Feministaah

There was a short story, read long ago, in which a woman wants to take up a job. She gets one to run a crèche, so she has to hire a domestic helper to look after her home and kids. The woman she hires, then has to leave her kids at the day care centre her employer runs. There must have been a point in there about the price women pay for having careers, but the fact is that a lot of women are able to pursue higher education and work outside the home, because another woman—it is usually a woman, but there are men too—are holding fort at home. The indispensable domestic worker came into focus through Alfonso Cuaron’s film   Roma , that has been a raved about by critics and audiences, and has just won three Academy Awards—narrowly missing the Best Film Prize which went to   Green Book , also about an employer-employee relationship, but in a different context. In  Roma , Cuaron revisits his childhood in Mexico City and plays tribute to the family’s maid  Libori...

Recently, there was a show of a play called  Pink  Sari Revolution , directed by the London-based Suba Das, written by Purva Naresh, based on the book by Amana Fontanella-Khan. Made one wonder whatever happened to Sampat Pal, the leader of the Gulabi Gang, whose vigilante group of  pink -sari clad women in Uttar Pradesh, had so captured the imagination, that two documentaries (by Kim Longinotto and Nishtha Jain) were made on her, also a feature film (by Soumik Sen, starring Madhuri Dixit), two books and several newspaper and magazine stories. There are other women’s groups and NGOs working for the welfare of underprivileged women, but Gulabi Gang made for exciting and colourful (literally—that sea of bright  pink ) material.  Sampat Pal belongs to one of the most backward and patriarchal regions of the country, where rural women have no presence and no voice. Violence, especially against lower-caste women, is rampant. This is the region from where ‘Bandit ...

There are so many ads that are offensive to women, that show them as weak, indecisive, vain or silly. There are protests against some—mostly the brazenly sexist ones—but soon it’s back to normal. There are scantily clad models selling cars, razors, male deodorants, and conservatively clothed women being told what’s good for them, if they want to keep husband, mother-in-law and son (rarely daughter) happy. But one Gillette commercial calling out toxic masculinity has men howling in rage and threatening to boycott the company’s shaving products. The n ew “We Believe” ad —carries the company’s tagline “Is this the best a man can get?” and the 48-second spot address issues like bullying, sexual harassment, violence, and the #MeToo movement.  A voiceover in the end says, “Is this the best a man can get? Is it? We can’t hide from it; it’s been going on far too long. We can’t laugh it off, making the same old excuses. But something finally changed. And there will be no going back...