Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) is celebrating the academic accomplishments of its alumna, Dr. Asiya Islam, whose forthcoming book A Woman’s Job: Making Middle Lives in New India (Cambridge University Press, South Asia in the Social Sciences Series) is earning recognition for its insights into gender, work, and socio-economic change in contemporary urban India.
Currently an assistant professor in gender, development, and globalisation at the London School of Economics, Dr. Islam’s academic journey began at AMU, where she completed her BA (Hons) in communicative English. She later went on to pursue an MSc in Gender, Media, and Culture from the London School of Economics, followed by a PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her career and scholarship have brought international acclaim, making AMU proud of her accomplishments.
Her new book, A Woman’s Job: Making Middle Lives in New India, offers a rare and compelling ethnography of young lower-middle-class women in Delhi as they navigate the complex terrains of service sector work, higher education, care responsibilities, and aspirations of modern urban life. Set against the backdrop of post-liberalisation India, the book addresses the long-standing puzzle of low female labour force participation, especially in cities, despite increasing levels of education and skill acquisition among women.
Dr Islam’s research shines a light on how gender, class, and caste intersect to shape women’s experiences of employment, domestic life, and personal aspiration. Through longitudinal ethnographic work, she documents how women weave in and out of paid employment in malls, cafés, call centres, and offices while simultaneously juggling social expectations of domesticity and respectability. The book reveals how urban working women engage with symbols of modernity such as jeans, smartphones, English fluency, and the Delhi Metro – not only as consumers but as participants in a changing India – while negotiating persistent structural inequalities.
Speaking about her work, Dr Islam noted, “I am broadly interested in the relationship between gender and work – how they shape each other in complex, often unseen ways. My aim has always been to understand both the promise and the limitations of empowerment through work, especially in the context of unpaid and underpaid labour like care and domestic work.”
Dr. Islam’s success is a source of inspiration for AMU students. Her academic achievements and contributions to feminist scholarship globally are testament to the calibre of talent nurtured at the university.
