Representation (Bengals on my mind)
I have had the blessing of living and working in both Kolkata and Dhaka, giving me a sense of bigger Bengal, viewing each one from over the border... but this blog is about women's representation.
I have had the blessing of living and working in both Kolkata (still Calcutta for my first few years there) and Dhaka, giving me some sense of a wider Bengal, and viewing each one from the other side of the border... But that’s all too serious and any comparisons are a minefield. I know from experience - everything from sanitation to electoral politics to mangoes.
So something a little less controversial (though only a little less).
Twelve years ago I embarked on a slightly crazy artistic project of making lots and lots of small stencils of famous, infamous, and unknown faces from ‘Bengal’ (Bangladesh and West Bengal).
I then painted them into a 7x7 grid - the result hangs on the wall above my desk (see end of blog). It’s 1 metre x 1 metre square and (ahem!) a bright and eclectic mix.
When I ran out of well known faces that I wanted to feature I added more that I adapted from photos in the matrimonial columns of Kolkata newspapers - anonymised and mashed up.
Rabindranath Tagore features twice (maybe one for each of his two national anthems).
As does Bappi Lahiri (Bollywood’s disco king).
I included the renowned Bangladeshi film maker Tareque Masud (of ‘Matir Moyna’ fame - 89% on Rotten Tomatoes) who so tragically died in a car crash in 2011. I had the privilege of meeting him and his wife Catherine Masud to talk about his early life and their films.
The notorious terrorist Bangla Bhai is featured, but so is Kolkata swimming champion Bula Choudhury1 She is one square below the Bengali feminist thinker and women’s rights activist Begum Rokeya. Next to Begum Rokeya is a young Mamata Banerjee.
The only face painted in more-or-less lifelike tones is Muhammad Yunus - who appears exactly as he does in my memory - he was coming out of the lifts at the BRAC Centre in around 2006 and radiated something special.
So where is this going? Women’s representation.
In the last few months I have been ‘noting loudly’ about the evaporation of women, gender and women’s representation in Bangladesh’s interim government and in the much talked about ‘window of opportunity’, from the high visibility of women in the street protests to a relative absence of women in formal and informal structures and debates. Some remedial action has been taken to include more women.
You don’t need to be a woman to be actively, vocally concerned about this.
This is made more complex (in the minds of some prominent men) by the demand to end civil service quotas - including quotas for women - in the summer of protests and revolution2.
There is a real risk of throwing women’s representation and gender equality out with the ‘quota bath water’, but I think we can and should be more sophisticated than that.
A ‘merit based approach’ can and should be inclusive - it does not, and should not, mean ‘class topping engineering graduate men - like me’.
checking my receipts
Looking at the 2012 painting again, I took a deep breath and counted to see whether I walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
I count 17 women in 49 panels, though this includes gods Durga and Kali.
There are 26 men in 49 panels.
The rest are flowers (genda phool - marigold), fish (rui mach), animals (a Jamini Roy cat, a buffalo), and flags.
So, of the humans featured: 39.5% women and 60.5% men.
Self assessment: ‘Peter should do better’.
And a reminder that we all need to tirelessly think, ask, remind, challenge, and check ourselves - and each other - on this.
Representation! (nothing about us without us! For us by us! etc)
I literally do search every document and PDF I receive using key words like ‘women’ and ‘gender’ (as well as ‘politic*’).
I am usually disappointed. And I ‘note loudly’ by giving critical feedback.
We should plan for this from the start, not wait for nerdy people like me to ‘check the receipts’ or ‘count the faces’ when it is much too late to do any better.
There’s even an SDG to help us remember….
Postscript: The painting, with curator.
I sent Bula Choudhury a photo of the painting and she sent me a very sweet reply.
I also heard reference to the experience of decades of prominent women prime ministers (‘we had two women prime ministers and look what happened!’) - let’s also think this line of criticism through for men too, dudes.
I love this Peter!
An old friend who is a leader in the world of Big Biz just wrote to say
'Women always count the faces of women, it's just we get told to shut up if we mention it. Even the act of vocalising in our own airspace is forbidden as space/air/dialogue is a male domain'.