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Our inspiring woman this week is Arundhati Bhattacharya, SBI's first female chairperson
Arundhati Bhattacharya
Our Inspiring Woman this week is Arundhati Bhattacharya who recently made the headlines for becoming the State Bank of India’s first female Chairperson. Currently CFO and Managing Director at SBI, she has been with SBI for over 35 years, in an illustrious career across multiple roles and subsidiaries.
Women heading banks is not a new trend in India, especially with well-known female CEOs in the private sector such Chanda Kochhar of ICICI and Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank. However, SBI is India’s largest bank and in the bank’s over 200 years of existence, this is the first time a woman will be leading it. That is certainly a first worth celebrating.
She was also previously the bank’s first female Managing Director, so this is a woman with a history of firsts! Her achievements at SBI have included the setting up of subsidiaries such as General Insurance and the Macquarie Infrastructure fund.
She has been upfront in talking about the challenges that women face in moving up the ladder. In one interview to the media, she says, “Often, people wonder if she can give the time required at work, given also her responsibilities at home. So a woman has to prove her worth over and over again each time she’s given a new responsibility, especially when she is at junior to mid-level position.”
Even as more women reach the top in the financial sector, we need more women – and men – being upfront about the challenges women face, and how they can navigate these, as well as get the institution to remove obstacles in their path up.
Arundhati Bhattacharya is an inspiration for proving again that women can do it, and here’s hoping that more women at the top will reach out to those of us younger and making the same journey.
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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