Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2007, 8 (1): 25-32

Culture, Gender and Immigration: Social-psychological Perspective of Socialization of Indian Immigrants in the United States of America

Martina Rašticová

The aim of this paper is to discuss theoretical approaches of gender role studies in the context of immigration. In the first part of this paper are defined three interrelated aspects of an immigrant's social experience: representation of culture; social location and marginality; idealized cultural identities. The main part of this paper focuses on a minority group of Indian immigrants in the USA. A few Indian mythological stories (The myth of Ekalaivya, The story of Pativirda and Pattini) help us to understand the specifics of Indian culture (the social class differences and the cast system). The second part of this paper focuses on the gender role of Indian men and women in the context of immigration. Some authors propose an intersectionality perspective for the study of gender, which argues for the need to study gender in relation to race, ethnicity, social class and sexual orientation. The last part of this paper describes the results of R. Mahalingam's research of gender roles of second-generation Indian women. Finally, some of the results of R. Mahalingam's research are compared to the results with similar methodological framework which was done in the Czech Republic in 2004.

Keywords: Culture, Gender identity, Immigration

Published: March 1, 2007  Show citation

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Rašticová, Martina. 2007. "Culture, Gender and Immigration: Social-psychological Perspective of Socialization of Indian Immigrants in the United States of America." Gender, Equal Opportunities, Research 8(1):25-32.
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