WOMEN SPECIAL ......WOMEN WITH A MISSION (1)

WOMEN WITH A MISSION (1)





Cooking with Stella, a 2009 film directed by Dilip Mehta, brother of filmmaker Deepa Mehta, created quite a buzz in Delhi's diplomatic circles, especially among women. A light comedy, about a Canadian diplomat (played by Lisa Ray) who arrives in Delhi with her husband, was largely shot inside the Canadian High Commission. Many women diplomats could identify with the scenes where Ray's staff were agog about a woman going out to work while her husband stayed at home and learnt cooking. Cut to the summer of 2017 and things have changed somewhat.New Delhi has around 15 women heads of missions, representing countries as diverse as Kenya, Argentina and the Philippines.However, there's still a long way to go, points out Australian High Commissioner Harinder Sidhu, since only around 10% of the missions in India are headed by women. Last month, Sidhu organised a lunch for all her women counterparts where they discussed the issues they have faced, including gender discrimination in foreign services and violence against young women in India.

CB Muthamma, the first woman to join the Indian Foreign Service in 1949, had fought against flagrant gender bias in the services -a woman officer had to, for instance, obtain permission from the government to get married and she could be asked to resign because of that. From the first woman foreign secretary Chokila Iyer to Arundhati Ghose, Nirupama Rao and Meera Shankar, women have made their mark in the services. Yet the number of women IFS officers is a matter of concern. Suryakanthi Tripathi, a retired Indian diplomat and former ambassador to Spain, says that the small number of Indian women who make it to the top jobs in the foreign services is not because of glass ceiling but because very few women opt for the IFS.“Back in 1974, when I joined the foreign service we had two girls in a class of 20 and even after so many years the proportion is not too different,“ she says.

What are the takeaways from women heading missions in India? On the eve of International Women's Day on March 8, ET Magazine caught up with some of them:

Ishani Duttagupta

ETM5MAR17