What a missed opportunity this report was. The title of this piece ‘Meet India’s Most Powerful Women Politicians’ in the otherwise well-researched site Global Voices, offered some hope that it would be a serious report on women politicial leaders. But the report, written by Manasi Gopalakrishnan, was full of stereotypical comments (e.g. Sonia Gandhi: the queen bee, Jayalalitha ‘The mother’ – with a black and white still of a very young Jayalalitha acting as Cleopatra in a Tamil film, Mayavati as ‘little sister’ who etc etc…).
Apart from the stereotypes, it’s political bias was pretty obvious – last on its list was Sushma Swaraj – described as ‘simply herself’ with a sober picture, her official designation and stating her million fans on twitter and that she would have been the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate but for Modi. No mention of Bellary brothers or other such complicated aspects of her life.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/04/10/meet-indias-most-powerful-women-politicians/
Geeta Seshu
