II. Culture, Resilience and Professional Identity Development – Indian Immigrant Women Professionals in the United States
India produces one of the largest numbers of women engineers and scientists. For instance in Anna University, the top ranked state university in India, more than 50% of the students majoring in computer science, information technology are women. Similar trends also exist among Indian diaspora in the United States. Indian women are very successful in pursuing a career in science, engineering and medicine. The intersecting identities (a woman and an engineer) affect the lives of Indian women professionals in complex ways. They are doubly disadvantaged in working in many predominantly male dominated fields, such as engineering and medicine. Using an intersectionality framework, we argue that perceived discrimination will positively relate to idealized beliefs about self and ethnic identity. For example, Indian women professionals believe that they are more hard working than Americans and better mothers. Such idealized beliefs will positively relate to John Henryism, an active personal coping measure. In collaboration with my doctoral student Sundari Balan, we studied the relationship between social marginality and idealized beliefs about Indian ethnic identity.