Scholar Probes Family Dynamics of Indian-American Nurses By Francis C. Assisi

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These are all Christian names, unmistakably and uniquely "Mallu." And behind these names is an American “success story” – but with a twist. As UCLA scholar Sheba George tells it in a forthcoming book, these are the ‘Women Who Come First’. That’s because, unlike most other immigrants from India, these women migrated first and their husbands followed.

It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that these young women first began appearing in the US and Canada in large numbers. Today their presence as America’s frontline health care providers have turned them into an indispensable part of the national health infrastructure. Indeed they can be found in large metropolitan hospitals as well as small nursing homes and their numbers may be even higher than that of Indian physicians.

We are of course referring to Indian Christian nurses from the state of Kerala, who form a substantial chunk of nursing professionals in the US and Canada. Now, for the first time, we get an intimate glimpse of these Indian-American nurses wherein the unique gender dynamics within their family structure is unveiled by an insider.

The author, Sheba Mariam George obtained her BA (1988) from Pomona College, MA (1992) and Ph.D (2001) in sociology from UC Berkeley. At present she is a postdoctoral fellow with NIMH AIDS Research Training Program, UCLA, and an Assistant Professor at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Derived from her 2001 dissertation entitled, "When Women Come First: Gender and Class and Transnational Ties among Indian Immigrants in the United States," the book will be published by the University of California Press in July 2005.

According to Sheba George, the nursing profession is often viewed in India as a “dirty” occupation for women, partly because it involves touching unknown men. It is a well-paid occupation, however, and a current worldwide shortage of nurses makes it relatively easy for them to emigrate, bringing their families with them. However, their husbands are caught in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, a working wife brings certain economic benefits. On the other, she breaks all conventions of the man being the breadwinner and unquestioned head of the household. Many of these men once held respected professional jobs in India, but are now relegated to laboring in blue-collar jobs, looking after the kids, and cleaning the house. To bolster their self-esteem, they take on leadership positions in church-going as far as to set up a new congregation if necessary.

As George explains: “Whereas with most other Asian Indian groups, the men immigrate first, in the case of Kerala Christians, female nurses have come first and only later sponsored husbands and families.” In the process they became the “uncontested breadwinners” while the men became “downwardly mobile, both economically and socially” resulting in “drastic changes in gender relations in their households.”

In an earlier study “Gendered Ideologies and Strategies: The Negotiation of the Household Division of Labor among Middle-class South Asian American Families.” from the Sloan Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley, George observed: “ Unlike their native born counterparts, the South Asian American men face a pronounced loss of patriarchal status in the household division of labor that is especially difficult for them, given their larger loss of status in the economic and social realms as a result of immigration”.

One of the crucial aspects of this class of immigrants is that the nurse-wife, more often than not, earns more than her husband. With family incomes in excess of $100,000, they are able to quickly grasp the American dream of a home with a two or three car garage. They are also able to help their families in India. But as one husband remarked in an interview: “When the husband is at home, the wife is at work. When the wife is at home, the husband has to work to adjust to the kids and their child care. So where is the family life?”

George's research site was an Indian Orthodox Christian church in the Midwest, peopled primarily by families of nurses from Kerala who came to the U.S. under occupational preference provisions of the 1965 immigration law. These women got good jobs in the U.S., securely establishing themselves before sponsoring their husbands and children some years later. The husbands sought what work they could find, but they often remained underemployed in comparison to the positions they had held in India.

George shows how in the face of the diminution of status that they experienced the husbands were able to find in the church a space to reassert their patriarchal authority. It is a fascinating enquiry; a richly textured and impeccably researched study that deftly illustrates the complex reconfigurations of gender and class relations concealed behind a quintessential American success story.

The book’s chapters include, Community: Creating Little Kerala and the Paradox of "Men Who Play" in the Church; Contradictions of Gender When Women Immigrate First; Work: Nursing, Women's Networks, and Men "Tied to a Stake"; and Transnational Connections: The Janus-Faced Reproduction of an Immigrant Community.

Says the author, who used ethnographic and in-depth interviewing methods in conducting her research. “In order to understand the dynamics of gender relations in communal life, I spent eighteen months doing extensive participant observation in an Indian Orthodox Christian immigrant congregation in an urban area of the U.S. I call Central City. I actively participated in church life, volunteered to teach Sunday school, and organized youth activities such as the Christmas play and Christmas caroling. I attended many women’s groups and prayer meetings in the homes of members. I also participated in various national church conferences, where I interviewed church leaders and attended seminars.”

“Using my ties in the congregation, I visited and interviewed married couples from the church in their homes and workplaces. I spent days and nights over at church members’ homes, watching home movies, looking at photo albums, washing dishes, and sharing in family prayer. I first approached those most active in the church for interviews and gradually moved toward the more marginal families, using a snowball sampling method.”

Barrie Thorne, Professor of Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley, says: "With remarkable scope and vivid insight, Sheba George describes the daily lives of a community of Christian immigrants with continuing ties to Kerala, India. George's analysis of the immigrants' struggles around issues of gender and class links experiences at work, at home, and in the church.”

Comments author Yen Le Espiritu: "Beautifully written, When Women Come First sensitively exposes the emotional and psychic costs that are part and parcel of the immigrant pursuit of the American dream. It is an outstanding contribution to the burgeoning field of gender and migration.”

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