Boundaries of Gender and Ethnicity: Gujarati Hindu Women in Artesia's “Little India”

Within the boundaries of Artesia's working-class Hindu women have reconfigured their ethnic identities and gendered roles. This article is based upon our study of a cohort of twenty women who work as seamstresses, cooks, beauticians, and saleswomen in the roughly sixty Indian-owned businesses—grocery, jewelry, music, and craft stores, in Little India, an enclave in the southeastern corner of Los Angeles County bordering Orange County. All belong to the linguistic community of Gujaratis.The boundaries of Little India itself, we argue, are both literal and symbolic, at once flexible, complex, and sometimes contradictory, especially for those women who choose to remain and work within the ethnic enclave. In addition, we explore various gendered notions of Indian identity including Bharatiyanari and Pativrata Dharma, and notions of Indian space including bahir and ghar, and Lakshman Resha in order to understand more fully the complexity of the work choices these women make.