Wear your attitude

What women politicians tell us with their fashion choices

Fashion is often dismissed as frivolous. Not the kind of thing that a 'serious ' woman should concern herself with. Not for her the needless obsessing with hemlines and necklines; not for her a seasonal update of her wardrobe; not for her a closet full of high-heeled shoes.

No, the 'serious' woman is not supposed to pay much attention to her clothes. She should ideally have a utilitarian 'uniform', the kind she can step into every morning with the minimum of fuss and then go out and conquer the world.

But what of the women who have, in effect, conquered their world? How much attention do they pay to clothes? And what do their fashion choices tell us about them?

This is an interesting question to ask at this time when the world is teeming with women leaders, all of them with a distinctive style of their own. A style that has been honed over the years to project an image. This image may portray anything from power to humility, femininity to feminism, style to practicality. But every image sends forth a strong message about the women behind it.

Let's take a quick trip around this picture gallery to see what it tells us about  those featured?

Hillary Clinton

It makes sense to start with the woman who will soon (fingers crossed!) be the leader of the free world. At the Democratic convention, where Hillary accepted the party's nomination to run for President of the United States, she appeared in a dazzlingly-bright white suit, set off by blonde hair blow-dried to within an inch of its life. This was an image calculated to send out subliminal messages of power, control, perfection. This was a woman confident enough to find her style -- pant suits in a single block of color, set off with a discreet neckpiece -- and stick to it. Yes, it was a uniform, but it was entirely of her own making. A nod to fashion and yet a complete repudiation of it. Very Hillary, in other words.

Theresa May

Reams of newsprint have been dedicated to May's love of shoes, which takes in every style from thigh-high PVC boots to animal print kitten heels. And now that she is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, her shoes attract more attention than ever before, signaling -- as the media never tire of pointing out - the fun and frivolous side of this otherwise 'serious' person. But it is her tightly-structured and perfectly-tailored jackets that tell us about the essential woman: always poised, always in control, the grown up in any room. And just when you think you have figured her out, May throws you off balance yet again: with a statement necklace that hints at hidden depths behind that icy exterior.


Angela Merkel

Frau Merkel doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. And nothing says that more clearly and loudly than her wardrobe choices -- or more accurately, the lack of them. She is always dressed in an ill-fitting suit, which makes no concessions to the German Chancellor's figure. The message is clear: this woman has more important things to think about than the fit of her clothes. And that is, in itself, a style statement of sorts.

Sonia Gandhi

From the time she entered politics, Sonia has based her look on that of her famous mother-in-law. It probably helps that she inherited Indira Gandhi's amazing collection of saris, a veritable treasure trove of handlooms accessed from all parts of India. And Sonia wears them well, always well starched and pinned into place, loose enough around the pleats so that she can take the same long strides that were an Indira trademark, head covered by her pallu when she heads into rural parts. She is the Gandhi bahu, the repository of the family legacy, and there is never a moment when she doesn't look the part.

Mayawati

In her person, she embodies the dream of Dalit empowerment. So, it is no accident that Mayawati is the only female Indian politician who is seen in public carrying a designer handbag; or that she sports diamonds in her ears that look straight out of J. Jayalalitha's collection. Or even, that she wears smart salwar kameez ensembles of the kind that upper middle class urban women live in. Her image conveys a strong message to her followers: expensive tastes are no longer a preserve of the upper castes. Dalits have as much right to them as anyone else.

Mamata Banerjee

Her crumpled cotton saris and flip-flops have become her signature style ever since she descended on the streets of Calcutta to fight the Communists. And now that she is chief minister of the state, it serves to signal that Mamatadi is the same as ever: power has not gone to her head, or indeed infiltrated her wardrobe. She remains the same simple woman who lives in a one-bedroom apartment and devotes her life to her 'peepul'. A woman like that has no time for an ironing board, even if someone else is doing the ironing.

Priyanka Gandhi

She is the chameleon of Indian politics. And just as she keeps the country guessing about her political intentions, she also tends to mix it up as far as her sartorial choices are concerned. In the city, she dresses like any other 40-something mother of two (albeit one with a better figure than most) in jeans and T-shirts. When she heads for the family constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli, she drapes herself in a handloom sari, just like her mother and grandmother before her. In that, she is like Superman or Batman, changing into costume before charging into battle. I guess the Uttar Pradesh elections will show if she really is Wonder Woman!

Half the sky

Is it really too much to ask for gender parity in Indian politics?

One of the nicest moments in recent politics unfolded in faraway Canada. The newly-elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, introduced his new Cabinet to the media, a nice round number of 30, evenly divided into 15 women and 15 men. This led one of the journalists at the press conference to ask, "Why is gender parity so important to you?"

Without missing a beat, Trudeau replied: "Because it is 2015." And then, with a supremely Gallic shrug, he moved on.

It was the matter of factness of Trudeau's response that really appealed to me. It was almost as if he couldn't believe that in the second decade of the 21st century, someone could be asking him such a lame question.

Except, of course, that this not a lame question. And gender parity is not something that any of us can take for granted, no matter where in the world we may live. Forget about the Middle-East or the Third World, where women are often seen as lesser beings, even in the so-called enlightened and progressive West, gender parity is far from a given.

I'll take the example of politics, because that's where we started. The US Senate has 20 women members out of a 100 while the House of Representatives has 84 women members out of 435. So, in the leading democracy of the world, the representation of women stands at an abysmal average of 18 per cent.

In the UK, things are only marginally better. There are 191 women in the House of Commons, whose total strength stands at 650. This brings the representation of women up to 29 per cent, which is an improvement over the previous House, in which women accounted for only 22 per cent.

Germany may have a female Chancellor in Angela Merkel, but the representation of women stops at 37 per cent. Even Scandinavian countries, with their emphasis on gender equality, stop short of gender parity. The representation of women is 40 per cent in Norway and 45 per cent in Sweden.

Canada is alone in the world in having a government that has 50 per cent representation of women in its ranks. (And Canada alone has a Cabinet that looks like Canada itself, with every culture, every ethnic minority represented. But that's another story, for another day.)

So, how does India hold up when put to the gender parity test? Well, as you may have guessed, not very well at all. Out of the 543 members of the Lok Sabha, only 66 are women. But at just above 12 per cent, this is still the highest representation of women in our entire Parliamentary history. (The previous Lok Sabha only had 59 women members.)

And how do individual parties do?

The Trinamool Congress performs the best, with 12 women MPs out of 34, scoring a very respectable 35 percent. The West Bengal state government, though, is a disappointment – despite being led by a female Chief Minister in Mamata Banerjee – with only four women ministers out of a total of 42. But not if you compare it to the Delhi state government, where Arvind Kejriwal didn't see it fit to appoint a single female minister when he swept to power on a virtual landslide.

The ruling BJP may have some strong female leadership in its first string, with Sushma Swaraj serving as external affairs minister, Smriti Irani as Human Resources Development minister, Nirmala Sitharaman as Commerce minister, but its tally of women MPs in the Lok Sabha is far from encouraging: a mere 32 out of 280 members. The only silver lining is that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha remains a woman, with Sumitra Mahajan taking over from Meira Kumar.

The Congress also falls damnably short, even though the party itself is led by a woman, Sonia Gandhi. Of its 44 members in the Lok Sabha only four are women. That really isn't good enough for a party that has always maintained that there should be 33 per cent reservation for women in legislative bodies.

I think I know what all of you are thinking right about now. How can we possibly compare ourselves to European democracies, or even to Canada, when it comes to women’s representation? These countries have progressive societies with strong women's rights movements, while we are struggling to emerge from a feudal mindset, especially in the rural parts of our country.

Fair enough. We have a long way to go before women can even dream of equal representation in politics. But if Canada seems a stretch too far, perhaps we should let the success story of Rwanda be a lesson to us all.

This African nation has a whopping 64 per cent representation of women in its Parliament, the highest in the world. One reason advanced for this is that the male population of this country dropped to 30 per cent after the worst genocide in recent history. But the other explanation is that Rwanda introduced quotas mandating a 30 per cent representation of women in Parliament and government. The women elected under this proviso proved so successful that the gender ratio gradually improved to stand at the current 64 per cent. And soon, it is argued, Rwanda may no longer even need quotas to ensure proportional representation of women.

Surely, if a nation just emerging from a violent past can achieve this, what excuse can we possibly have to fall so short? I have never been a votary of women’s reservation in Parliament, believing that it pushes women into a ghetto, but I am now inclined to say: bring it on!

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.

Kitchen politics

Do we really need to peek into the personal spaces of politicians to judge how they will perform their public duties?

Do you know what Narendra Modi’s kitchen in his Race Course Road residence looks like? Or even the one he left back home in Ahmedabad? Have you any clue what brand Sonia Gandhi’s kitchen stove or mixer-grinder is? Have Arun Jaitley or Rahul Gandhi ever given you a tour of their kitchens? Has Sushma Swaraj invited the cameras in as she rustles up a mean phulka?

Of course not. Our politicians would never dream of doing any such thing. You may well argue that this is because our politicians on the whole don’t have much to do with kitchens (unless you’re talking of kitchen cabinets). As is common in most Indian homes, the kitchens are probably the preserve of cooks and maids. And the reason they don’t show off their pots and pans is because they have no clue where they are stored.

And you are probably right about all of that. But that said, it is also true that private lives – and personal spaces, for that matter – of politicians are still treated as off limits by the Indian media. We may ask an actress or a model to cook spaghetti Bolognese for the benefit of the cameras. We may request a sportsman to pose with an energy drink in front of his refrigerator. But we hardly ever seek to peer into the homes of our politicians.

Well, consider yourself lucky. In the run-up to the UK elections, the poor British electorate has had more kitchens thrown at it than it knows what to do with. Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron kicked off proceedings by inviting the cameras into his kitchen at Downing street, where he was photographed combing his daughter’s hair to get her ready for school, while wife Samantha bent fetchingly over the kitchen stove in the background. He followed this up with an interview conducted in his constituency home, as he rustled up a salad and some cold cuts for the family.

So, what could the Labour leader do but follow suit? Except that, being Ed Milliband, he couldn’t help but start a controversy in the process. Ed and wife Justine Thornton were pictured standing awkwardly in a tiny, forlorn kitchen, bare surfaces all around, sipping on mugs of tea. Cue, much chortling about how Milliband’s characterless kitchen was a metaphor for his own personality, not to mention his campaign. To add injury to insult, it was then revealed that this was not the main kitchen of the Milliband home, but a tiny kitchenette used by their live-in nanny. Cue, many jokes about ‘Two-kitchens Ed’!

With Cameron and Milliband in the fray, how could Nick Clegg be left behind? The Liberal leader dutifully turned out for kitchen duty with his Spanish wife, Miriam Gonzales Durantez, each of them clutching a glass of white wine, while a pot of paella simmered away in the background. Probably not the best subliminal messaging but then this is Nick Clegg we are talking about.

To be fair to the British media, they have entered the personal spaces of politicians only by invitation. And that’s because every politician worth his sea salt wants to prove to the British public what an ‘ordinary Joe’ he really is. So, they all line up to show how they can fix meals in the kitchen, get their kids ready for the school run, supervise their homework, and then relax with a glass of wine just like any other knackered parent. I guess this is supposed to make people like them, to see them as ‘one of us’, to appreciate that they perform the same ordinary chores like everyone else. Except that they also run the country (or would very much like to run the country, if only people would see the light).

Honestly, are these staged photo-opportunities the best way to decide who is the best man for the top job? Does David Cameron become a better candidate for PM because he knows how to comb his daughter’s hair into a high ponytail and stick a scrunchie on it? Does Ed Milliband think he can endear himself to his Labour base by preening in a tiny kitchenette that they could presumably identify with? And does Nick Clegg… Actually, scratch that. I have no idea what Clegg thinks he’s trying to achieve – and it’s beginning to look as if he doesn’t either.

But what all of this malarkey does achieve is make me so very thankful that I live in India, where I don’t have the kitchen sink thrown at me every time a politician stands for election. I would much rather judge politicos on the basis of the soundness of their ideas rather than the softness of their idlis. I don’t need to know what kind of pressure cooker a politician uses to decide if he can stand up to the stresses of a high-pressure job. And I really don’t need to peek into his personal space to judge how he will perform in the public sphere.

As the saying does not go, if you can take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

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.