Middle-aged Women and Intergenerational Aspirations in Dehradun, India: Mobility as Social Achievement During Post-active Motherhood

Abstract

Post-active motherhood can be a period of flourishing for many women. Aspirations for social achievement beyond the domestic sphere become imaginable or realisable as women are released from the more intensive work of raising children. This article examines this period of life for a cohort of women in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. After years of social service and political activities, these women seek social advancement through the formal status as municipal councillor for their ward. Such projects are frustrated, unachievable due to not having the right type of capital, resulting in mobility in imagination, immobility in fact. In revealing how such projects are frustrated, I draw attention to the constrained mobility of women in post-active motherhood as a feminist and social issue.