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Why Salman Khan needs to watch good movies
Mukherjee had no intention of going back to the United Kingdom, where she had given up a flourishing career as a business manager to come to India and start a company that would do fashion retail. So she changed her CA.
Suchi Mukherjee went to see a chartered accountant as she took her first baby steps towards setting up Lime Road. The wearied man took a good look at her and said: “Are you crazy? Go back.”
Mukherjee had no intention of going back to the United Kingdom, where she had given up a flourishing career as a business manager to come to India and start a company that would do fashion retail. So she changed her CA.
But that does not change the fact that women in business are viewed through a prism that’s less accepting of them than it is of men. Women are always thought of — and not just by men — as less deserving of their success than men. It’s fine so long as the women confine themselves to being the receptionist, or the secretary, or the tea lady. If they manage to break the glass ceiling and rise to the top, they — goes the popular perception — must have done something below the board.
Read | LimeRoad to redemption: Why e-com troubles make Suchi Mukherjee happy
If that can not be proved, they would question her choice of clothes, or make her out to be a bitch. Or they would question her attitude towards her family and children, as if the key to corporate success for women is paved with broken homes. If a woman voices a firm opinion in a meeting, there will likely be sideway glances among her male colleagues to ask if she is having her periods. As if having periods is an accusation one needs to avoid. A lady entrepreneur told me she was denied promotion in her last job because she was pregnant with her second child. She worked at the India office of a new-age, United States-based company.
It’s the case not just in India but around the world. The reason it survives and thrives is because much of the sexism at work is subtle. That’s what Ellen Pao found out the hard way. A former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Pao sued the firm, one of best-known venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley, of discriminating against her because of her gender. It became a much-talked-about case. But in March last year, the court ruled in favour of the firm because of insufficient evidence.
However, in spite of the verdict going against Pao, her case managed to put the spotlight on the way women are treated in the Silicon Valley. And if the Silicon Valley, the mecca of young and modern entrepreneurs, does not acquit itself impeccably, imagine the situation elsewhere. One wonders whether we have come too far from days of Mad Men, the acclaimed TV show, which had the advertising world of the 1960s as its backdrop. As the men in the show smoked and drank in office, they treated most of the women as low-intellect objects of desire.
Read | Firm truths: Gender biases at work hurt all women
Not that the attitude is confined to the world of advertising or corporations, or to the 1960s. Last year, Nobel winning scientist Tim Hunt, at the ripe old age of 72, had this to say at the world conference of science journalists in Seoul: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.” The “girls” Hunt was talking about were women scientists.
That — the pervasiveness of the sexist attitude — is why we need to rally around Kangana Ranaut. She kicked ass with her response to the loose talk that she was a witch. “Witchcraft is an ancient art, everyone should know about it. What is wrong with witchcraft? Don’t we like Harry Potter? I would want my daughter to know about witchcraft,” she said. Of course, countless women were burned in the dark ages on the charge of being witches. Even now, as Ranaut said, when people want to run down a woman they rush to call her a daayan, a chudail, or a whore. Curiously, “wizard” has never been able to become an invective. Nor stud, for that matter. If a woman is friendly to several women, she is not nice. But if a man manages to befriend several women, he is someone to look up to.
Read | Kangana Ranaut is a witch and must be burnt at the stake?
There is a joke going around on WhatsApp groups and Facebook that the first women fighter pilots of the Indian Air Force are being told by their relatives: “All this is fine, but when will you get married?”
One can manage to smirk at that, but not at how Salman Khan described his feelings after shooting for a wrestling movie. Clearly, Khan has no idea about the trauma the damn thing perpetrates on a woman. Perhaps he has spent too much time watching television shows like Two and a Half Men. Perhaps the Bollywood star has not seen the well-made movies on the subject. He can do worse than to start with the Rekha- and Vinod Mehra-starrer, Ghar.
Read | Salman Khan, why do you keep making it difficult for a fan to remain loyal?
