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Swapna, on the other hand, expects to be married within the next two
to three years, though she has never had a boyfriend. The 23-year-old
has asked her parents to arrange a marriage. “I haven’t found anyone
myself,” explains the soft-spoken Bangalorian.
Methodology
The research into the female singleton in India was conducted over
two and a half weeks in January 2006 by JWT on behalf of Unilever.
A total of 30 women—10 per city—were interviewed in New Delhi,
Bangalore, and Mumbai. The sample was made up of middle- to
upper-middle-class 20-something women who were single, educated, and
metropolitan. Twelve experts from the worlds of fashion, entertainment, beauty, media,
research, and academia were also interviewed. In addition, JWT’s research team
observed the demographic in the field—in dance clubs, lounges, pubs, eateries, coffee
shops, markets, malls, bookstores, universities, and workplaces.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
Independence Day
Historically, women in India have followed a trajectory of dependence:
from father to husband to son. It was a hand-off of sorts, with a
father giving his daughter away to his new son-in-law and a son
assuming the role of caretaker as his mother got on in years. This
age-old practice ensured that at no time in an Indian woman’s life
was she outside a man’s charge. Just a generation ago, the words
“independent” and “woman” side by side would have been
considered an oxymoron.
Fast-forward to 2006, and the descriptor most associated with the modern 20-something
woman is “independent.” In talking about themselves and their peers, today’s young women
use the adjective so much that it is fast becoming trite. They aspire to independence in all
senses of the word, both fiscally and emotionally.
“The 20-something woman in India generally is ambitious. She is a very loving and warm
person, and for her, her family matters a lot. At the same time, she doesn’t want to get married
and just take care of her kids. She wants to go out, she wants to earn money, and she wants to
4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
be independent financially, economically and
emotionally,” says Ruchika, a 22-year-old MBA
student and dancer from New Delhi.
“I feel that women are trying to capture all the opportunities that they have these days, in
whatever fields. All the fields are open for them,” says Gurveen, a 23-year-old New Delhi native
and MA candidate in international business.
“Women are starting to want to work more. They want to be more independent. You probably
have a lot more women in our age group getting jobs and spending money than you did before,”
adds Anees, 25, a freelance editor from New Delhi.
Certainly, the BPOs and call centers have been encountering their
share of criticism. In cities like Bangalore, the warp-speed
development they have brought has magnified vast infrastructure
weaknesses, raised traffic woes to maddening levels, increased rents
to exorbitant heights, and spurred some students to abandon their
studies for a fast buck. And the women employed by call centers are
starting to suffer the consequences of the biorhythmic disturbances
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5
that come from working all night and sleeping all day. Infertility and
suicide rates are going up. And the recent murder of a female call-center
employee by a man posing as the company’s driver has brought safety
concerns to the forefront.
No matter what her career path, the modern 20-something woman strives for professional
success. Yet most are not gunning for the C-suite. The dreamers are the
exception; the vast majority are firmly grounded. While multinational
companies have infused the workplace with the concept of equal
opportunity, young women realize that the top rungs of the corporate
ladder are still reserved for the opposite sex. (A reality that is
gradually changing, thanks to the inroads made by glass-ceiling-
breakers like Biocon India chair and managing director Kiran
Mazumdar Shaw and HSBC India deputy CEO Naina Lal Kidwai.)
“When you are breaking into more conservative professions, like law,
then gender discrimination is more blatant,” relays Chhaya, the 27-
year-old Mumbai-based lawyer. “At my previous job, I went for
feedback and they actually told me, ‘You were the better one, but
we’re giving the guy a higher salary because he’s a guy and he’s got a
family to look after.’”
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Money Makes a Woman’s World Go Round
Today’s 20-something woman may not be motivated by thoughts of the
corner office, but she is driven by the almighty buck. For her, a steady
paycheck represents a ticket to financial independence. She aspires to a
comfortable, colorful life augmented by travel and other luxuries. Maybe
even a two-car household—one of the ultimate signs of prosperity.
“I want to earn a lot of money, because money really drives me. I see
myself very rich, with at least two cars parked outside my house,” says
Chitralekha, 25, an advertising account manager from New Delhi.
8 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Me Stage
Women describe this emerging life stage as the
period between being a part of their parents’
family and establishing their own—generally, a
post-education, pre-marriage space. And it is
not restricted to those who live on their own,
as it is common for Indian women to stay
with their parents until they get married.
More and more, however, young women are
leaving the nest. Some move to another
city for school, others relocate for work,
and still others rent an apartment locally
with friends.
“We can marry at our own will when we feel that we are
independent enough, or when we feel that we have enough
money in our bank accounts,” says Gurveen, the masters
student in international business. “The 20-something woman in
India now is bold. She’s ambitious. She’s hard-working. She’s
eager to learn, and she can stand on her own feet.”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 9
to unwind. Wearing Western clothes accented with Indian
flourishes, they hit posh lounges, sipping Sex and the City-
inspired cosmos and catching up with friends.
“Ever since I’ve come back from Sydney, I’ve gone a bit berserk
in Delhi. I’ve been going out a lot—every week, usually on the
weekends and sometimes during the weekdays, too, till late at
night,” relays Mansha, 25, a furniture designer who returned to
India in late 2004 after studying at the Hotel School in South
Wales and TAFE New South Wales.
10 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Marriage Matters
While a brave minority thumbs their nose at marriage, even going so
far as to claim they never want to wed, the institution is so central to
the fabric of Indian society that its pull is inescapable.
Women feel constant pressure to either expedite the “me” stage or skip it altogether
and proceed directly to wedlock. Once they put their hard-earned degrees to use in the
workforce, for instance, many see their parents’ thoughts quickly shift to marriage. To the older
generation, it’s the next logical step.
“Once you’ve completed your studies and you’ve worked for a year, then suddenly it’s all about
marriage and settling down. That is a problem because my parents are really pressurizing me
into that now. Like, ‘Can we start looking around for someone?’ Even if your parents don’t think
it’s that important, it’s all the other relatives who keep coming home and saying, ‘She’s old
enough to get married, so you should start looking around seriously,’” says Kavitha who
recently moved out of her parents’ house and into a friend’s place in Bangalore.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 11
Adds Mannrosy, who lives with her mother in New Delhi:
“Even in a metropolitan city like Delhi, there’s a lot of
pressure from the parents’ side for a girl to get married. If
she crosses the age of 26, the pressure increases. If she’s
30, then they’ve lost all hope that she’ll ever get married. I
knew a lot of girls in my college who came from very rich
families, but they had a lot of pressure for them to get
married by the time they were 21, even though they were
bright and wanted to work.”
“People seem to think that if you’re single, it’s not out of choice or something,” says Anees,
the freelance editor from New Delhi.
“It’s perceived that you have a huge defect if you don’t get married,” agrees Chitralekha,
another Delhiite. “There is something totally wrong with you and missing in you because of
which you couldn’t get married. And your parents are going to be so unhappy.”
As a result, most young women feel they have no choice. Marriage awaits. But these days, they
can drag their feet a bit. Having grown up the product of an arranged marriage, a woman often
would prefer a love match, where she, not her parents, selects a lifelong mate.
“For me, I would only marry someone I love,” Mannrosy explains. “What I feel is, if a girl likes
someone and she wants to marry him, then an arranged marriage shouldn’t be forced on her
just because that’s the norm.”
“I’ve actually made it clear to my parents that I don’t want them looking out for a groom for
me,” says Seema, 23, a Web site content coordinator from Bangalore. “If he’s going say, ‘You
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sit at home, and I want you to cook,’ I’m not going to listen to him. So I think it’s important for
you to choose a partner who you can connect with, who can understand you, and who respects
your ideas. Otherwise, you’d kind of go mad.”
Still, these women do not romanticize marriage the way Western society does. They understand
that, first and foremost, a marriage is a partnership. Forever pragmatic, they see that arranged
unions are just as likely to survive as love marriages. And there are going to be problems along
the way no matter what.
“When I was younger I thought the idea of an arranged marriage was crazy. How could I just
marry someone my parents found for me? But how it works is that I think our expectations are a
lot lower when it’s an arranged marriage, because you just work with the basics,” explains
Supreeta, 27, a Bangalore-based freelance television producer. “Two families come together
because of similar backgrounds. When it comes to living with someone, that is a huge plus
point, because they eat the same kind of food, they probably live the same. If both families are
middle class, the aspiration value is the same and your values of raising your kids are the same.”
Keeping this in mind, even some of the most progressive-thinking women are open to the idea
of an arranged marriage. Many say that if they have not found Mr. Right on their own by the
time they are ready to settle down, they will turn to their parents for help. They trust that their
mother and father will identify a man worthy of them. In a joke laced
with truth, these women say their parents couldn’t do any worse
for them than they have for themselves. They are exhausted: They
have had their fill of the dating scene and experimentation with the
opposite sex. They are ready.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 13
Balancing Act
Arranged marriage is one thing, subservience is quite another.
Modern 20-something women intend to conduct their marriage on
their own terms. Among them, little tolerance exists for the old-
school mentality, which dictates that a wife drop what she’s doing
to tend to her husband’s needs whenever he says the word.
“After you get married, you have someone in your life or you
have a family, and you need to give them some amount of your
time and attention, and I would expect the same back,” says
Meghna, a 22-year-old film student at the Film Institute of India
in Mumbai.
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Reverence for Rabble Rousers
For this reason, 20-somethings admire women who have achieved that
balance. While all respect and love their mothers unconditionally, some
who have been raised in households where male domination and female
submissiveness rule feel their mothers cannot relate to their lives. It’s
the pioneering mothers who have managed to juggle a career and
family with aplomb whom daughters tap for advice.
The same is true of Delhiite Ruchika: “For me, my mentor has been my
mom. She has been a career woman herself. She’s been working for
around 26 years, and she’s been taking care of us as well. She’s been
performing all her duties at home religiously. She’s not ever made us
feel that she’s not there when we needed her. And at the same time,
she was there at her career as well.”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 15
Young women also look up to rule breakers: women like Sushmita
Sen, a former Miss Universe-turned-Bollywood actress who
adopted a baby out of wedlock—something that is frowned upon
by Indian society. Or Barkha Dutt, a bulldog broadcast journalist
for NDTV who has covered everything from politics to India-
Pakistan negotiations. Or Sonia Mizra, the short-skirt-wearing,
midriff-baring tennis sensation who recently came under attack for
endorsing safe premarital sex. Or family members or friends who
have strayed from societal expectations. And while 20-something
singletons largely adhere to cultural mores, they are inspired by
women courageous enough to break with convention.
As for role models in the media, HR exec Karen says, “The single
women look up to Sushmita Sen for who she is. The youth feel
like she’s completely different from the rest. She adopted a child
being a single woman. She fought for it.”
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Us Versus Them
As with media habits, 20-something middle- to upper-middle
class women are constantly dividing the world into two camps:
us and them. The well-off versus the poor. Old school versus new
school. City dwellers versus rural residents. Educated versus
uneducated. North versus South. East versus West.
“Twenty-something women in
India are of two different
kinds,” says Meghna, the
Mumbai-based film student. “They are women who are in the cities
and women who are from smaller states who are not independent
and by the time they are 20 to 21, they are married off and they
have children. They don’t work or anything. But, from the big cities,
the 20-something women are totally independent.”
They may have gay friends, for instance, but they are
conscious of the country’s blatant homophobia. They
may be accepting of live-in relationships, but they realize
a stigma is attached to such arrangements. They may
engage in premarital sex, but rarely do they talk about
it, since it’s still very much a societal no-no. More often
than not, closed-mindedness trumps open-mindedness.
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The Dawning Age of Empowerment
The close-minded myopic view is still largely evident in
men’s attitudes and actions toward women. No
matter how progressive or well-traveled or
educated today’s 20-something female singletons
are, they are not immune to the injustices or
atrocities inflicted upon their gender in India.
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target men and women alike. The seeds need to be planted early
and often at home and at school, with parents teaching their
daughters and sons to respect females by word and example,
and teachers reinforcing that message.
“For an extremely long time, we’ve been told that we are not as
good as men. So we’re the first generation that’s kind of trying
to break that,” says Hindustan Times journalist Smita.
“I think Indian women today are at the most powerful and most
focused position that they’ve ever been in,” says Bangalore-
based fashion impresario Prasad Bidapa. “I think that Indian
women are being accepted on their own rights. They’re not
perceived as someone’s daughter, or someone’s sister, or
someone’s wife or girlfriend anymore. They have taken control
of their sexual lives, of their social lives, of their careers. They
seem to be doing damn well with it.”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 19
CITY DIFFERENCES
Delhi
New Delhi is a city in motion. The capital of India, it is a large, sprawling metropolis with wide
roads and good infrastructure; residents are especially proud of their new Metro system. But
despite its modern amenities, Delhi is exceptionally conservative and male-centric—
uncharacteristic of most university cities. Women feel oppressed by “eve-teasing” and other
forms of sexual harassment in what is known as the rape capital of India. As a result, their
personal freedoms are restricted. Driving alone at night is a liability; riding public transportation
invites harassment. Taking an evening stroll is unthinkable, while going “clubbing and pubbing”
requires a male along for protection. For a large urban center it is still marked by provincial
mind-sets. People are obsessed with each other's business and with keeping up appearances,
showing off their material goods in a place where “flash” is everything.
I think one of the biggest problems I face in Delhi is the lack of safety for women, because I’m single
and I live alone. It’s especially difficult wanting to go out at night and not feeling safe driving home
alone. You don’t feel comfortable as a woman here. You don’t feel comfortable dressing in certain
types of clothes. – Anees, 25, freelance editor
One of the biggest problems that I face is walking down the street, having to frown at 100 men
because they just can't stop ogling you. The safety issue affects us big time, because we have to
think twice about going out after a certain time. If you don’t have your own car, public transport is
not accessible, so we have to call a guy to pick us up and drop us back.
– Isha, 20, student/call center employee
Delhi has its own charm of living. That charm would be the warmth when you enter a shop—the
shopkeeper would offer you water, tea. That would not be the case in cities like Bangalore and
Mumbai. Delhi has had this charm since the past 50 years, since it has been the capital of India.
– Gurveen, 23, MA candidate in international business
Delhi, for a single woman, is very diverse. There are so many experiences here. It’s a huge city, you
see. Being single here helps you grow tremendously. There are so many experiences here, and there’s
just so much to learn. – Mannrosy, 25, call center employee
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Bangalore
As the IT capital of India and home to hundreds of multinational companies, Bangalore is booming
with job opportunities for 20-something single women. The classifieds section of the newspaper
grows thicker every day, thanks to the demand for talent at tech companies, BPOs, and call
centers. As a result, India’s third-largest city attracts transplants from all over the country looking
for jobs, as well as freedom from the conservative ways that pervade smaller towns and rural
areas. The multinationals have brought with them equal opportunity and progressive thinking,
which young Bangalorians and transients alike are ready to embrace. For instance, live-in
relationships—normally a no-no in Indian society—are becoming prevalent as people focus more
on their own lives and less on what others are doing. On the downside, Bangalore’s warp-speed
development has revealed vast infrastructure weaknesses and led to a dramatic rise in rents.
Despite these troubles, residents remain laid-back. They frequent pubs and lounges, where they
like to unwind after a long day or week. They work hard, and they play hard.
Bangalore is a very young city. It used to be a paradise for people who had retired from life, but now
it seems to be a very young, cosmopolitan city. Everywhere you turn around, you see people in their
20s making it big. It’s the IT capital of India, definitely. – Supreeta, 27, freelance television producer
Because there are so many more people moving in, and people are getting paid a lot of money, so you
have two people applying for an apartment. If one person says, ‘I’m going to pay 2,000 rupees more,’
obviously they’ll rent it at that higher rate. And again, there are infrastructure problems: bad roads, a
lot of traffic—mismanaged traffic, actually. We have too many cars and too many people insisting that
they take their own cars to work. There’s no carpool culture over here, which is a bad thing.
– Kavitha, 23, software engineer
If you look at our roads in Bangalore, there are no roads. It’s more of a ditch, and then you’re lucky
to get two seconds of road. So because of that, people have to travel long distances on no roads. At
the same time, rent is very high. Very, very high in Bangalore. There are certain areas where you really
can’t afford it. If you’re living close to an IT company or an IT park, it’s very expensive.
– Karen, 25, human resources executive
Being single in Bangalore is a lot easier. You have people coming in from all parts of the country into
the city, so people are a lot more open and tolerant towards what everyone else is thinking. It’s a lot
easier to be single in terms of, nobody looks down upon the fact that you’re single at a particular age.
– Mythili, 23, finance systems analyst
Bangalore is the coolest. This is the most relaxed city. Bangalorians are very sweet people, very
relaxed. It’s a very chilled-out place. – Seema, 23, Web site content coordinator
Mumbai
Mumbai is considered one of the world’s “megacities,” with a population nearing 20 million
people. It’s no surprise that its fast-paced, cosmopolitan lifestyle is often compared to New
York City's. Home to Bollywood, it is India’s hub of creative energy and, as a result, is more
progressive and liberal-minded than most of the country. Residents of Mumbai feel less
pressure to conform and more freedom to live their lives without judgment. In addition, women
feel considerably safer here. They can walk alone at night and are subjected to “eve-teasing”
less frequently. Career-wise, Mumbai is filled with opportunities in many fields, and Indian
women have been quick to seize them. Educated and career-driven, this generation of women is
the first that is deliberately delaying marriage (if only for a few years) to claim financial
independence. These 20-somethings are enjoying the chance to carve their own path in life.
The people of Mumbai are very warm, they're very open, but they don't cross that line of familiarity…
Bombay’s people are too wrapped up in their own work and their own lives to really bother.
– Meghna, 22, film student
In Bombay you can rebel and not be typecast. – Lipi, 28, social work student
In Bombay, people aren’t too worried about what the other guy’s doing.
– Mamta, 25, human resources assistant manager
It’s more of a fast life in Bombay, so you don’t really have the time to ask, “Okay, what is that girl
doing? Where is she going?” – Sony, 24, online sales executive
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