Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the popular culture of home baking in Indian cities, illustrating the role of the digital in refashioning domesticity and women's labour in ways that help women navigate and at times resist structural norms of gender through the crafting of an entrepreneurial identity self.

Paper long abstract:

A growing body of scholarship discusses female work cultures in the age of digital media. Digital entrepreneurship that revolves around domestic crafts such as cooking facilitates 'work from home’ cultures by promoting a model of “having it all”, merging elements of passion and profit, and personal and professional obligations of women (Duff and Hund 2015).

While social media platforms like Instagram lend public visibility to women’s labour and creativity, providing an easy entry into entrepreneurship, women’s sustained confirmation to the ‘domestic’ is reflective of the ’digital double bind’ (Duffy and Pruchniewska, 2017) that structures home based businesses such as cooking or baking. An ethnographic enquiry into the growing trend of home baking cultures in the city of Ahmedabad illustrates the ways in which digital platforms help women navigate gendered ideas of home and work and construct an entrepreneurial identity that is rooted in passion, independence, self worth and happiness.