when speaking with men or
women, and while, in the beginning of her career, she may have been uncomfortable being the
only woman on a team, she has now adapted to this norm. Aditi (F) noted that she had been
isolated from other women starting in the 11
th
grade, “We are kind of used to that scenario. So,

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it’s not a very big deal. Like, I know how to conduct myself in a group of all men. It’s very
rarely that you feel extremely out of place.” Though Aditi did note that when she worked at one
major international corporation, she felt deliberately alienated from her all-male co-workers, but
argued that was because, “they were all guys from a certain area” rather than just random guys.
A few women reported feeling more comfortable around men than women, enabling
them to succeed in male-dominated workspaces more naturally. Meher (F), Yashica (F), Bimala
(F), and Suhana (F) all agreed they had always felt more comfortable around men than women.
Though Yashica’s workplace had a poor ratio of men to women—around seven to one—leaving
her vastly outnumbered, she claimed she preferred it this way.
Interviewer: Did you feel like that affected your experience?
Yashica: Not at all. I was very happy.
Interviewer: Because you’d rather work with guys?
Yashica: Yeah.
Interviewer: You’re just more comfortable?
Yashica: I don’t know… I’m always comfortable with men. I didn’t even have a lot of
girl best friends; I had a lot of guy best friends.… I didn’t have very good experiences
with girl best friends or girl peers or whatever. Now I always prefer guys.

Bimala does not believe her communicative behavior changes when speaking with men or
women. In fact, Bimala blames her inflexible communication style for stalling out potential
connections with women, because
I don’t know why, but it always turns out that my frequency matches more with guys
than with girls. I have always been too much focused on studies. I’ve never dressed up,
never did make-up, never shopped, and I just hate gossiping…. But if there’s a guy who’s
talking more about computer science or who’s talking about, say, politics, anything, it
just happens that I have more common topics to talk with him than with girls.

Here, Bimala is painting a picture, and not a very flattering one, of Indian femininity, while
simultaneously distancing herself from it. And of course she distanced herself, when what she

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has described is so vain, shallow, and materialistic. Similarly, Suhana (F) seemed to prefer a
male-dominated workspace because “boys are less drama and girls are more drama.”
Liked or Respected, but Rarely Both. Several women agreed that, in the workplace, it
was better to be respected than to be liked. Jhalak (F) believed it was important for women to be
more confident in their communication and be more willing to clearly state their wants and
needs.
If I am working at a place and someone tells me, “Can you do this?” I should be the one
to say, “No, I don’t want to do this. You can give me some other task.” But you should
not come under someone else’s control, thinking to yourself, “If he’s telling me, maybe I
should be doing what he says. How could I deny him, how could I say no?”

Unfortunately, Jhalak also pointed out that a woman speaking so directly and with such
confidence created its own problems in the workplace. Men were likely to resent a woman who
spoke like this. For Jhalak, it was more important to be in control of one’s own narrative than it
was to be friends with colleagues.
Tanvi (F) explained why it was important for working women to engage in conflict when
necessary: because men treated women in a way that necessitated confrontation to be respected.
Tanvi: During my work experience… sometimes I felt that my manager- I worked in
different teams but sometimes I felt that they were behaving in a certain way because I'm
a girl.
Interviewer: What kind of behaviors?
Tanvi: Like if you [the boss] are assigning some feature to a guy [to work on], it’s the
way you approach. If it is a guy, he will get a lot more respect and professionalism; if it is
a girl, she will get a strict response. Like, “You should do it, there is no other option for
you.”
Interviewer: Like telling you? As opposed to having a conversation?
Tanvi: Yeah.
Harita (F) described her communication style by saying, “I am a person who will not
hesitate to put my thoughts in front of anyone.” This confidence has led to clashes with male

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colleagues. Once, Harita and two men were in charge of a 300-person project, a national-level
event.
These two males were like, “We’ll make the decisions and she has to listen to it because
she’s a female, and she can’t take a stand for herself.” But they had a totally wrong
perception about me because I’m not a girl who is going to keep silent or who is going to
take an injustice…. Three times—I’ll tell you the number—three times they submitted
stuff without my knowledge.

When she protested, they told her, “’It’s ok! It was nothing.’” So, she reported them. After this,
Harita said, “they knew, they can’t mess with me.” After hearing this story, I pointed out that
even though she was triumphant, she had still lost something during this conflict. I told her, “But
that sucks, because then you have a contentious relationship with your co-leaders. Either they
like you or they take you seriously, but it’s not both.” Harita did not disagree or agree; instead,
she continued her story.
When I reported the issue, they were, of course, not happy with me. “Oh my god, you
shouldn’t have done that.” Then there was this cold thing going on between the two of
them and me for about a month. But later on, I had to make certain decisions without
their approval, and those decisions proved to be extremely successful for the event.
Everything got sorted, and then they were happy co-leaders.

Her response took me by surprise. She was unwilling to focus on how the situation was unfair or
even contemplate what she lost out on because of her gender. I tried to understand her point in
telling me this story.
Interviewer: It sounds like you feel that, no matter the situation, your job is to deal with
things as they come, no matter how they come. Even if it’s unfair. You deal with it. What
you described was not a fair situation. And you said, “I am not going to put up with this.”
Harita: Exactly.
Interviewer: And you dealt with it.
Harita: Yes.
Interviewer: And so you consider that scenario ultimately a success?

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Harita: Yeah, yeah. It is necessary for me to learn to tackle situations like that. I can’t
just keep crying, right? I can’t just keep complaining about it, because I have to grow up
to be a strong woman, right?
Interviewer: So, you consider this part of being a woman?
Harita: Yes, being a woman, always, always.

Harita describes herself as aggressive, stubborn, and headstrong. “And I’m glad that I’m this
way.” Similarly, at one point in the interview, Parul (F) said she did not really care what other
people thought of her. She was not defiant, just matter of fact.
Conclusion
Throughout Chapter 5, women have described the many disparities in treatment they
experience in the Indian tech workplace. Though many of the men in this study did not believe
that there were any differences in treatment between the sexes at work, women were far more
likely to recognize differences. These differences range from being seen as less capable of
handling challenging tasks to being denied promotion opportunities because bosses fear that
women will get married or get pregnant soon after hiring. The female participants in this study
learned to cope with these obstacles primarily by embracing a fiercely confident persona.
Confidence was the only universally mentioned weapon that Indian female programmers used
against the misogyny of their workspaces. In describing the role of confidence, women also
noted how difficult it often is for their peers to be as confidence, since so much of Indian society
trains women to be timid.

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Chapter 6: Discussion
This chapter discusses conclusions that can be drawn from the results. First, it presents
those key conclusions established in the Results chapters in one table. Next, it more thoroughly
discusses four themes that emerge through textual analysis. The first theme is The Problem with
Knowledge Work, which examines the drawn-out temporality of knowledge work such as
computer programming and how this disadvantages women workers. Buying into the Myth of
Meritocracy discusses both the harmfulness of IT’s meritocracy myth but also the ways that it
enables success in early-stage female computer programmers. Next, it provides a summation of
the positives and negatives of working in the IT industry for Indian women and then places this
breakdown in comparison with the work environment for women working in the United States’
IT industry. The final area of discussion is The Female Participants are the Jugaarus, which
proposes that the various paths that female Indian computer programmers utilize to succeed
indicate that they are a variant of jugaruus that their country has such affection for.
A Review of Key Conclusions
Concerning RQ1: Indian cultural norms impact women throughout their lives and thus
naturally, this impact spills over into the workplace. In childhood, female participants often
needed a strong-willed parental authority to teach them that they did not have decreased worth or
ability because of their ‘inferior’ gender, because if the messages streaming in from Indian
society are left uninterrupted, a girl will find herself naturally believing she is lesser. Once in the
workplace, Indian cultural norms concerning a woman’s supposed split attention between home
and work ensure that females are less likely to be given meaningful work or promotions.
Concerning RQ2, RQ3, RQ4, and RQ7: India has a plethora of culturally dictated
behavioral norms concerning women’s safety, femininity and chastity. These cultural norms

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inhibit women’s freedom of movement and require them to adhere to limiting and rigid social
standards; however, safety, femininity, and chastity concerns also served to drive young women
toward a career in the IT sector, as least in the short-term. Tech jobs are considered safe jobs for
women—spaces where their chastity will not be threatened—and are gender-neutral jobs, leaning
in a feminine direction. In fact, tech jobs have a wide range of benefits for Indian women that do
not exist or are not relevant for women in the United States’ tech industry (see Table 6.2).
In India, however, safety and chastity concerns do limit women’s ability to work as many
hours as men and reduce the likelihood that a woman will be included on essential tasks with
tight deadlines, for fear that she would be required to leave in the middle of crunch time because
of curfew restrictions. Likewise, expectations of femininity demand that, once married, women
prioritize family over work and cease work entirely when they have children. Concerns around
safety, femininity, and chastity get women in the front door of these companies but those same
factors end up limiting their success or driving them out of the workforce entirely.
Concerning RQ5A, RQ5B, RQ6A, RQ6B, and RQ8: Results concerning gender
disparities in the workplace indicate that though men do not believe there is sexism in the Indian
IT workplace, most women do see sexism in these spaces. Both genders bought into the myth of
meritocracy but for women, buy-in caused cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962) that had to be
reconciled, often through separating the self from ‘those other women’ who are the wrong kinds
of women, or by imagining oneself as a man in a woman’s body. Female Indian computer
programmers also display a variety of traits that assist them in thriving in the tech workplace,
regardless of sexism and oppressive cultural norms concerning gender. The most important and
most undeniable trait is the impression of unshakeable self-confidence. Self-confidence was not
only named and described frequently by the female participants, it was also evident in the ways

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they spoke and interacted with the interviewer. An offshoot of this self-confidence was not
caring about whether one has friends at work and being willing to be disliked rather than be
disrespected. Finally, female participants often described situations where they had to
deliberately unlearn a feminine behavior to succeed at work. This level of self-awareness
improved a woman’s work interactions.
Concerning RQ9 and RQ10: The first thing to note about young Indians’ perceptions of
desirable soft skills is that neither gender was able to name any soft skills and instead defaulted
back to naming logical thinking as the most important trait. This is indicative of the extent to
which the computer programming workplace in India has been coded masculine. Both genders
valued persistence and problem-solving, but women tended to name a wider range of
characteristics than men. Women, not men, valued adaptability, creativity, and eagerness to
learn, with no men naming adaptability as a desired trait. Women’s belief in the value of
adaptability and creativity are indicative of their use of jugaad in the workplace and in computer
programming. Indian women who become computer programmers, more than Indian men in the
same field and certainly much more than American male computer programmers, embody
jugaad. Table 6.1 provides a list of the ten research questions this dissertation asked as well as
the key conclusions that were reached concerning each research question.

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Table 6.1
Key Conclusions Drawn from Each Research Question
# Research Question Key Conclusions
RQ1
In what ways do Indian cultural
norms that concern gender impact
young women’s likelihood of
success in the tech workplace?
• They are less likely to be given meaningful tasks, given leadership roles, or
given promotions because of concerns around marriage.
• They are more likely to have learned self-defeating behaviors.
• Many relied on parents to teach them self-confidence that could combat
India’s hostile climate toward women.
RQ2
Do young female Indian computer
programmers identify the threat of
violence against women in the
public sphere as a factor
inhibiting their ability to work and
to advance in their careers?
• Yes. Many women mentioned how unsafe getting to and from work was for
them and the women they knew, and the impact on their jobs.
• Most female participants had found ways to avoid taking public transit or
walking to work.
• Women described frustration at having to be home before dark and relying
on the company’s hired car or bus service as transport.
RQ3
How do traditional notions of
Indian femininity impact young
female Indian computer
programmers’ ability to work and
to succeed in the workplace?
• Traditional notions of Indian femininity are antithetical to traits necessary to
succeed in an IT workplace. Women know this.
• Female participants learned how to undo their femininity ‘training.’
• Female participants knew many women who behaved in a more traditionally
feminine manner and consequently suffered at work.
RQ4
How do traditional notions of
Indian female chastity impact
young female Indian computer
programmers’ ability to work and
to succeed in the workplace?
• See RQ2. The primary impact of chastity/purity concerns is manifested in all
the precautions women take to get to work safely.
• Some women became computer programmers because it is considered to be
a safe and proper job for a young woman.
• Chastity concerns inhibited opposite-sex interactions at work.
RQ5A
RQ5B
Do young Indian women believe
that males and females are treated
differently in the tech workplace?
If so, what differences do they
describe?
• Yes. 63% of women believed that women are treated differently.
• Women reported a culture that believes men are superior, safety concerns
that inhibit work opportunities, and—because of low representation—the
ability of a few lazy or unintelligent women to make all other women look bad.
RQ6A
RQ6B
Do young Indian men believe that
males and females are treated
differently in the tech workplace?
If so, what differences do they
describe?
• No. 87% of men did not believe women are treated differently.
• Men proudly saw the IT workplace as a space of equality.
• Those men who did name differences mentioned the female body as a
source of disability and larger Indian culture as discouraging.
• 50% of men saw transport as potentially dangerous for women.
RQ7
What factors make computer
programming a desirable career
for young Indian women?
• See Table 6.2 for a review of the pros of working in the IT industry for
Indian women.
RQ8
What latent factors do female
Indian computer programmers
describe that enable their success
in the IT workforce?
• Obvious and undeniable self-confidence.
• Being willing to not be liked or have a friend group at work.
• Buying into the myth of meritocracy.
• Being able to recognize feminine behaviors in order to undo them.
RQ9
For young Indians, what soft
skills define an adept computer
programmer? Does this definition
differ across genders?
• Both genders initially named cognitive skills like logical thinking and had to
be prompted to name soft skills.
• Both genders value persistence and problem-solving.
• Women name a wider range of soft skills than men.
• Women, not men, value adaptability, creativity, eagerness to learn.
RQ10
What unique role does jugaad
play in female Indian computer
programmers’ success in the IT
workplace?
• Women more than men identify adaptability and creativity—two key traits
of jugaad—as necessary for good computer programming.
• Women learn jugaad on the job through experience; see Figure 5.5.
• Female participants embodied jugaad not just at work but also in their lives.

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The Problem with Knowledge Work
Knowledge work such as computer programming is seen by many in India as a career
virtually designed for a middle-class woman who wants to work, in part because a woman can
work in the office, safely commute home, and then continue her work as a spouse and/or mother.
As Singh et al. (2017) describe, work-family balance is not as simple as hours spent at home and
hours spent at work. As an experience, it consists of three parts: time balance, satisfaction
balance, and involvement balance (Singh et al., 2017). Time balance is the most obvious and is
what people, especially Indian men, think of when they think of work-life balance. How many
hours is a woman devoting each day or week to work and how many hours to home? Satisfaction
balance refers to the amount of satisfaction that people get out of each of their roles; part of the
participants’ enthusiasm in the interviews stemmed from the immense satisfaction they drew
from their work. Unfortunately, a daughter or wife’s satisfaction with either area of her life is
low on the list of concerns for many Indian families, especially in-laws; however, this poor
treatment of daughters-in-law is well known and thus taken into consideration when evaluating
married women’s work performance. The final element of work-life balance is involvement
balance. Here is where female Indian computer programmers experience a large disadvantage,
made all the larger by IT culture’s refusal to acknowledge that such a thing even exists.
Involvement balance concerns levels of psychological involvement in activities at work
and home (Singh et al., 2017). The human mind can only hold a limited number of things in its
attention at any one time; even processes that are occurring on a more unconscious level still
require ‘space’ in the brain. Both direct focus on and an unconscious awareness of a topic are
cognitively taxing.

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In her essay on Irish computer programmers at work, O’Carroll (2008) theorizes that
knowledge work produces high proportions of unpaid labor because the work continues long
after a worker has left the office. “Employees are not aware of the time spent on these activities
as time spent working. These activities, while being an essential element of the work process, are
also seen as peripheral to it” (O’Carroll, 2008, p. 185). Workers mulling over problems while at
home perform free labor that is vitally important to the success of knowledge work. The
obstacles that arise in fields such as computer programming require time to solve—hours spent
in contemplation, either consciously or unconsciously. However, “These software workers have
internalized a particular business ethic, an approach to work in which only the output, visible and
measurable, is counted as ‘real’. The process that leads to the output fades from view”
(O’Carroll, 2008, p. 187). Thus, most workers are unaware of the amount of unpaid labor they
perform.
The problem for female computer programmers in India is that their involvement balance
cannot favor work because the circumstances of their lives dictate a greater focus on home. Even
if a female programmer fully devotes her mind and energy to her work while at the office, once
she goes home, she must manage a wide variety of tasks that all take cognitive resources. There
is no more room left in her brain to unconsciously mull over a tricky work problem that she
needs to solve. In contrast, for an Indian man, cognitive responsibilities cease once he walks in
his front door. Therefore, since it is not burdened with other cognitive tasks, his brain can
continue to operate on an unconscious level. This is true even if he does not realize such
cognitive work is occurring.
Both the male and the female employee return to the office the next morning. Because the
man has had a full evening of cognitive processing, he has made progress towards the goal; he

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has suggestions ready for the next step to take. If she had been given the same time and space for
cognitive work as the man, the woman would be equally like to have something to contribute.
Because her brain was otherwise occupied, she contributes nothing. Now, the male worker
appears more intelligent, more committed, or more likely to take initiative than the female
worker. Because this disparity in work-life involvement balance is not acknowledged, any
advantages he achieves over her appear natural and justified.
Buying into the Myth of Meritocracy
The myth of meritocracy was a belief that was present in virtually all of the participants’
interviews. For instance, many participants described coding as something that any person could
do if they just worked hard enough. This claim flies in the face both of their elite backgrounds
and the research showing how overwhelmingly middle-class IT workers are.
As the capable and confident female participants demonstrated, it is possible to succeed
as an Indian woman in a male-dominated career. Some participants even make it sound easy.
About being the only woman, Aditi (F) said,
It’s not that you have to be more masculine. It’s just that you have to be more assertive
and be sure that your voice gets through. Sometimes with a lot of guys it can be like
they’re overpowering you in a way. They’ll just forget that you’re there, and you have to
make sure that’s not the case, that they don’t just ignore you because you’re a girl.

However, note that many of the women had a special circumstance that enabled them to learn
behaviors necessary for success. Some had fathers or brothers after whom they modeled their
behavior, others deliberately immersed themselves in extracurriculars that would force them to
socialize with men, and a few were lucky enough to be born with outgoing, confident, and
aggressive temperaments that predisposed them to careers dominated by men. In general, though,
how are Indian women supposed to learn all the communicative styles and mannerisms that will
facilitate success?

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The solution seems obvious: The working woman must adapt her behavior to the
workplace culture. However, young women often do not realize how detrimental traditional
feminine communicative behaviors can be to their careers. As discussed earlier in this report,
there is a common assumption in India that women are more emotionally fragile than men. Thus,
women are spoken to with more consideration for their feelings than for truthfulness, making
honest feedback or critique from male superiors and co-workers unlikely. Because Indian IT is
still overwhelmingly male-dominated, female leadership is virtually non-existent, eliminating the
possibility of woman-to-woman mentor-mentee relationships and the honest feedback these
relationships facilitate. In the face of such limited feedback, female IT workers must somehow
identify which of their behaviors is hindering their advancement, unlearn those behaviors, find
out which behaviors could serve as more workplace-appropriate replacements, and then learn
those new behaviors. Though this lack of exposure to ‘proper’ behavior is not an insurmountable
obstacle to success, it had a larger impact than many of my interviewees were willing to
acknowledge. This is one example of the ways the myth of meritocracy in the Indian IT industry
has a negative impact on women.
Ironically, however, the myth of meritocracy also has a positive effect on women,
especially when they are first entering the field. This belief that one is judged on merit alone
gives women hope that once they enter the IT workforce, they will be judged on something other
than their gender. It encourages them to pursue IT careers. It is only at the point when a woman
has children that she must fully reconcile this meritocracy myth with the inequal treatment she
receives as a mother at work. The persuasive power of this myth is evident in how many women
reported that their workplaces had been spaces of total equality, despite them also providing
examples of sexism they had encountered.

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Female-Friendly Indian IT Work
After lengthy analysis of the nuances of women’s work in the India IT sector, it is
clarifying to simply list the positive and negative aspects of working in this career. Table 6.2
provides this list. Because of the unique situation that Indian female programmers find
themselves in, the positives far outweigh the negatives. This is true in the number of advantages
outweighing the number of disadvantages but also in the weight of the individual elements, as
the positives are far ‘heavier’ for Indian women than the negatives. For instance, the ability to
delay marriage by several years without causing a scandal is a major advantage, something that
is likely to far outweigh a lack of female mentors. For a direct comparison, though few to no
part-time options are available, companies are extremely eager to retain female workers and will
let them take extensive maternity leaves or give them reduced loads if they are overburdened
with childcare. Likewise, it may be a masculine work culture but 1) this is not unusual for
virtually every field of employment in the country and 2) in India, computer programming is
unique in its ability to allow the true skill of an individual to make itself apparent, regardless of
gender. The value of computer programming is increased further when one considers that there
are few career options available to middle-class women.

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Table 6.2
Comparison of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Working in India’s IT Sector as a Woman
Advantages Disadvantages
+
1:2 ratio of women to men, one of the
highest in the country
- Few female mentors and role models
+
Blatant sexual harassment is taken very
seriously and severely punished
- Few to no part-time options available
+
Both genders learned how to code at the
same age, giving neither the advantage
- Masculine work culture
+
Career arises as a natural progression from a
commonly obtained college degree
- Myth of meritocracy is active
+ Credible way to delay marriage -
On occasion, people will assume a woman is
less gifted at STEM jobs
+
Companies are happy to accommodate a
woman’s need to care for children
-
Safety restrictions cause women to miss out
on job opportunities
+
Extremely safe workplace, with safe
transport provided
-
Tech advances so rapidly that women who
give birth struggle to catch up
+ Job is unlikely to damage reputation -
Will be denied advancement opportunities
because of gender
+
Job where women can be respected for their
expertise and ability

+ May open the possibility of overseas travel
+
More likely to be welcoming to women than
almost any other job in the country

+ Pay is excellent
+
Physical strength is not a factor in ability;
nothing physically taxing at all

Now consider which of these pros and cons remains relevant when transferred to the
context of female tech workers in the United States. The points that are relevant to female
workers in the United States have their icons highlighted in blue. Out of 13 pros, only two are

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both relevant to and true for women from the United States. Out of eight cons, all but two are
relevant to and true for women from the United States. This finding harkens back to Trauth et
al.’s (2008) question about “why some women persist in the IT field in the face of systemic
gender biases in both education and the workplace” (p. 8). Here is a potential answer to that
question.
Though both the United States and India have, in many ways, hostile work environments
for women in the IT sector, the unique sociocultural influences, the educational system, and the
specific nature of women’s employment in India combine to make working in the IT industry
seem like one of the most desirable options available. In contrast, the United States has a variety
of fields of employment available to women, many of which are dominated by women. Women
have other options for well-paying, respectable employment that are likely to have a far less
toxic masculine work culture, so why would they subject themselves to a tech career?
Women from the United States also experience a vastly different education system—one
which prioritizes learning a wide range of subjects, but none very deeply. As a product of socio-
cultural conditioning, the US educational system also pushes women out of STEM tracks and
does not encourage girls to learn computer programming at a young age. This is a double
disadvantage, since women believe they are naturally deficient in their STEM abilities and then
have this confirmed when they attempt to learn to code and quickly realize how much more
advanced are the male coders (who have been coding since a young age). The combination of
these factors results in women believing they are fundamentally unqualified for careers in
computer programming and then observing how miserable women who work in IT seem to be
and thinking, “Why would I even want to work there? There are so many other jobs I could get
that would be far more pleasant.”

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Thus, the unique combination of factors in India results in vastly different outcomes than
the United States, despite it being the same field of employment in both countries. This finding
confirms Poster’s (2013) argument that different international contexts produce “different kinds
of discriminating environments” and that there might be “hidden advantages in these settings” (p.
42). These differing contexts can be considered discriminatory structures that have unique
impacts on their members. Despite, and in part because of, India’s patriarchal and misogynistic
culture, women in India are more likely to become computer programmers than women in the
United States.
The Female Participants are the Jugaarus
As was mentioned in the introduction chapter, the female participants are peripheral
practitioners, people who exist on the boundaries of multiple systems and thus belong in many
worlds but inhabit no world fully. Takhteyev (2012) argues that it is valuable to look “at people
who inhabit simultaneously two different contexts” (p. 2). This is because people who exist in
multiple different communities must navigate between those communities, finding ways to
translate between them. As Takhteyev explains,
This nexus of relations creates a context for individual actions, a context that individuals
can ‘inhabit’ in ways that can be likened to how they inhabit physical places, and to
which they can have commitments—commitments that must be balanced with those to
the local place and the national community. (p. 5)

The translation process that occurs as a result of peripheral practitioners’ attempts to balance
their commitments to disparate communities results in a “local bricolage of foreign and native
pieces” (Takhteyev, 2012, p. 23).
In the case of female Indian computer programmers as peripheral practitioners, there are
four worlds that must be continually realigned, four worlds that the women must be able to
communicate between: Silicon Valley and India, as well as the masculine space of work and the

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feminine space of home. Male Indian computer programmers need to navigate two of those four
worlds: Silicon Valley and India. American male computer programmers only exist in the one
world that is summed up in Silicon Valley. What does this mean for Indian computer
programmers of either gender? Takhteyev (2012) explains,
Peripheral practitioners are judged—collectively and individually—on their ability to
represent the global practice, to solve local problems not with local solutions but as
central members would have done—for example, developing a software solution as it
would be done ‘over there in Silicon Valley.’ p. 41

Globalization and the corresponding rise of the IT industry in India thus resulted in “a ‘diasporic’
situation of the peripheral practitioners, who engage simultaneously in two cultures: the local
mainstream culture and the globalizing world of the practice” (Takhteyev, 2012, p. 6).
Navigating between two worlds is already a challenge, but Indian women must navigate
between two more. Because Indian society places such a high priority on females’ femininity and
womanhood, it is not an option for women to simply neglect or disregard this world; however,
most of the personality traits and behaviors that are learned in the feminine space of the home are
antithetical to those traits needed to succeed in the IT workplace. Thus, women must adapt,
shifting their personality to match their surroundings, while still retaining their own identity.
These women craft a bricolage of practices that best suits their unique needs.
Jugaad—so like Hebdige’s concept of bricolage (1979)—is imagined in India as
something practiced by the poor, but this conception is highly relative. Wealth in India spans a
vast range, and this expanse becomes even larger when placed against wealth in the United
States. In a similar way, jugaad is for use by those who are in some way resource scarce; jugaad
is used by people who need it, and who are creative enough to make it happen.
Women in India who want to become computer programmers find themselves continually
in a position of resource scarcity, though the resource needed may not be monetary. Women in

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India are denied a variety of resources as conditions of their existence; they are denied access to
equal levels of education, to freedom of movement, to freedom of expression, to network
connections with members of the opposite sex, to the right to a life without children, often to the
right to work outside the home. Once women are married or have children, they will be denied
the resource of time. Self-confidence is rarely thought of as a resource, but its absence functions
like resource deprivation. Self-confidence, too, is often denied to women, who are taught that
they are inferior to men.
Every woman who becomes a successful computer programmer has had to jugaad her
way into this role, because the system was not designed to accommodate her needs, was not
designed to contain her peripheral nature. The female participants did not see themselves as
jugaarus. If anything, they would sometimes seek to differentiate themselves and their work from
people who used jugaad, since jugaad could be linked to shoddy workmanship or selfish neglect
of one’s responsibilities. But the behaviors that the women described, the stories they told about
how they came to be where they are, were full of examples of jugaad in action. The women
possessed all the necessary traits to practice many jugaads; they were desperate for a solution to
their problem and thus were highly motivated to make things work no matter what; as a part of
their womanhood they experienced scarcity of key resources; they valued creativity and
adaptability in their work—both crucial to a successful jugaad; and they had the confidence and
willpower to defy convention in order to achieve their goals. The female participants’ adaptive
behaviors enabled extraordinary success.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion
This conclusion section briefly reviews the primary claims of the dissertation and offers
reasons for their relevance and significance. It then goes over some potential limitations of the
study and how they were compensated for, if compensation was possible. Next, it looks at a few
potential future directions for this research. Finally, it shares some concluding thoughts from the
female participants themselves—messages they wanted to share with the female computer
programmers who will come after them.
Summation of Primary Dissertation Claims
This dissertation argues that the unique circumstances of Indian women’s lives facilitate
employment in IT work as computer programmers. Unique circumstances include one’s
upbringing and formative experiences, one’s education, one’s culture and values, and one’s
range of access to opportunities afforded other members of the social group. This claim is
surprising, given India’s reputation as a patriarchal and misogynistic country; however, the
dissertation does not argue that India is fueling women’s movement toward computer
programming because the country is egalitarian. This dissertation argues the opposite: The
unique forms of discrimination present in India combine to—entirely incidentally—produce an
environment that encourages women to pursue careers in computer programming. This
environment can be contrasted against the environment in the United States. In both countries,
hostile and misogynistic forces are at work to constrain women’s freedoms and opportunities. In
both countries, the workplace is a masculine space with masculine norms. In both countries,
women are outnumbered by men in the IT industry. And yet, the unique forms of discrimination
present in the United States combined to—entirely incidentally—produce an environment that is

197
actively hostile to women’s participation in computer programming. The statistics on women in
computer programming in the two countries reflect that reality.
What, then, is the value of this knowledge? If Silicon Valley and the tech industry as a
whole want to increase diversity, as they claim they do, then the United States needs to learn
from India. The first thing to learn is that it is impactful to frame computer programming as an
activity for either gender, not just for males. This framing must start young, because boys often
learn their first programming languages in their early teens or before. Any amount of time that
boys spend tinkering with computers while girls pursue other activities is time that will come
back to haunt those girls at a future date, when they find themselves in classes with men for
whom computer operations just seem so much more natural.
Second, the United States needs to unlearn its bias against women in STEM fields. Until
it does, both men and women will see women as out of place in spaces of technology. India’s
educational system has many faults, but one thing it does right is pushing both genders from a
young age to master STEM subjects with no available ‘out’ for people who would rather not
pursue those subjects. Everyone, of either gender, will learn those subjects; everyone, of either
gender, will be expected to demonstrate mastery. This places men and women on equal footing
as they begin their undergraduate degrees. It also forces women to participate in STEM subjects
for long enough to recognize that societal notions of women’s inferior abilities in these courses is
demonstrably untrue. It gives women a fighting chance.
Third, tech companies in the United States must actively craft environments that are
welcoming to women. This does not mean decorating the office in shades of pink or having a
diversity seminar once a month. Though India continues to be patriarchal and misogynistic,
Indian IT companies aggressively recruit women to work for them and they incentivize female

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workers in a variety of ways that are concrete and meaningful rather than superficial. IT
companies observe women’s greatest needs and the biggest barriers women face to employment
and they focus their efforts on those obstacles.
Women cannot get to work safely on public transit? The company will hire a private car
service to transport the women for free. Women need time off to give birth? The company will
extend the Indian government’s already generous paid maternity leave. Mothers falling behind
on the latest technology and unable to keep up with their co-workers? The company will create a
free course specifically designed for women in this situation that teaches them everything they
missed while away. A woman has one uncomfortable conversation with a man who verbally
sexually harasses her? The man is not only immediately fired, he is also blacklisted so that he
can no longer work at any major tech company in India. A female new hire is struggling to adapt
to company culture because she has no female mentors? Various male superiors will
enthusiastically take on the challenge of advising her, focusing extra attention on her needs
precisely because she is a woman, not despite her being a woman. The India IT industry wants
women and they prove it through their actions. It is hard to think of an example of a large
American tech company going to the same lengths to accommodate women’s needs. The Indian
IT industry meets women where they are at while the American IT industry implements methods
to increase diversity and then demands that women stretch and contort to fit themselves around
the diversity efforts. Only one of these scenarios results in change. The other only looks
attractive in theory.
All this is not to say that the United States is inferior to India in its treatment of women in
every way. It is to say that the ways India discriminates have produced more favorable results for
women in computer programming than the United States. The United States as a culture is much

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more egalitarian between the sexes, especially when it comes to responsibilities in the home and
with children. The primary reason that Indian women leave the IT workforce is that they do not
have enough time to be wife, mother, and employee. There is only so much IT companies can do
to fix this; the changes must occur on a cultural level. As the World Economic Forum’s
executive summary on the industry gender gap succinctly states,
Interventions to promote gender parity do not work as a checklist of actions that will each
independently produce results. They must be accompanied by a holistic set of priorities
and long-term commitments, and by a deep understanding of the corporate, industry, and
cultural context, as well as the organizational culture and local policy environment.
(2016, p. 7)

The female participants knew this. That is why Raveena said, “They put women’s rights into a
bubble called culture.” If women’s freedom is tied up in tradition and Indian-ness, women will
remain bound up in its web. For female Indian programmers to move to the next step of their
development—long-term careers in IT work with promotions to leadership positions—the larger
culture must shift, beginning to separate women’s identity from cooking, cleaning, and childcare.
Limitations of the Study
There were limitations to this study that should be acknowledged. First, I am a white
woman residing in the United States who was trying to create a connection with Indian people. I
very clearly did not share their experiences, or their cultures and languages. The contrast
between the participants and I was heightened whenever I would ask men questions concerning
sexism in India. Likely, some level of social desirability bias took place because the men did not
want to share anti-feminist views in front of a Western woman. Some level of social desirability
bias also took place with respondents of both genders where they may have answered certain
questions in a way that portrayed India in what they saw as a more favorable light. Thus, this is

200
social desirability bias not on behalf of one’s self but on behalf of one’s country as an extension
of the self.
The participant pool had some complicating factors. Though the sample size was enough
for the interview method of data collection, it is a small sample from which to draw conclusions
about India’s IT workforce, especially when considering India’s extreme diversity across
regions. The study also had an uneven number of male and female participants; this was an
intentional choice, since women’s voices were the ones I wanted to focus on, but it decreases the
legitimacy of all the number-based comparisons between women and men.
Because data was collected from universities with master’s programs in computer
science, the age range of participants was narrow, and all participants were under the age of 30.
In some ways this is advantageous. Indian has an extremely young IT workforce, and women
tend to leave the workforce around the age of 30, so my study reflects this demographic.
Regardless, I strove to be clear throughout the dissertation that this sample consists of people
who are in the early stages of their careers; naturally, this shapes their perceptions, making them
more optimistic, for one thing, and less traditional, for another.
There was a selection bias in effect since the only female Indian computer programmers I
was speaking with were the extremely successful ones. There was no representation from women
who never scored high enough on their entrances exams to be admitted to a decent college, nor
from women who ended up in BPO jobs or dead-end tech jobs. My study was filled with hard-
working, highly intelligent, passionate, well-spoken, wealthy, middle-class Indian women whose
life’s narratives thus far has been one primarily of success. Though this description reflects the
demographic of female Indian computer programmers, it is still a perspective that is incredibly
skewed towards the elite, in terms of intellect and socio-economic factors.

201
Future Directions of Research
This research provides a solid foundation on which future scholars who are interested in
the differing experiences of American and Indian female computer programmers can build. It
would be worth investigating women’s experiences in the United States further so a more
comprehensive comparison between the two countries could be made. Also, as China is one of
the world’s largest producers of computer programmers, it would be worthwhile to conduct a
comparison between the three nations. A researcher based in India or with access to that
population could interview women working as computer programmers who 1) are married and
have children or 2) have not achieved the same levels of success as some of the female
participants in this study. This research would provide insight into women’s level of awareness
of the myth of meritocracy after they experienced the sexism woven into the process by which
working women have children and return to their jobs. Further exploration of the unique ways
that Indian IT offices are both masculine spaces but also welcoming to women is advised, as any
conclusion drawn from this study could be applied to tech workplaces in the United States.
Finally, there is an excellent paper waiting to be written that demonstrates how many of
the problems articulated in this study are not unique to India but are present in most American
women’s lives. There is a tendency to ‘other’ the Indian and see the country as simply less
culturally developed than the United States. The truth is, almost all the issues female computer
programmers in India experience are experienced here as well, just more cleverly disguised so as
to seem egalitarian or at least natural.
Some Messages to Future Female Indian Computer Programmers
During our interview, Tanvi (F) told an anecdotal story about her adventures participating
in a company-wide scavenger hunt called a ‘rally.’ This story—through its illumination of

202
India’s protective attitude towards women—is somehow both heartwarming and unsettling. The
scavenger hunt involved working in teams of two or four, in scooters or cars, traversing the city,
following clues. Tanvi teamed up with her female friend and they hopped on Tanvi’s scooter and
began exploring. Tanvi explained why her participation was so unusual. “Girls know to drive
scooties [scooters] and all but they don’t participate in the rallies.” Very soon into the journey,
Tanvi and her friend took a wrong turn and got lost.
And we were going, going, going. We crossed the Tamil Nadu [Indian state] border. And
we missed the route, we went wrong, and people started searching for us, but we didn’t
know. So, we had lost the spot but still we had a clue [to work with], so we asked the
people around there and the people in the road, and they directed us to the next location.
There, they told us, "We thought we lost you and we sent someone, he was looking hard
for you.” Since we lost the route, they sent someone and he was looking for us! He was
roaming around and looking for us. And the people were very much worried about me.

During this rally, my friend and I, we used to speak a lot, we used to scold each other, we
used to fight, and we used to roam. We were not interested in winning the game, it's just
participation itself. But, still, I could find the surprise in their eyes when we reached that
final spot. After we reached the end, everybody was asking about me apparently. When
we reached that spot, everyone was surprised. Literally, they said, "Oh wow, how did you
come, how did you come?" Everybody was asking us, you know.

They put on some background music—like, cinematic music for giving certificates. They
distributed the prizes for everyone and then they said, “We have distributed prizes for all
the prize winners and now we are going to announce a special category for people who
didn't win the game, but they won all our hearts.” And we were so surprised to have won
something. It was the most wonderful experience in my life.

But I wouldn't have gone to that place if I had known the destination. I called up my
father afterwards and I told him about it. He said, "If you told me I would have come in
back of you driving my car. I would have protected you." He told me that. I was happy
that I didn’t tell him. I wouldn’t have wanted to disturb him so then I wouldn't have
participated.

Throughout this story, Tanvi articulates the thrill and elation of journeying into the unknown,
meeting new people, and conquering a daunting challenge. It was an extraordinary thing for her
and her friend just to participate, “to roam” not for winning’s sake but for the sake of being
present in the world. How tragic that a scavenger hunt on a scooter would be so dangerous that

203
Tanvi would not have participated if she had known in advance what the journey would entail.
How oppressive to be so unsafe when stepping outside that her own father was ready to drive his
car behind her scooter, tailing her like a bodyguard or secret agent all the way to the finish. I
could practically feel the thrill of freedom as Tanvi described her adventure, but her admission,
“It was the most wonderful experience in my life,” made me sad. The female participants in my
study were powerful people with big dreams; though no one is meant to be caged up, these
women seemed particularly ill-suited for it. They deserved far better than what their country was
giving them.
Indian women endure a drastic reduction in agency because of the continual threat
presented by their fellow citizens. Indian society works, in many ways, to make its women small,
to make their lives small, to reduce them down to nothing more than self-abnegation and
servility, a self that survives only by denying its own right to exist. In the face of all this, the
women I interviewed were brave and powerful. Their presence filled up the room and their
confidence sometimes overwhelmed my own. Each one had fought for her successes and was
determined to take her one life and “make it big,” as Waida (F) said.
Inspired by their power, I asked each woman at the end of her interview if there was
anything, she would like to share that she had not had a chance to say. Often, she would pause
for a moment and then direct her final statement to the other Indian women who were trying to
become computer programmers themselves. I conclude this dissertation by sharing some of their
messages.
Tanvi: What is holding women back is that Indians keep on restricting girls. If a girl
wants to go out of her comfort zone, they are pulling her back and putting her in it again.
Throughout their schooling, girls in India are always in their comfort zones. When the
time comes to take a step out, you are so comfortable where you are at that you don’t
realize your life isn’t in your comfort zone. Your real life is somewhere outside of your

204
comfort zone. If you are not used to going outside of your comfort zone, then you’ll have
to live and die in it. That's what I think people are doing to girls in India.

Pahal: I think most of the women who are pursuing computer science do not end up
working long term. They might do it for a couple of years and then they get married. But
things are beginning to change, and I want them to change more. I want everybody to be
independent, to not just rely on the men or someone superior in the family. I want women
to stand for themselves. I want them to have opinions, I want them to say things and raise
their voices when something bad is happening. I want them to stand up. I know people in
India who just want to suppress things because they don’t want people to notice or they
don't want to make a scene out of it. But I want women to make a scene out of it! Make
things change that way.

Sai: We should not think that we are less in comparison to men. I do that a lot. I get
intimidated by others so much. Be confident. Pursue what you want.

Harita: The aggressive nature you see in me is because of the situations I have faced. I
have had people look down upon me because I’m a girl, or because I’m Indian, or
because of my skin color. But I have always been really stubborn and really headstrong
about my dreams. And I’m glad that I’m this way. Women have equal or even more
intellect than males; we should be given a chance to voice our opinions. And that is
exactly what I'm doing now. I think some woman feel inhibitions or they don't feel that
comfortable coming out of their shell because of their entire male-dominated world. Such
women should be given a chance.

Zuri: Women in India face many safety issues—at night there is one set of issues, during
the day there is another. For a woman, just going to work is a gamble. Will she or will
she not be raped? These are the issues that you need to take care of first if you want
women to become computer programmers in India. You have so many different issues
concerning women that reaching the point where you can even try to help a woman who
codes? Well, that becomes a very long process. Very few women are fortunate enough to
have the resources to pay for things on their own. Like me, I am quite fortunate to have
those resources and to be here in the United States where I can speak so openly. But I
cannot look at some other woman and say to her, “Why are you not successful like me?”
because I know she didn’t get the resources I got. In the end, all an Indian woman can do
is help other women. When you know there is a need, go and help them.

Deepa: We should not be scared of what we want to do. We are capable of doing
everything better than men. It's just that push, it's just that support we need. We just need
to let go of all the restrictions and all the constraints. We have to fight. And that's the way
we can achieve everything, I think.

205
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Appendix A:
Semi-Structured Interview Guide
1. Demographics
1.1. Full name
1.2. Age
1.3. Home city and state
1.4. Parents’ home state
1.5. Religion
1.6. Caste
1.7. Tribe/Sub-caste
1.8. Socio-economic status
1.9. Languages
1.10. Current degree
1.11. Degree progress
1.12. Undergraduate degree and university
1.13. Previous jobs held
1.14. Future career goals (10-15 years)
1.15. Marital status
1.16. Parents’ employment
1.17. Siblings’ ages, genders, educations, and careers
2. Background
2.1. Did you go to public or private school in India?
2.2. Did you receive special training for the college entrance exams?
2.3. What are your parents’ attitudes towards your education?
2.4. What are your parents’ levels of education?
2.5. Why did you choose to go into computer science?
2.6. Who is paying for your education? Did they save up for that?
2.7. What are your family’s assumptions of your eventual marriage? What are your plans?
2.8. Why did you not attend an Indian graduate program?
2.9. Are you planning on going back to India or staying in the US? Why?

223
3. Code
3.1. What was the first coding language you learned? How old were you?
3.2. What coding languages do you know now? Do you have a favorite? Why?
3.3. What are the ideal personal qualities to be a good coder?
3.4. Describe the step-by-step process you go through to solve a coding task.
3.5. When you produce code, what are the associated emotions you experience?
3.6. Is your code often part of a collaborative project?
4. Jugaad
4.1. How would you define jugaad in English?
4.2. What connotation does jugaad have in India?
4.3. Is jugaad appropriate in the workplace?
4.4. Have you used jugaad in your work?
5. Gender
5.1. Do you feel that gender has impacted your working experiences? [FEMALE] OR Can
you imagine any ways your working or educational experience would have been
different, had you been a woman instead of a man? [MALE]
5.2. What was the gender ratio in your undergraduate class? What was the gender ratio at
each job or internship you held? Did that impact you in any way?
5.3. Were your supervisors and mentors males or females?
5.4. Have safety concerns impacted your work in India or the US? How did you commute to
work? Did you work long hours?
5.5. Have you heard about or experienced sexism or sexual harassment in the workplace?
5.6. How should a woman behave to excel at her job in the Indian tech work force? Does that
differ from the cultural ‘ideal woman’? [FEMALE] OR In your community, what is the
ideal woman like? [MALE]
6. Wrap-up
6.1. Is there anything you’d like to say that you haven’t had a chance to say?
6.2. Can I contact you in the future with any questions or clarifications?

224
Appendix B:
Map of India Distributed to Participants to Mark Home State

225
Appendix C:
Recruitment Emails
Email sent to USC:
Seeking female, Indian students enrolled in the computer science master’s program at
USC willing to be interviewed about their experiences. Compensation provided at a rate
of $20 per every 30 minutes.
Most interviews last approximately one hour. PLEASE NOTE: This study is only open to
women of Indian nationality. If you are interested, please
click https://calendly.com/chrisrobbins/jugaad-interviews to sign up.
Email clrobbin@usc.edu with any questions or concerns.

Email sent to ASU:
Seeking computer science graduate students of Indian nationality willing to be
interviewed about their experiences growing up in India and their interest in computer
programming. Compensation provided at a rate of $15 per every 30 minutes. Most
interviews last approximately one hour. If you are interested, please
click https://calendly.com/chrisrobbins/jugaad-interviews-asu to sign up.
Email clrobbin@usc.edu with any questions or concerns.

226
Appendix D:
Consent Form
INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR EXEMPT NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
You are invited to participate in an interview conducted by Christiana Robbins, a doctoral candidate at the
University of Southern California (USC), because you are a computer science student aged 18 and up.
Research studies, including interviews, include only people who voluntarily choose to take part. This
document explains information about this interview. You should ask questions about anything that is
unclear to you.
PURPOSE OF THE INTERVIEW
This study uses interviews in an attempt to understand the experiences of Indians who are enrolled in a
master’s program for computer science or computer engineering at universities in the United States.
PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
If you agree to take part in this study, your interview will be recorded via an audio recorder. If you are
not comfortable being audio recorded, you should not participate in this interview. You do not have
to answer any questions you don’t want to. You can choose to quit the interview at any point, and you
will still be compensated for the portion of time you participated. There are no costs to you for your
participation in the study. The location of the study is still to be determined.
PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
USC: You will be paid $20.00 in cash or via Venmo for each 30 minutes of participation in this interview,
up to a maximum of $60.00, i.e., 90 minutes.
ASU: You will be paid $15.00 in cash or via Venmo for each 30 minutes of participation in this
interview, up to a maximum of $45.00, i.e., 90 minutes.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Your responses will be held confidential to the best of the researcher’s abilities and will not be associated
with your identity. At the completion of the study, any direct identifiers obtained (such as your name) will
be destroyed and de-identified data will be maintained for up to three years for future research use. Audio
recordings will be kept for the duration of the research. The recordings are confidential; no identifying
part of the recordings will be listened to by anyone except the researcher. Data from the study, including
recordings, will be kept for no more than three years from the date of the interview. If you do not want
your data used in future studies, you should not participate. The researcher and the University of Southern
California’s Human Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and
monitors research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects. When the results of the
research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable information will be used.

227
INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Principal Investigator
Christiana Robbins (crobbin@usc.edu).
IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the research
in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone independent of
the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board (UPIRB), 3720 South
Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu.
Statement of Consent: I have read the above information and have received answers to any questions I
asked. I consent to take part in the interview.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Robbins, Christiana (author)

Core Title The jugaarus: elite female Indian programmers' use of confidence and creativity to succeed in a male-dominated field

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 09/29/2020

Defense Date 07/27/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag computer programmer,female,India,IT,jugaad,OAI-PMH Harvest,sexism,structuration,surveillance,workplace

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lake, Randall (committee chair), Miller, Lynn (committee chair), Riley, Patricia (committee member)

Creator Email clouiserobbins@gmail.com,clrobbin@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-381223

Unique identifier UC11666396

Identifier etd-RobbinsChr-9026.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-381223 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-RobbinsChr-9026.pdf

Dmrecord 381223

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Robbins, Christiana

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA