A victory for Indian women?

Figurehead position or not, congratulations are in order for Pratibha Patil, the new president of India. Patil is India's first woman president (though the subconty is not unfamiliar with women leaders, such as Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi).

(And, of course, obligatory mention of how ironic it is that India is by and large perceived [in the U.S.] as oppressive to women, while we Americans struggle to wrap our heads around the potential election of Hilz and default to either calling her a bitch or a lesbian.)

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).

Confronting abuse

The Ministry for Women and Child Development (supported by Save the Children and UNICEF) has just released the results of an empirical national study on child abuse that spanned 12,500 children and 4,800 young adults in 13 Indian states. And it's a blockbuster: It asserts that two out of every three children have been physically abused and more than half of the respondents were subject to sexual abuse.

I'm a bit skeptical, primarily because none of the stories I've read have defined the exact boundaries of physical or sexual abuse, nor have they addressed the issue of methodological rigor. Prayas, the NGO that did the data collection, offers some insight on its methodology on its Web site, but a little more clarity would be nice. Statistics conceal as much as they reveal (or, in the words of Andrew Lang, "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts -- for support rather than illumination"), and everything, from the phrasing of questions to the people deployed to collect information, can distort reality.

Regardless, this report seems like an excellent opportunity for some thoughtful follow-up reporting -- whether to broach the reliability of such surveys, to address the issue of gender as it affected the findings, to discuss ways of raising awareness and bucking the trend, &c. Will any media outlets take up this challenge, or are they content to simply project images of young girls playing barefoot in the dirt under headlines such as "Girls want to be boys"? I'm not so optimistic, but perhaps someone will prove me wrong.

Innocent until proven guilty, but still probably an asshole

This week, Indian celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon was arrested and charged with six felonies, including rape and lewd acts on a child.

Now, I'm not jumping to conclusions, and in America, it's innocent until proven guilty (unlike what is sometimes rougher justice here -- as when alleged killer/rapist/cannibal [?!] Mohinder Singh Pandher had the shit kicked out of him when he exited a court earlier this year). But I feel pretty secure calling foul on this statement by Jon's defense attorney, Ronald Richards:

When you have people desperate to be in fashion, they get upset when you don't place them where they want to be. When you deal with a large number of women, you're going to have potential false allegations made against you.

Way to take the high road. A pure class act. Because you know that every young girl is dying to be known as having been sexually abused, or to have her name associated with rape and lewdness the world over.

A whole DAY for people with vaginas?

It's International Women's Day, an event I hardly knew existed when I was in the U.S., but one which is widely acknowledged in the good ole subconty. If you do one thing to commemorate half the world's population, perhaps it should be visiting the Blank Noise Project, which is a blog/activist group committed to intervening on the behalf of women in India.

Alternatively, you could check out information from the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development, or head to a seminar held by the National Commission for Women entitled "Mentally Ill Women: Is Destitution the Only Answer?"

Despite the somewhat exploitative/outlandish title, I wish I had been able to attend this colloquiom. Although I don't explicitly address it that often any longer, mental illness is certainly an issue close to my heart, and living outside "my" society has only highlighted the fact that it is only a fortuitous confluence of circumstance -- gender, geographic location, parentage, historical era -- that has allowed me to study, marry, travel, and thrive.

On this (perhaps constructively) manufactured holiday, I'd like to acknowledge the strength of the women in my life, past and present. To, first and foremost, my mother and grandmother, who have modeled for me what a woman should be -- intelligent, independent, feisty, caring, and driven. To the lovely Rita, for accepting so wholeheartedly as a daughter; to all the women of S's family for being thoughtful and involving me in all the family's gatherings. To my best girlfriends from "home," Dina, Mandi, Janessa, and Elaine; and to my most excellent women colleagues (and our single male team member!). There are miles to go before we sleep, but we have, indeed, come a long way.

[Mush aside: Lots of interesting coverage in the news in relation to gender, &c. A short selection of the panoply of articles ...

"Women Struggle to Find Place in Modern India" (DNA)
"Two Steps Forward, One Backward" (Inter Press Service)
"Only 14% Women in Top Management in India" (Rediff)
"Mumbai Taxi Service: No Men Allowed" (CNN)
"Tiny Steps to a Women's March" (Times of India)
"Women to be Kept Off Combat" (Hindustan Times)
"Veet Celebrates Women's Day With Launch of Indian Website" (Indiantelevision.com)]