In India, gendered language throws politics into chaos as country gets a woman president, and other stories
#WomenLead (Issue 109): Your weekly round-up on women in politics
Hello, and welcome to Issue 109!
In this week’s edition, we bring you an important (and currently charged) debate from India about what our gendered language tells us about politics at large. Since it is slightly on the longer side of reads, we are skipping the quick updates section, though bringing you more reads and reflections suggestions.
In case you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here.
Spotlight: INDIA 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳
Soon after Droupadi Murmu assumed office as India’s new president on Monday, a conversation about how to address her in Hindi started brewing.
In English, “President” is gender-neutral, but its Hindi equivalent, ‘Rashtrapati’, is a masculine term that has been (like most other things in the world) assumed to take on a gender-neutral meaning. The conversation exploded when Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, an MP from an opposition party, referred to Murmu as ‘Rashtrapatni’ instead, unwittingly trying to offer a feminine alternative.
A storm exploded leading to protests and even an adjournment of Parliament.
Let us explain the semantics a little before we get to the larger point.
In Hindi, ‘pati’ means husband, and ‘patni’ means wife. ‘Rashtrapati’, the term for President, is made of two words: rashtra (the nation), and pati. But here, pati is used in a larger sense, and not to mean husband. It is commonly used as a suffix as in this case to give a sense of a head figure, a guardian of sorts. So, Rashtrapati is not the nation’s husband, but the nation’s head.
But the same does not apply to ‘Rashtrapatni’.
Rashtrapatni would literally translate to the nation’s wife, and not the nation’s head. (Because how could patni mean anything more than wife, and how could pati be reduced to such a narrow meaning, after all?)
So when Mr. Chowdhury used the term Rashtrapatni, it became a patriarchal remark instead. An insult. Chowdhury has apologized to the president and has called it a slip of tongue since Hindi is not his first language. But the whole confusion has put the perceived gender-neutrality of masculine words under the spotlight in India.
Of course, as #WomenLead readers know by now, there is more to this debate than these technicalities.
This is not the first time that gendered terms and confusion over them is shedding light on how the world around us is designed for the “default male.”
🇩🇪 In 2020, Christine Lambrecht, Germany’s Justice Minister, decided to use feminine pronouns and nouns to refer to the default person in a draft legislation on bankruptcy. Common nouns in German have masculine, feminine and neutral gender forms. But as is common across the world, legal texts in Germany also use masculine forms to refer to all people. Lambrecht’s attempt to shift this did not go down well with her colleagues, some of whom called it a gimmick, while another argued such a law would potentially “only be valid for women, or for people of female gender, and so would very likely be unconstitutional”. The bill was withdrawn and resubmitted with “conventional” wording instead.
🇫🇷 Just a few months ago, when Elisabeth Borne was appointed France’s Prime Minister, the outgoing PM addressed her as "première ministre", the feminine form of the title in French. But Eric Zemmour, a far-right politician, was not pleased, refusing to use the term because in his words, “French should above all sound pleasant to the ear”. [Screeching music plays in the background].
🇮🇷 In Iran, women are not able to run for Presidential polls, even though the Guardian Council, the constitutional body that approves candidates, maintains that it had never rejected a candidate simply for being a woman. As the country headed for a Presidential poll last year, we learnt that whether or not a woman can be Iran’s president has been a matter of “perennial public debate”.
At the heart of the confusion was actually some gendered language. Article 115 of the Constitution states that a presidential candidate has to be a “rajol-e siasi”. But the term can be interpreted both as a “political man” or “political personality”, and this confusion has kept this office out of reach for the country’s women. (Tell us again, who said these gendered terms were no big deal?).
🇯🇴 And how can we forget Jordan, where male politicians went berserk and engaged in some ridiculous behavior for they were unhappy at the inclusion of the word “female Jordanians” in the Constitution. Do go back and read the full edition here in case you want to relive the chaos, but at the heart of the amendment was - again - the fact that the Constitution thus far had used the default male to refer to all people in the country, and the country was attempting to explicitly recognise the rights of women. The conservatives were - unsurprisingly - not too pleased.
Back to India where we still do not have a gender-neutral (or gender-inclusive term) for ‘President’ in Hindi.
The question has come up previously - at the time when the Constitution was being framed in the 1940s, and again when Pratibha Patil became the first woman president in 2007. On both occasions, the decision-makers decided to stick to ‘Rashtrapati’ because guess what, man-as-normal is how politics and public life operates. And looks like, nobody was really expecting women to be occupying the post anyway.
It’s easy to dismiss these small technicalities and pretend that they don’t matter. But improving representation (of women, or of any community/identity) is not simply about increasing their numbers. That is just Step 1.
Our institutions, policies, language, and all the related paraphernalia need to adapt and stop assuming that the heterosexual man is the default political person.
We have previously seen how pregnant and breastfeeding women present a problem for Parliaments and political institutions that have been designed for men and often are unable to respond to the needs of any person whose body and biology are different.
Language matters. Inclusive, sensitive language matters.
While we are having a very welcome movement about more gender-representative and inclusive pronouns, it is time our politics shakes itself out of its slumber and makes way for what it should be - a place for all people, regardless of gender, and not a space predominantly occupied for men. Gender-inclusive titles are just a small way to pave the way for that change.
But India seems to have missed this bus the second time over. Dear Change, where art thou? #WeBeWaiting.
Reflections & Reads
(Long-but-must read) “How Barbados is resisting climate colonialism under PM Mia Mottley in an effort to survive the costs of global warming,” ProPublica
“Three reasons why women leaders actually matter for women,” The Conversation
“Kenya Election 2022: The struggle of women aspirants in marginalised communities,” BBC
“Half a century of data on American women and politics: A tribute to the Center for American Women and Politics,” Ms. Magazine
“Barriers to women’s political participation in Vanuatu,” Dev Policy Blog
“Stereotypes, violence keep women out of politics in Zimbabwe,” Al Jazeera
That’s a wrap for this week! Did you like this edition? Then press the ❤️ button and show us some love! And please, please do share this with a friend or on your social media accounts. There’s frankly nothing quite like reader love and endorsement, so please keep it coming! We’ll see you next weekend with Issue 110!
Thank you for always summarizing the news for us. I wanted to ask the role of the president in India. I've heard mostly of the Prime Minister but little of the president, is it an honorary title?
Will Rashtraadhyaksh work as a gender neutral term ?