Got vagina?

Then P.RM Travels has a job for you.

In the classified section of The Hindu, I happened upon a rather hilarious ad, which I will recreate below:

Singapore-Walk-In
1. Mechanical Engineers - 5 yrs exp in rotating, static, PPM skills, planning and scheduling with SAP R3 knowledge. Cost estimation etc ...
2. MEP-Coordinators - able to do electrical / mechanical maintenance work in building, petro- chemical industry
3. Process Technicians - Petro- chemical exp must
4. Female (exp not essential)
5. QA/QC-Inspectors - precision industry experience must
...
To apply, to know salary & nature of job log on to our website. www.jobonhand.com

Does this strike anyone else as extremely shady? They're not asking for an executive assistant or an administrator, and experience is explicitly unnecessary. So what, dear friends, could the job profile for this female be?

(And, OK, if you go to the Web site, they do request a "female operator." However, I fail to see why they couldn't put this in the ad, if they're going to list details about the other jobs -- apparently targeting men -- that are a bit more salient than specifying desired genitals.)

Better health through impoverishment!

India's Ministry of Health has just debuted a Web site promoting awareness about health. While I applaud them for providing information on disease prevention, nutrition, and healthy lifestyles, I'm a bit disturbed by some of the content I found in a section entitled "Indian values."

Next to a picture of women carrying earthen urns on their heads, text reads: "The glory in carrying an urn, Health through carrying an urn These women rarely developed cervical spondylosis. They were physically active and many of today's diseases were thus prevented."

Then, by a woman grinding wheat on a millstone, comes this reproach: "Health through grinding your own flour in glorious India. These glorious Indian women never developed a frozen shoulder. They were physically active and home ground pure whole grains were being consumed which are very healthy to the body. Health was through eating whole grains, health through physical activity through their daily chores."

The key message seems to be right on -- physical activity is good. But the subtext seems to be that women, in embracing urban lifestyles, are dooming themselves to unspoken tragedy. This wouldn't bother me so much if there was also a section on how men should return to the agrarian life, say, urging them to embrace manually sowing fields, but there isn't. Instead, it is presumed that women should stay in their traditional places, shunning convenience for the sake of slaving over an open fire to provide the family endless freshly made rotis (and, of course, waiting until the men finish their meals before serving themselves leftovers).

Damn those hussies!

Moronic letter of The Week (pun intended; October 29, 2006 issue) -- one Colonel Sanjay Kapoor of Delhi extols:

"Women have come a long way in the last decade but somewhere along, they seem to have gone overboard ('Welcome to she-zone', October 8). Women are running nonstop with the sole aim of overtaking men. In trying to compete with men, they have forgotten that they need not wear trousers, use alcohol, smoke and be ruthless. In trying to find a new identity women are losing the identity they had. Where are those doe-eyed women who could entice men by just fluttering their eyelids? She can be an achiever without becoming a man and killing her feminine identity. These are indicators of the suicidal and homicidal mission that women are on these days."

Umm...I just can't respond to this. If fluttering my eyelids is supposed to be my only claim to identity, then I guess I was born with the wrong genitals.