In the 1960s, nurses from Kerala came to the United States to work. According to Sheba Mariam George, author of When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration - the nursing profession is often viewed in India as a “dirty” occupation for women, partly because it involves touching unknown men. It is a well-paid occupation, however, and a shortage of nurses makes it relatively easy for them to emigrate, bringing their families with them. However, their husbands are caught in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, a working wife brings certain economic benefits. On the other, she breaks all conventions of the man being the breadwinner and unquestioned head of the household. 

As George explains: “Whereas with most other Asian Indian groups, the men immigrate first, in the case of Kerala Christians, female nurses have come first and only later sponsored husbands and families.” In the process they became the “uncontested breadwinners” while the men became “downwardly mobile, both economically and socially” resulting in “drastic changes in gender relations in their households.

In the early 1980s, domestic violence agencies serving South Asian women were established in response to:

(1) The battered women’s movement in the United States that primarily examined the unequal status of women in society.

(2) The systemic and widespread patriarchal social structure that accepted male aggression.

(3) The mainstream feminist’s movement marginalization of ethnic women.

This gave rise to organizations such as Aarohan in New Jersey, Sakhi in New York City, Apna Ghar in Chicago, and Narika in the San Francisco Bay Area.