Indian women are especially subject to anomie. Within the multi-generational household women know what their dharma is and how to fulfill it. Dharma is a Hindu term that means duty, or the role a person must fill in life to progress spiritually. A traditional Hindu woman's dharma is to marry and to raise children, preferably sons, within the framework of a multi-generational household. They lose this sure social role, however, when transplanted into a nuclear home. The majority of active participants in Devipuram are urban women with children school-age and above, and with a high economic status that keeps them out of the workforce. While many women who move to an urban setting must go to work to help provide for their family, and thus have resolved or are resolving anomie by engaging in organic solidarity, the women of Devipuram have not entered into that world and so are trapped in the anomie that was created when they left mechanical solidarity behind.