Gender Agenda newsletter: Ma-behen-beti-bahu

The Hindu

24-05-2025

Ma-behen-beti-bahu
Around the time that Banu Mushtaq and her translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize 2025 for Heart Lamp, a collection of stories in Kannada, several other events took place in India.
On May 18, two days before the Booker win, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, an associate professor of political science in what was marketed as India's first liberal-arts higher-education institution, was booked for social media posts that Renu Bhatia, the chairperson for the Haryana State Commission for Women, had a problem with, because it 'disparaged women officers in the armed forces'. Bhatia gave interviews speaking about 'desh ki beti' being wronged. Many students and colleagues came out in Mahmudabad's support.
The other event was the inclusion of journalist-turned-politician M.J. Akbar in a multi-party delegation sent off to Europe, to represent India's stance post the Pahalgam terrorist attack and Operation Sindoor. The Network of Women in Media, India, condemned this in a statement, saying, 'Many women journalists who said they had been subjected to predatory behaviour, sexual harassment and/or assault by MJ Akbar over the years, spoke out during India's #MeToo movement around 2018, with at least 20 women ready to testify against him.' He had also lost a 'defamation case he filed against one of his accusers'.
The third was Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, whose bio on social media platform X says he makes 'Genghis Khan look like a humanitarian', called women journalists of Newslaundry 'prostitutes' and their workplace a 'brothel'. Nine journalists from Newslaundry took him to court, and the Delhi High Court asked him to take the posts down.
Each is representative of where India stands on gender right now: Mushtaq's book is a subtle commentary on women who are unheard; Bhatia's FIR is illustrative of how a woman can misuse power thrown to her by male bosses; Akbar's inclusion in a peace mission based on tragic losses suffered by women is India's ruling party telling us that in some cases, even optics don't matter. As for Iyer-Mitra, the venom he believed he could get away with speaks of a larger patriarchal structure that attempts to drag women down.
Women speak in different voices: Mushtaq's subtle narratives of unheard, pushed-aside women in her book; Bhatia's ventriloquist voice mouthing the words of male bosses; NWMI's statement stemming from collective might; the women of Newslaundry who used the force of education, employment, and the knowledge of their rights, to call out Iyer-Mitra's statements as 'defamatory, false, malicious and unsubstantiated'.
All the voices are fuelled by patriarchy, three of them a cry against the violence it brings; one, a reflection on where India is today. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap 2024 puts India at 129 of 146 countries: 112 on education, 142 in economic participation, 142 on health and survival.
Toolkit
Students at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology have developed a 'toolbox to boost gender inclusion'. The Genie Action Toolbox is a set of five potential areas people are likely to encounter challenges: meeting, recruitment, harassment, conflict resolution, community building. Users can query the system that will suggest solutions.
Wordsworth
Gender-responsive
Group policies or activities that acknowledge the barriers to gender quality. These could be familial, cultural, system, or structural, and they often define gender roles. They create an environment that takes on-ground realities into consideration while planning. Last week, the Observer Research Foundation put out an article that spoke about how as India moves from coal-based to renewable energy, 'skill development in coal-dependent regions can support a more equitable transition.'
Somewhere someone said something stupid
I'm not a feminist really…. I can never believe that we have to fight the men, because every woman's issue is a man's issue, and if we can't fight together it's not worth it, for me it's not worth it....
Usha Uthup, musician
Woman we met
Hema Nayal, 40, runs a bangles-bindis-barrettes store in the village of Bhatelia in Uttarakhand's Nainital district. She remembers starting in September 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. 'All the shops were shut but women still wanted a few cosmetics. So I put in about ₹2,000, sourced the choodi-bindi from Haldwani (the closest city) and started selling out of home. When everything opened, my husband suggested I rent a place in the market,' she says. Nayal has a full day. She starts her morning with household chores: cooking, seeing her children (a 17-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son) off to school, cutting grass for the cows. Then she heads to her job as a helper in the Anganwadi, coming in to her little triangular-shaped store that can just about seat two, by about 2 p.m. 'Kuch hi auraten hain yahan jo apne liye bhi jee rahe hain,' (There are only women here who also live for themselves), she says.