Bargaining Freedoms: How Women in Urban India Experience a Sense of Agency

Patriarchal structures are sedimented into the fabric of everyday life and shape the experiences of women in India from the micro level of individual attitudes, social interactions, and family dynamics, to the broader level of social institutions, community norms, and cultural practices. The present study, thus, aimed to understand the experiences of working urban Indian women, and how they understand their sense of agency, the contestations within it, and the ways in which they negotiate the same. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight women. Using Braun and Clarke’s (Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101, 2006) thematic analysis, three themes were delineated: a) experiencing gender-based constraints to agency, b) meanings associated with agency, and c) negotiating gendered contestations to agency. These negotiations can involve assertion of one’s choices, active resistance of patriarchal ideologies, engaging in graded dialogical negotiation or accommodating. Results highlight how participants respond to contextual barriers enacted by various social actors in their lives and the emotional labour of such negotiations. The findings have implications for deepening psychosocial frameworks of mental health by understanding the unique stressors of urban women, how these shape their values and identities and the forms of resilience and resistance that they use to advocate for their needs.