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Valued Daughters traces the spread of ambition for lifetime careers among young women in urban India, who are effecting many changes by stepping out of their traditional roles to pursue higher education and jobs. It analyses intersecting transitions—demographic, educational, economic, social, and cultural, with their individual histories and trajectories—that form the context of this study. Using first-hand narratives of women and their families, this book illustrates a new and changing sense of self among these daughters, whose mothers never had careers of their own.

Focusing on the way these young career-oriented women engage with immediate society and the world at large, this book explores how they view traditional roles and how they are, in turn, viewed by the society.

Contents: 1. Intersecting Transitions. 2. A History of Women among Men. 3. Gender and Demography: Paradoxical Effects. 4. Professional Aspirations and Education in Cities. 5. Status-raising as a Father–Daughter Project. 6. Educated Elites in a New Gender Era. 7. Embedded Agency: Gains, Losses, and Unborn Hopes. 8. Social Reproduction and the Professional Imaginary. 9. Towards Gender Transformation. Bibliography. Index.