njrick:
jimisim: Where they do unfortunately have problems is in finding a husband, as many first-generation parents and their sons still want a conformist and submissive wife.
Made more difficult, of course, by their desire to conform with expectations enough to want to marry within the ethnic group (by my observation).
Both true. I sense that for many feisty young Indian subcontinent women, whether they have indulgent or traditional parents - and both occur, though the traditional (at least for ethnic Pakistanis) are probably rather more common than among white Anglo-saxons - they have to cope with attitudes around male and older people dominance somewhere within their community, often family, and this gives hones their assertiveness (wow, that became ass sertiveness, can't think why) much as growing up in a tough neighbourhood can help some boxers, police officers etc. An ethnic Indian acquaintance who held a lowly position in a hospital expressed something like despair that when he met female Indian doctors in the corridors, they cast their eyes down before him and walked by like demure inferiors. Now it's entirely possible they wouldn't have done that if he'd been white or black.