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Detroit,
Dec 10: General Motors Co on Tuesday said chief executive officer Dan
Akerson would step down next month and be replaced by global product
development chief Mary Barra, who will become the first woman to lead a
major US automaker...
...DC, Page 12, Wednesday 11 December 2013
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Much water has flown down the Moosi since women were confined to specific government jobs in India. Now they are all over the professions (except as in the above cartoon's). They are chairing boardrooms and deciding the fates of thousands of their employees and stockholders. They can make or break your fortunes...like in the SBI, Axis Bank, ICCI, Morgan Stanley and National Stock Exchange when you are alive and kicking; and in the LIC after your term expires.
An altogether wholesome state of affairs.
Before quitting this series I have to address a delicate and controversial issue without ducking it.
That is, how far a lady's or gent's looks decide their employability and hikes and promotions.
Without doubt, caeteris paribus, every male boss, chauvinistic pig or not, used to prefer a Marilyn Monroe as his secretary to a Plain Jane, till a few days back. Similarly, I am sure although I have no proof, every lady boss would love to have a Gregory Peck rather than a gps as her research scholar.
When he was close to 60, my guide SDM once made this private remark to me with a naughty smile:
"We had a lady professor of chemistry in our Calcutta University. She was an eminent chemist but not very good-looking. So we lost all interest in chemistry. Authorities must employ good-looking ladies as professors. Hai na?"
He would have now been hauled over hot coals by our NCW had he made that remark in public now. It is nice that things have changed...outwardly at least.
I often wondered if my teaching career in physics at IIT KGP would have been the same had I too been a girl kid like my six sisters...making it a grand slam of hearts. I am sure it wouldn't have been different in the classrooms. And I would surely have been taken in as a teacher by our HoD, HNB, in 1965 as a rare addition to the stag party in the department till then. And I would surely have been allowed the freedom not to do things I didn't like to do as long as I took my classes.
But I would perhaps have missed my woolgathering sessions at Harrys where I used to quietly sit alone on a far-off cement bench with a glass of tea and a cigarette, thinking about nothing in particular:
...Woolgathering is essentially a male activity. I haven’t seen women
gather wool of any color or kind. Women are wired differently. They
don’t like a restful mind. They are scared. And that is why they go
forth and select (‘Natural Selection’ of Darwin), marry, and invite
trouble for themselves and all....
There are two fields in which the looks of ladies and gents don't matter much: sports and politics.
Not every grand slam winner in tennis had the good looks of a Steffi Graf. Nor a male Jimmy Connors.
The less said the better in politics where looks don't seem to matter at all. Margaret Thatcher was the longest serving prime minister of Britain in the last century and transformed the economic outlook of her country thwarting its killer trade unions with an iron hand. And she didn't have a face that launched a thousand ships like Helen of Troy, although she did launch a few battle ships in the piteous Falklands invasion.
And the greatest American president, Lincoln, didn't launch even a single ship...that credit went to the partly disabled Roosevelt. And Lincoln was least inhibited by his grumpy face:
...Lincoln himself had often cracked jokes about his own homeliness. During
one of his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, the story goes, Douglas
called him two-faced. Lincoln turned and appealed to the crowd. “If I
had another face,” he asked, “do you think I’d wear this one?"...
Nehrujee was handsome and had the 'charm of the very devil'. So did Rajivjee in his youth...he was no Dimple Kapadia though.RKN wrote a piece on his visits to Indirajee at her home. And the word 'beautiful' doesn't occur there although 'gracious' does. And as everyone knows she won the only conclusive victory for Free India...so far.
And the present lady Gandhi turned the tables on Ataljee and Co in 2004 although she doesn't have the looks or poesy or wit of the lady sitting now as her leader of opposition.
I don't envy these ladies at all.
...But one...
Because her job in her profession was like mine, only a million times harder. The biggest class I had to teach had only 350 students. And they were all greenhorns. And I did the entire speaking and they the listening.
But this lady has to handle unruly classes of 500 odd veterans, mostly older to her. And she can't do any speaking although her job says so anomalously. She has to let others speak or shut them up.
I had only a few rules to mug up...the left and right hand rules, swimming man's rule, and the three Hund's rules. She, on the other hand, must have a hundred odd rules at her fingertips.
But she has done her job gloriously...so far. And she is the first one to do so.
And yet there are silly complaints against her, mostly by males:
...On being nominated for the position of speaker, she submitted her
resignation three days after assuming ministerial office. She was
elected the Speaker of Lok Sabha, thereby becoming the first woman
speaker of the country.
It has wrongly been misreported in Media that she had spent around 10
crore Indian Rupees to make foreign visits. The Parliament Secretariat
claimed that some news papers had misreported and created the impression
that this was spent on holidays abroad. It clarified that the money was
spent not by her alone but by the Parliamentary delegation which
included several MPs from all political parties, and that each and every
visit was for official business. In her official capacity, the Speaker
has to lead Indian Parliamentary Delegations to the Conferences of the
Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the Commonwealth Parliamentary
Association (CPA), of which India is a member," the statement said.
However the 29 trips made in a mere period of 37 months(an average of 1
trip per 37 days) is unprecedented and has been seen as sheer waste and
misuse of public funds in context of a developing country like India...
...wiki
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In the early sixties, in order to impress our erudite English Professor uncle, 'since I wrote to you last, much water has flown here in Ganges and there in Pennar ....". Promptly he wrote back saying "flow-flowed-flowed & fly-flew-flown". Since then I have seen many eminent writers including noted speech writer William Safire, penning the same phrase "much water has flown....'!
ReplyDeleteBut GPS also says so !!!