After a long time in this week's elections, Germans did not have the option to choose Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female Chancellor, who served four continuous terms since 2005.
In an unrelated development, a young woman, a First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, exercised the right of reply to Pakistan PM Imran Khan’s unacceptable remarks in his statement at the UN General Assembly. The Indian statement referred to Pakistan, as a country ‘where terrorists enjoy free pass’, which is an "arsonist" disguising itself as a "fire-fighter".
Earlier this month, I participated in the Valedictory Session of a two-week-long event comprising a series of discussions that culminated in the session on ‘Women in Diplomacy: Perspectives from India and Republic of Korea’, organised by India’s dynamic Ambassador to the ROK, Sripriya Ranganathan. She was well-positioned to talk about the Indian perspective on the subject, as I brought in experiences from the thirty-eight years I spent in diplomacy! Two excellent South Korean women diplomats provided the ROK perspective: Amb Hyo-eun (Jenny) Kim, Ambassador for Climate Change, and Amb Miyon Lee, DG Economic Diplomacy from the ROK Foreign Office. Dr Song Kyung-jin, Chair Innovative Economy Forum, as Moderator, was able to weave a rich tapestry, through her intelligent questions.
Women in both countries took their time to accept diplomacy as a career choice. But in both countries, in recent times, women are coming forward to embrace this career.
Looking at the picture for India, the first woman joined the Indian Foreign Service, way back in 1949. CB Muthamma, India’s first woman diplomat, and woman Ambassador was my distinguished predecessor as High Commissioner to Ghana. From 1949 onwards there was, off and on, a single woman in the batches that joined the Indian Foreign Service, a number that slowly picked up, but still remained in single digits until 2011. Since then, the number of young Indian women joining the foreign service has been in double digits every year! The latest Batch of 2020 has a total intake of 24 officers, of which 10 are women officers, amounting roughly to an impressive 42 per cent. Of the 830 officers comprising the Cadre of IFS (persons in position), nearly 25 per cent are women officers. India has 16 women ambassadors/ high commissioners and 6 consuls general, including the current Indian HC to UK, Gaitri Issar Kumar. Women regularly reach the senior-most levels of the service and have flown the Indian flag in all corners of the world, serving in the most powerful countries to countries in conflict. These achievements are on merit alone.
Traditionally, diplomacy was seen as a male domain. In the past, diplomats would be sent as envoys from the court of one king to another, including during times of war. The means of travel were not easy, involving days and weeks on the road in often unsafe environments. Times have now changed. Women are much more a part of the work environment everywhere and continue to break new glass ceilings. There’s hardly a field that women haven’t conquered, from piloting airplanes to fighting alongside male soldiers, from climbing the tallest mountains to journeying into space. In this day and age, every arena is equally available to women.
Women can bring empathy to diplomacy. Women’s strong motherly instincts can be an asset in dealing with people. In India, this was personified by the late Sushma Swaraj, who as External Affairs Minister, added a new dimension to India’s foreign policy by making it people-centric. Women tend to be creative and bring ‘out of the box’ thinking. Women do not prefer conflict and wars; it’s their spouses and children that go to battle. It is said that wars begin when diplomacy fails. A woman is likely to make every effort to find diplomatic solutions.
The life of a woman in diplomacy can be fairly challenging. In conservative societies, women are often judged unfairly if they go out for a beer or whiskey with male companions or slap them on the back with familiarity. It is harder for women to develop close friendships with their male counterparts. As a young single first-time Ambassador in Accra, I found it a difficult challenge to navigate as my husband was posted far away in Angola. Managing work and family life is equally hard for a woman in diplomacy as in other professions. In my younger days, I too had to teach my children over the phone, when they had to prepare for a test while I was travelling, and recall dictating my monthly report while sponging my son who had a high fever from typhoid.
Yet, women continue to face subtle bias, even where the gender bias is not overt. Perhaps the biggest challenge that women face is that of being taken seriously. Despite having performed the most challenging of jobs, women around the world are often stereotyped as being more suitable for soft jobs!
We celebrated International Daughters Day on 26 September. Let us wholeheartedly welcome the achievements of our daughters in whichever field they choose.
