A gender bender?

It was tough choosing six women to feature in our Women's Day article. In fact, we had a debate on whether it was even necessary, as some of the women we contacted said that today women literally had the world on a platter and discrimination was a fact of the past. Does it emphasise stereotypical reactions to women? One of the ladies interviewed was piqued that people constantly complimented her on her dimpled smile, saying "I'm much more than my smile!"

Also an unusual feature of the pharmaceutical industry is that women may outnumber men in certain departments, like quality control, R&D and clinical research, as women have always naturally chosen these fields. In fact, while setting up institutional committees it sometimes becomes a task to search for and ensure "male" representation to avoid gender bias!

But we went ahead with the feature as we felt it was necessary to highlight role models. Because opportunities have not filtered down enough. In the recent hue and cry about 'Dr Horror's' kidney trade mafia, it emerged that most of the donors were young women. In fact, most of the women in Chennai's Tsunami Nagar, have had to sell their kidneys to feed their families while waiting for government compensation which never came. The story is constantly played out in India's slum colonies, where it is considered a 'women's job' to sell organs to support her family. Until such practices stop, there will always be a reason to have "Women's Day" segments.

Viveka Roychowdhury
viveka.r@expressindia.com