Women’s Employment and its Effects on Bengali Households of Shillong, India

This paper examines the effect of the employment of women on the structure and functions of households within the Bengali community in a part of northeastern India. Despite its demographic significance, this cultural grouping remains largely unstudied from a sociological point of view. The results of the present study show that the entrance of women into the paid work force, the rate of which has increased in recent years, has had a partially transformative effect on the household, in the sense that responsibility for domestic tasks and for domestic decision-making is increasingly being shared by both spouses. In addition, unmarried women are coming to view the marriage bargain in distinctly non-traditional terms. The results suggest that paid employment has the potential to alter deeply-embedded and well-established cultural norms.