Sharmao Jaan
With Umrao Jaan take 2 releasing yesterday, I thought I’d make my vote clear. If I can’t have Rekha again, give me mol Lola Kutty over Barbie-face Aishwarya any day.
Via email, and I believe from VIndia:
{ Category Archives }
Media
Minimum security, maximum impact…
Or: women political cartoonists and why we need more of ‘em.
I thought it was about time I introduced Stephanie McMillan to those of you who read this blog, but don’t know about her (and possibly don’t check my blogroll; hey, that’s okay, forgive you). I came upon her when this brilliant cartoon did the rounds:
This was up on Stephanie’s site, Minimum Security, in April 2006, in response to Republican Senator Bill Napoli’s support to a legislation in South Dakota limiting abortion services access to (in his words):
…a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married.
The rest of us, married or otherwise, virgin or otherwise, religious or otherwise, clearly don’t count. So Stephanie felt, if anti-abortion politicians can be so certain about telling women what to do with their bodies, why not let them deal with other decisions women make? All other decisions…!
Geeky Gals at the BlogHer Conference
I know I was being cheeky by commenting on Stake Five that we might explore Feminist ColdFusion or ColdFused Feminism, but the interfaces between gender and technology do fascinate me. Unsurprising, now that I’m with a geek who’s feminist and slowly turning into a feminist gee-eek! myself (what else can explain my evangelism around Ubuntu, which is my OS, and various other minor joys around website constructions and blog creations?). Any which way, it made me interested in learning more about the second BlogHer (’where the women bloggers are’) conference, held in San Jose, July 28-29.
‘News’ bhi kabhi news thi
In other words: once upon a simple time, News!!! used to be plain, common, possibly boring, but certainly unadorned: news. On one channel, if we were lucky enough not to be interrupted by power cuts at a drop of rain. And now? Move over soap operas. Here comes the news.
Last weekend, a concerned Indian public spent breathless hours - over two whole days - in front of the idjit box, gazing fearfully at the sight of a little boy trapped in a 60 foot well. Without seeking accountability from the contractor(s) for gross negligence, the (un’countable) news channels jostled with each other to provide us a whimper by whimper account of Prince’s trauma. While no one is denying the fear and hope of the situation - and the classic plot of a feel-good ‘human interest’ story when Prince was finally rescued - did we (and Prince) have to be submitted to the indignities of sensational media coverage?
Whose news is it anyway?
If you’re lucky, you’ve been able to blog about it. If not, you’ve been fuming in offline silence over the Indian government/ISPs’ inept blocking of blogsites over the past couple of days. But in the midst of all this cyberspace critique, a news item in early June seems to have passed under the radar of many bloggers. Or was there a blackout there too? And this time, by the mainstream media?
On June 5th 2006, The Hindu carried a story on the first ever statistical analysis of its kind: a survey of the social profile of more than 300 senior journalists in 37 Hindi and English newspapers and television channels in Delhi. As Newswatch India commented, if sex, religion and caste are to be taken together, more than two-thirds of the top media professionals in the India come from less than 10 per cent of its population. Shocker (or is it really?): there is not a single Dalit or Adivasi amongst these top 315 media decision-makers. Hindu upper caste men hold 71% of these jobs, and Muslims, only 3%. Interestingly, a gender analysis gives the most positive spin, but there too, mainly in the English electronic media: women account for 32 per cent of the top jobs. In the English print media, women form 6 per cent of top editorial positions and 14 per cent and 11 per cent in the Hindi print and electronic media. But there is no woman amongst the few OBC (Other Backward Classes) decision-makers: groups that suffer ‘double disadvantage’ are almost entirely absent from those surveyed.
