Not that I expect much insight from the TOI, but this article on powerful single Indian women just irks me. Its tone, its
For this image to succeed, the single woman politician must stick by some rules. Women in politics can neither be footloose nor fancy free. Instead, they must work at maintaining a persona that is out of reach, asexual, almost celibate.
And what about in Indian life? The article makes no mention of the stigma associated with not marrying, and the social control exercised over women’s bodies that pushes them to maintain such a persona. All the author says broaching this is:
Being single also adds to the creation of a myth around a person that enables them to rise above the ordinary.
Despite being masters of the game of identity politics, the four ladies are yet to discover the political value of their identity as ’single women’…Yet a proper understanding of the political identity of single women–the specific discrimination, social exclusion and other issues that confront single women in India (gender sensitive workplaces, adoption, equal pay, sexual harassment, healthcare, right to property, social-cultural rights or right to housing)–is still to come.
Perhaps one might find this in the following article of the series? Granted, the topic is too huge to broach in this one article. But what puzzles me is the first sentence, that these women haven’t understood their own political value as single women–but somehow the author has? And it’s not too clear through the article just what that value is, although it seems the author is trying to make that case.
