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!

  

Gender bender

A quick primer on how not to write about women

The Rio Olympics were groundbreaking in one aspect. These were the Olympic Games which saw the highest female participation ever, at 45 per cent. Of the 10,444 total competitors, 4,700 were women. And while that is just short of actual parity, we have come a long way from 1900, when women were allowed into the Olympics for the first time. That year, of the 997 competitors only 22 were women (making up an abysmal 2.2 percent).

But while female participation has changed the look of the Olympics in no uncertain manner, what hasn’t changed is the sexist tone to the coverage of women athletes and sports stars. In fact sexism in sports reportage is so rampant that it has even generated its own hashtag on twitter: #CoverTheAthlete. It was started last year after a commentator asked Canadian tennis player, Eugenie Bouchard to “give us a twirl and tell us about your outfit”. (No, I am not making this up. Though I wish to God I was.)

The reportage of the Rio Olympics provided us some gems of this genre as well. A BBC presenter congratulated Andy Murray for being “the first person to ever win two Olympic gold medals”. (Murray, to his credit, corrected him instantly: Venus and Serena Williams have won four gold medals each.) The Hungarian swimmer, Katina Hosszu, won gold and broke the world record in the 400-meter individual medley, but one NBC commentator instantly pointed to her coach-husband watching from the sidelines to credit him with her performance.

And then, there was the constant comparison of women competitors to their male counterparts. Ryan Lochte, now in the news for having made up a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio, said this about record-breaking swimmer, Katie Ledecky, “She swims like a guy…I’ve never seen a female swimmer like that. She gets faster every time she gets in and her times are becoming good for a guy.” It was in keeping then, that the day Ledecky set the world record in women’s 800 freestyle, one paper chose to lead with “Phelps ties for silver in 100 fly.” And that the Daily Mail referred to her, with a certain predictability, as “the female Michael Phelps”.

It took Simone Biles, the Golden Girl of Gymnastics, to call out this false equivalence. After winning the gold in the gymnastics all-around, she executed yet another perfect landing: “I am not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I am the first Simone Biles.”

Unfortunately, it’s not just sport that suffers from sexist reporting. Politics is no better. The night Hillary Clinton won the nomination as Democratic candidate for the US Presidency, you would have thought that she had earned the right to be on the front pages the next day. And you would have been quite wrong. All across America, newspapers great and small went with a larger than life picture of her husband, Bill Clinton. Hillary may have shattered that glass ceiling into a million little shards but it was still her husband who got prime billing (pun entirely unintended). 

Clearly, we in the media have still not got the hang of covering high-achieving women without a side-serving of sexism. So, in the spirit of helping out, here’s my ready primer on how not to write about women in the news.

• Try to focus on the woman herself, without being distracted by the significant males in her life. Don’t be like the Chicago Tribune, which referred to Corey Cogdell-Unrein, who won a bronze in women’s trap shooting, as the wife of a Chicago Bears linesman. (They apologized after a backlash on Twitter, conceding sheepishly that she was “awesome on her own”.)
• Don’t compare her to a man. Or announce that she is like a man, with the air of conferring a rare tribute on her. (As in: “Indira Gandhi was the only man in her Cabinet.” No, she wasn’t. She was a woman; albeit one who kicked ass.)
• Set yourself this simple test: would I ask a man such a question? If the answer is no, then don’t ask that question of a woman either. (Sample: How do you manage a work-life balance? Is having kids the best thing you have ever done? Or even: When are you settling down?)
• Stop hemming a woman within patriarchal constructs. She may be someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother. But that is not her defining characteristic. So don’t act as if that is the most important thing about her. 
• Don’t reduce a woman to a sum of her body parts. If she is a politician like Theresa May, it is not relevant to point out that she occasionally flashes ‘a hint of cleavage’. A woman, every woman, has breasts. Get over it. (If it’s one of the Kardashians, however, go for it; that’s exactly what they signed up for.)
• Stop with the body-shaming euphemisms when describing women in the spotlight. She is flaunting her curves; i.e. she has gotten a bit fat. She is sporting a baby bump; as opposed to what exactly? Leaving it behind at home? And then, there’s that zinger: She is a ‘real woman’ (which roughly translates as: Oh my God, can you believe how big she’s gotten!).
• And most of all remember, no woman is a ‘female’ version of any man. Sania Mirza is not a female Leander Paes. P.V. Sindhu is not a female Prakash Padukone. Every woman is a person in her own right, with her own identity. Try and respect that; it’s really not that difficult.

Mum's the word

It's time to debunk the myth that motherhood 'completes' a woman

Motherhood. It's a tricky business. And no, I don't mean mothering, which comes with its own set of complications -- and rewards. I am talking about motherhood, a state that everyone and his uncle has an opinion about. Motherhood, which is made out to be the ultimate achievement of a woman (and the inability to achieve it the ultimate failure). Motherhood, the status update that sets the women apart from the girls. Motherhood, the rite of passage that is meant to 'complete' you.

And the reason I have been thinking about motherhood over the last fortnight is down to three women: Jennifer Aniston, Sania Mirza, and of course, Theresa May.

Let's begin with Aniston, who has spent most of her adult life being stalked by the Pregnancy Police. From the time she was married to Brad Pitt to now, when she is wife to Justin Theroux, pregnancy rumors have constantly swirled around Aniston. So, you can understand why she finally blew her stack when some paparazzi pictures of her with a slightly more rounded tummy set off yet another hysterical round of Jen-is-finally-pregnant pieces.

In a searing piece for HuffPost, Aniston wrote, her rage fairly dripping off the page, that she was not pregnant but simply 'fed up' of the constant speculation revolving around her uterus. "I have grown tired of being part of this narrative," she wrote, adding that she was "not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way".

Then it was Sania Mirza's turn to face the mother of all questions from TV anchor, Rajdeep Sardesai. His query was framed in terms of 'settling down'. "What about motherhood...building a family...it seems like you don't want to retire just yet to settle down".

Mirza was having none of this. She responded with a zinging backhander: "You sound disappointed that I am not choosing motherhood over being number one in the world...unfortunately, that's when we are settled, and no matter how many Wimbledons we win or number ones in the world we become, we don't become settled."

To his credit, Sardesai saw the point immediately and instantly apologised, conceding the point that he would never have asked that question of a male sportsperson.

The rest of the world is not always so obliging.  Most people see a childless - or child-free, to use the more politically-correct term - woman as a perennial question mark. Why didn't she have children? Was it down to fertility issues? (If it was, who was to 'blame': the husband or her?) Or is she just a selfish so-and-so, who didn't want kids to hamper her hedonism? What is the appropriate response to her barren state: concern, pity or scorn?

And then come the value judgements. How could she possibly understand what other mothers go through as they bring up their kids when she doesn't have any of her own. She simply can't have the same stake in the future that mothers do - as Andrea Leadsom said so famously and fatally about Theresa May, when they were both running for Tory leader, and the Prime Ministership of Great Britain - because it's not her children who are going to inherit the earth. She can't understand the depth of maternal love because she hasn't experienced it first-hand. And she cannot begin to fathom the despair caused by the loss of a child because, yes, she doesn't have children.

It's almost as if the rest of the world has agreed that a woman who doesn't have a kid is lesser-than in some way. That because an entire world of experience is shut off to her, so is the world of empathy, or indeed, sympathy.

Perhaps this is why childless women so often feel obliged to explain their empty nest to others. Even the resolutely private May had to offer up this tiny morsel about her childlessness: it simply didn't happen (like it doesn't for many people) and while it was an abiding sadness, she and her husband got on with their lives.

Jennifer Aniston, too, responded to the motherhood question a tad defensively in 2014 interview. "You may not have had a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn't mean that you aren't mothering - dogs, friends, friends' children...This continually is being said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself, that I don't want to be a mother, and how selfish that is...Even saying it gets me a little tight in the throat."

But why should any woman - celebrity or otherwise - feel obliged to explain why she doesn't have children? It is nobody's business but her's and her partner's; and presumably both of them are in on the secret.

Thankfully, even Aniston knows better now. As this older and wiser Jen wrote in her HuffPost piece, "We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child...We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."

And yes, whether that includes children or not is entirely up to every woman to decide for herself. And no, she doesn't owe you or the world any explanations about her decision.

Gender bender

Is every attack directed at a woman necessarily misogynistic?

So, what is misogyny? I only ask because someone who couldn't tell the difference between a dictionary and thesaurus tried to teach Sonam Kapoor the meaning of the word in a twitter exchange recently. And also because I suspect that most of us are a little bit hazy on the concept. We know it exists. We know it when we see it or feel it. But the boundaries between what is misogynistic and what is simply a gender-neutral insult seem to lie on constantly shifting sands, so it sometimes difficult to nail down what exactly is misogynistic and what is not.

First off, let's make one thing clear. Every attack on a woman is not misogynistic by default. For instance, if you pillory Indira Gandhi on the imposition of the Emergency and the human rights abuses that followed, you are not being misogynistic. You are criticising her in terms that would apply equally if she were a man. If, however, you laud her as 'the only man in her Cabinet' then you are effectively saying that a woman is only praiseworthy if she behaves and acts in a 'manly' manner, and that squarely hits the misogyny mark.

Let's take a more recent example from Indian politics. Smriti Irani, the union minister for human resources development, gets her fair share of criticism from the media. She is attacked for interfering in the running of independent institutions; she is blamed when certain worthies resign from important educational posts; she is accused of taking directions from the RSS when it comes to the running of her ministry. But whatever the merit of these charges, not one of them is inspired by misogyny. These are accusations that would be made even if Irani were a man.

Misogyny only rears its ugly head when sexist specimens like Sanjay Nirupam refer to her in disparaging terms in television discussions, sneering that “Kal tak toh tum paise key liye TV pey thumke laga rehi thi, aaj neta ban gayi…Pata hai tumhara character.” The sub-text is clear. Irani doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously because she was an actress who used to perform on television, a lightweight who is only good for lagaoing a few ‘thumkas’. How dare she presume that she can debate with serious politicians like Nirupam (huh?) on equal terms?

Women politicians have become so innured to this kind of sexual innuendo, of being objectified, that they probably don’t even take much notice of such things. After all, if you stopped and protested every misogynistic remark thrown at you, there would no time and energy left to deal with anything else. Not Irani though, she sued Nirupam for defamation; and more power to her.

But all women in the public eye have to deal with this stuff at one time or the other. Take, for instance, such female sports stars as Sania Mirza and Saina Nehwal who have notched up as many victories as they have controversies. But it is hardly misogynistic to criticise Nehwal for being a bit of sore loser when she pointed out that she had been ignored for the Padma awards while wrestler Sushil Kumar got one (though you could make the case that Nehwal was a victim of the inherent misogyny of the sports establishment that values male sports stars over the female ones). If a male sporting hero had cribbed publicly about being overlooked, he would have faced much the same sort of reaction. But when you start slamming Sania Mirza for the hemlines of her skirts when she plays tennis then your attack is aimed directly at her gender identity. You don't need a dictionary (or even, dare I say, a thesaurus) to brand this as misogynistic.

Were the attacks on Aishwarya Rai when she didn't lose her baby weight fast enough an example of misogyny? Some of us in the media certainly thought so, arguing that no leading man would be targeted for weight gain in quite the same manner. Perhaps. But those who maintained that the rules for film stars – of both genders – were different, also had a point (see what I mean about shifting sands?). Aamir Khan has had to cope with jibes when he appeared looked a few kilos heavier recently. So did Hrithik Roshan, who quickly stepped away from the carbs and hit the gym, so that he could release before-and-after pix to prove that he was back in shape.

So then, what qualifies as a misogynistic attack? And what doesn’t?

Well, first, there are the no-brainers. If you insult a woman using sexual innuendo, imagery or abuse (‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’ or the newly-minted ‘presstitute’) then that is straight out misogynistic. If you bring in her gender in any way while criticizing her work, that is misogynistic. If you objectify her, or reduce her to a sum of her body parts, that is misogynistic.

But you simply cannot extend the use of the term ‘misogynistic’ to attacks that while directed at a woman do not arise from the fact of her being a woman. Deriding Sonia Gandhi for her Italian birth is racist but not misogynistic. But comparing her to ‘Monica Lewinsky’, as the late Pramod Mahajan did during an election campaign, hits the misogyny mark dead centre. It is important that we learn to tell the difference.

If we are going to battle misogyny we first need to identify it. Then can we recognize it when it hits us square in the face. And only then can we fight back.

Ladies Special

Let’s celebrate Women’s Day by celebrating the women we admire and love

As you may well have noticed, today is International Women’s Day. Yes, yes, we’ve all heard that tired old refrain: Every day is Women’s Day. And no, it wasn’t funny a decade ago, and it’s not funny now. Nor are the annual fulminations of how Women’s Day is a farce because we really haven’t come a long way (baby) very helpful.

So, this year, I decided to celebrate the day by listing some of the women I think are worth celebrating.

Nora Ephron

Her most famous saying was: “Be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” But I have to confess that Ephron is the heroine of my life, and has been ever since I first read her in college. She had the brilliant knack of tapping into her own life to come up with universal truths that every woman could identify with (take the title of her book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck”, for instance). So, her story became our story, and our stories became hers. There could be no greater tribute to any writer.

P.D. James

There is much to admire in Phyllis Dorothy James’ fiction: her intricate plotting, her mastery of suspense, her writing style, and her ability to create characters (Adam Dalgliesh, Cordelia Grey) that we fell in love with. But there is even more to admire in James’ life. A civil servant whose husband died early of a drug and alcohol overdose leaving her to bring up their two young daughters, she published her first book at 42, having written it while working full time. And then, there was no stopping her. She wrote 14 books featuring Dalgiesh, two featuring Grey, and wound up her writing career with a Jane Austen tribute novel, Death Comes To Pemberly, at ripe old age of 91.

Smriti Irani

If a fiction writer made up a story like that of Irani’s, she/he would be accused of over-egging the pudding. She left the family home after finishing school, heading to Mumbai to make a living (where she famously worked at McDonalds). She participated in the Miss India pageant, and then hit the big time with her role as Tulsi in the TV serial, Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. In 2003, she joined the BJP, and had such a meteoric rise that 11 years later, at 38, she became the youngest Cabinet minister, in charge of the crucial portfolio of Human Resources Development. That’s an impressive resume by any standards. But what is even more impressive is Irani’s amazing ability to shrug off the many unpleasant personal attacks on her and concentrate on doing her job.

Mamata Banerjee

I can hear those gasps of disbelief all the way from Calcutta to Delhi. But bear with me a moment and let me tell you the story of a young woman, born in the most humble of circumstances, who took on the might of the Communists in a state which they had ruled for decades, without a thought for her own personal safety. She stuck to the task until she had driven them out of office. But even after assuming office as West Bengal chief minister, she never forgot where she came from. She still lives in her old, two-room house, wears the same crumpled cotton saris, and has the same fiery zeal that she displayed as an activist.

Mary Kom

It takes a special talent to excel in a sport at an international level. And Kom’s achievement is even more special because of the many obstacles she had to overcome to become a champion boxer: her early life in the disturbed area of Manipur, the lack of training resources, the paucity of support for her chosen career. But not only did Kom triumph, she also made a comeback to boxing after having twins, shutting up all those who had written her off.

Sania Mirza

Her achievements in tennis are there for everyone to see, but what I admire most about Mirza is the way she has chosen to live her life completely on her own terms. She wore short skirts on the tennis court despite the attacks by Muslim conservatives. She stood firm by Shoaib Malik, the Pakistani cricketer she fell in love with, marrying him amidst a swirl of controversy. And she showed both grace and courage, standing up to the bullies who would deny her Indian identity post her marriage.

Madonna

What an absolute trouper she is! She took a tumble down the stage at the recent Brit awards, landing on her head and shoulders with an almighty thwack. Lesser beings would have been rushed straight to hospital after that. But not Madonna: she stood up, shook off the dust, and carried on with her act as if nothing had happened. No wonder the Material Girl has been a star longer than most pop stars of today have been alive!

Farah Khan

Say what you will about Farah Khan’s school of filmmaking (yes, it’s full on escapist masala fare, but so what?) but there is no denying that she is one of the most bankable names in the movie business now. Her last release, Happy New Year, was the biggest grosser of 2014, raking in a record-breaking Rs 350 crores. And with it, Khan proved that while it may be hard to gain entry into the Big Boys Club that is Bollywood, it is not impossible to beat them at their own game.

Who is an Indian?

And does marrying a Pakistani make you any less of one?

So, what makes an Indian an Indian? Or to put it another way, what turns an Indian into a foreigner? Or, for that matter, what turns a foreigner into an Indian? I only ask because, as I sit down to write this, a controversy has broken out about whether Sania Mirza deserves to be appointed brand ambassador of the newly-minted state of Telengana.

In case you have been living on a desert island for the past decade or so, Sania Mirza is India’s first bonafide female tennis star, who, at the peak of her playing form, had a world ranking of 27 in singles and five in doubles. In the course of her checkered career, she met, fell in love with, and married a Test cricketer called Shoaib Malik (and the two appear to be living happily ever after, thank you very much).

So, nobody should have been too surprised when K. Chandrasekhar Rao, the chief minister of Telegana, held a ceremony to appoint Sania as Telegana brand ambassador. After all, she is the pride and joy of Hyderabad, where her family have lived for generations (since 1908, since you ask). What better brand ambassador could a state possibly have than a local girl who became an international star through a combination of sheer talent, hard work, and a ferocious desire to succeed?

Ah, but here’s the rub. You remember the husband I mentioned, don’t you? A decent sort of chap who plays cricket rather well. The problem is that he plays cricket for Pakistan. And even though the couple currently lives in Dubai, Shoaib is a Pakistani citizen.

Cue, angry BJP legislators like K. Laxman queuing up to denounce the decision to appoint Sania the brand ambassador of Telengana. How could the state government possibly give the gig to a woman who was the ‘daughter-in-law of Pakistan’? Never mind that Sania has retained her Indian citizenship, still plays for India, and has announced proudly, “I am an Indian, who will remain an Indian till the end of my life.”

But for sexist, misogynist, traditionalists like the BJP member and others of his ilk, a woman is defined by the man she weds. Once she is married, she takes on the identity and nationality of her husband, and ceases to be herself, or even a person in her own right. Sania married a Pakistani; so, she is Pakistan’s daughter-in-law. Ergo, even if she is still an Indian passport holder, she can no longer call herself an Indian.

That’s how the argument goes…at least that’s how it goes until the woman in question is Sonia Gandhi. Then, the argument is turned right on its head. Like Sania, Sonia too met a man of a different nationality, fell in love and got married. She left her native Italy at the age of 22, to come and live with her husband, Rajiv, whom she married in 1968. So, she has now spent 46 years in India as opposed to the 22 she spent in Italy. She took on Indian nationality in 1983 so she has been a citizen of this country for more than 30 years. And even after her husband was brutally assassinated in 1991, she chose to stay on in India, which she regarded as her natural home.

So, by any reckoning, if anyone has earned the right to be referred to as ‘India’s daughter-in-law’ it is Sonia Gandhi. And yet, when it comes to being counted as Indian, she still doesn’t quite cut it. Her ‘foreign origin’ is like the proverbial Damocles sword hanging over her head.

Which brings me back to my original question. Who is an Indian? And who is not? And on what basis is that decision made?

Well, if you ask me, it all comes down to one word: choice. If you choose to be Indian, no matter where you were born, where you currently live, or whom you are married to, then you are an Indian. If you choose not to be Indian, no matter if you were born in India, are married to an Indian, and live in India, well then, you are not an Indian. It really is as simple as that. That is what the ‘idea of India’ is all about.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen may have lived almost his entire adult life abroad, may be married to a foreigner, but still holds on to his Indian passport. So he indubitably is an Indian. Ditto steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who lives and does business abroad but has refused to give up his Indian passport. The late K.R. Narayanan may have married a Burmese lady while still in the foreign service, but that didn’t prevent him from becoming President of India. But while we have no problem with identifying these men as Indian, women often encounter a grey area when it comes to establishing their identity and their nationality.

Which brings us back to where we started: why this fuss about Sania and Sonia? And why the double standards? Is it because the patriarchy is unwilling to grant these women – and others like them – what men take for granted: the freedom to choose? It should be up to a woman to decide which country she wishes to belong to: the one she was born in or the one she married into. And it is for us to respect that choice.