ABSTRACT
Performativity and precarity are essential to understanding the vulnerability of women in India, regardless of class and caste. Gender norms define how women are treated in India, with performativity – which precedes any act of volition and agency – and precarity – which involves a life ruled by unpredictability – providing a culture-specific understanding of how gender is conceptualised in India. In this commentary, we investigate the conditions of women of both upper and lower classes/castes in New Delhi. We draw on observations and interviews that we conducted with upper class/caste women, combined with secondary descriptions in the media regarding gender violence, as well as scholarly publications on middle-and lower-caste women, all within New Delhi. While structural conditions have changed in recent decades, enabling women to work outside the home in greater numbers,
traditional norms and cultural perceptions of women as subordinate to men in the household prevail (Derne, 2008). To study changes in the role and status of women in India, we must consider the context of concomitant economic and structural changes.
