Women's Web

…one MCP at a time?

Guest Blogger Roopa Prabhakar describes herself as a a new mother, a working woman who believes her face is plastered on the glass ceiling, a closet feminist and writer.

How do Indian women ever get ahead in their professional life? Everywhere I turn I either run into an obnoxious MCP or a woman who’s actually an enabler somebody who eggs her male colleagues on to perpetuate their bad behavior. Whatever happened to universal sisterhood? For me, this was the unkindest cut of all, to see women siding with these men just so that they can say “We never have any problems with anybody, team spirit runs in our blood!!!” to all and sundry.

Does gender conditioning start from the womb?

It was a couple of  months ago when I was trawling baby stores in a mall in Manila, hunting for the perfect baby shower gift for my 8 months pregnant friend that I realized that differentiation on the basis of colour was still a very real phenomenon. No, they did not have different products for Asian babies as opposed to Caucasian babies. And thank the powers that be for that small mercy. But all the stores were neatly partitioned into the blue section and the pink section.

Now, my friend had found out her baby’s gender, as is usual here in the Philippines and told us in advance. So the obliging sales assistants who showed me option after option for baby boy gifts did not have a lot of issues with me as a complete newbie to baby stores. Without a lot [...]