Ladies first

Young girls these days are spoilt for choice when it comes to role models

There is not much about the young that arouses my envy. I don’t grudge them their top-notch metabolism, their wrinkle-free complexions, their insouciance that all will turn out okay, or even the fact that life is full of endless possibilities for them. That’s because I was young once myself, and I know what a tortured time this can be for most of us.

This is an age when we are yet to get truly comfortable in our skin, no matter how firm and unpigmented it may be; when we are tortured by the spectre of failure as well as dreams of success; when we feel things so deeply and viscerally that it marks us for life. This is a time when the best of us are often reduced to emotional wrecks, tossed on the waves of our hormones and the moods they induce.

These are only some of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to relive my youth, for all the money and anti-ageing face-cream in the world.

But there is one thing that I do envy about the young girls growing up right about now. And that’s the fact that they have so many positive female role models in the world they live in. Growing up, my generation had to be content with such stock figures as Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa. But while these were towering and inspirational personalities in their own right, they were not relatable in quite the same way as the female role models of today are.

And they are everywhere: from sports to arts; from politics to business; from the movies to the media. Wherever you look, there are strong, brave women taking on the world – and winning.

Let’s take sport, to begin with. Yes, we had P.T Usha and Ashwini Nachappa, both leading track stars of their time. But that was about it. There were no tennis or badminton stars on the international circuit who looked like us. And few of us even knew what our female cricketers looked like, though we may have been familiar with Diana Edulji’s name.

How things have changed since then! Sania Mirza has been a bonafide international tennis star for nearly a decade now, winning international titles and endorsements deals with equal elan. Badminton champion Saina Nehwal has won over 20 international titles, an Olympic bronze medal, and attained number one ranking in the world. Somewhere along the way, she has managed to find the time to become brand ambassador for a range of companies as well as for the Government of India campaign to promote the girl child.

And now we have a new stable of stars in the Indian women’s cricket team, all of them with inspirational stories behind them. There’s Mithali Raj, best-known for reading Rumi on the sidelines before she lights up the green with her fiery shots all across the field. And keeping her company are such stalwarts as batting wizards Harmanpreet Kaur and Punam Raut, all-rounder Deepti Sharma, and fiery fast bowler Jhulan Goswami (no relation, alas!).

A quick look at the movie business also gives us hope. Gone are the days of heroines who hid behind Mummy’s pallu or depended on their ‘Godfathers’ to shore up their careers. Today, the film industry is full of independent women, who have succeeded by dint of their own efforts. These are women who make their own rules rather than play the roles prescribed for them. Whether it is Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra, who left the security of Bollywood to make a splash in the West, or Kangana Ranaut and Anushka Sharma, who revel in their ‘outsider’ tag and create their own opportunities, the landscape is heaving with female stars who are not just strong and confident but also secure in their self-belief. And these are qualities that every young girl can aspire to, whatever career she chooses.

The banking sector is as rich in female role models as it is in term deposits. The largest bank in the country, the State Bank of India, is headed by Arundhati Bhattacharya, the first woman to be appointed to that role. Chanda Kochchar is the managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank, the second-largest bank in India (and the largest in the private sector). Shikha Sharma is the managing director and CEO of Axis Bank. Naina Lal Kidwai is the country head of HSBC India. Kalpania Morparia is CEO of J.P. Morgan, India. I could go on, but you get the picture.

The media landscape is also dotted with strong female figures. While NDTV gets the credit for producing the largest number of female stars – Barkha Dutt, Nidhi Razdan, Sonia Singh – others news channels are now fast catching up. Navika Kumar rules the airwaves at Times Now while Mirror Now’s Faye D’Souza is fast carving out a place for herself in the overcrowded media landscape. And then, there’s my friend, Priya Sahgal, whose discussion programmes on NewsX are an island of sanity in this era of outrage-fuelled TV.

Publishing is also rapidly being overrun by women bosses: Meru Gokhale at Penguin Random House; V. Karthika and Sudha Sadanand at Amazon Westland; Diya Kar Hazra at HarperCollins India; and Chiki Sarkar, who heads her own start-up, Juggernaut.

So, if you are a young girl growing up right about now, what do you see around you? You see strong, capable women, following their dreams, working hard, creating their own path, and enjoying the journey. And it gives you hope – even the certainty – that you can do just that in your own time.

How I wish I had had that when I was growing up!

  

Sexism rules, ok!

Don’t sweat the small stuff; it’s the big picture that really matters

When it comes to sexism and misogyny in politics – or indeed in public life – I can’t help but feel that we tend to miss the wood for the trees. We are so busy protesting and outraging against the slings and arrows of everyday political discourse that we completely miss the big-ticket discrimination right under our noses.

Take the recent brouhaha over Vinay Katiyar’s sexist comments about Priyanka Gandhi. Asked what he thought of Priyanka as a star campaigner in the UP Assembly election, Katiyar scoffed that there were much prettier stars campaigning for the BJP. To her credit, Priyanka retorted with good humour: “He’s right, they do!” But then she added for good measure: “If that’s all he sees in my colleagues, who are such strong, brave, beautiful women, who have battled through all sorts of hardships to get where they are, then he makes me laugh even more…”

Priyanka may have laughed it off, but the media were not amused. No sooner were Katiyar’s remarks reported than social media skirmishes began clogging everyone’s timelines as those attacking the BJP leader came up against the full fervor of the Bhakt Brigade. That evening’s prime-time news bulletins devoted hours to debating how awful these sexist remarks were and how Katiyar should be forced to apologise. (True to form, Katiyar refused to do so and even walked out of Nidhi Razdan’s show on NDTV when he ran out of excuses for his behavior.) And the next day’s newspapers headlined the Katiyar remarks, and Priyanka’s retort, asking other women politicians to weigh in on the issue.

All of it left me asking myself some tough questions. Did Vinay Katiyar’s comment offend me? Yes, it did. Should he have objectified both Priyanka and his own party’s women leaders in the way that he did? Of course not. Was it really that big a deal that every TV channel should lead on it? Well, I was not so sure about that one.

Sexist man makes sexist remark. Should we allow that stray remark to dominate the headlines? Or should we go with that old saying: “Dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is.”

Yes, sexism and misogyny are woven into the very fabric of our public life. And it behoves us to call them out whenever we can, as loud as we can, and as often as we can. But should we continually get distracted by the ‘dog bites man’ spectacle and talk of nothing else? Or should we look past these incidents to focus on stuff that really matters?

So, what does matter? Is it that women are constantly being objectified and commodified by male chauvinists? Or is it that women are so rarely seen and heard on our political scene (unless, or course, they are related to male politicians)? Is it that people are too focused on their looks? Or that they are, at the end of the day, virtually invisible?

Let’s take a quick look around. As of this writing, as Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls, of the 324 candidates that the SP has announced so far, only 24 are women (and one of them is Aparna Yadav, Mulayam’s daughter-in-law). The BJP has 36 women among the 304 candidates it has announced. The Congress has announced the names of 43 candidates, of which only two are women. And even the BSP, which has a woman leader in Mayawati, has only 18 women among its 401 candidates.

In Punjab, the number of female candidates in the fray is also abysmal. The Shiromani Akali Dal has five women among its 94 candidates. AAP, which is contesting 112 seats has only nine women candidates. And of the Congress’ 117 candidates, only 11 are women.

The absence of women is, if anything, even more marked in Goa. Here, AAP is fielding five women, the Congress has three female candidates while the BJP has just the one.

Now, here’s an issue that I would like to see debated in prime-time TV news shows. That is the headline that I would like to see in my newspaper. Where are the women? Why are they missing in action? Why do we see so few female faces on the campaign trail?

I really don’t care whether they are pretty or not. Or how Vinay Katiyar – or any other male politician, for that matter – rates their looks. These are minor irritants. Let’s not allow them to distract us from the things that really matter. Men commenting on women’s looks is small stuff; men depriving women of opportunities is what we should be outraged about.

And no, don’t go waving the red rag of the Women’s Reservation Bill at me. You know as well as I do that it will never get passed. But there is nothing preventing political parties from reserving a third of their seats for women off their own bat. So why don’t they put their candidate list where their mouths are, and show us the tickets?

I don’t think this will happen any time soon. But until it does, let’s outrage about it as loud and clear as we can.