This study of professional software women in urban India examines practices of respectable femininity and discourses of the
Indian family to understand the changing and abiding aspects of a seemingly new national culture. Colonial and nationalist
constructs of the Indian home, and the middle-class women who protected that home, continue to powerfully shape everyday articulations
of national belonging, even as they are transformed through individual negotiations and a global economy. Drawing from extensive
interviews and ethnographic work, this paper analyzes the interplay of gender, class, and nation in contemporary urban India
as individualized, gendered efforts to accumulate symbolic capital.
Keywords Gender - Nation - India - Symbolic capital (Bourdieu)