#WomenLead turns one! 🎈
#WomenLead turns one! 🎈
Some reflections, learnings and important announcements as we celebrate this milestone
#WomenLead completes a year tomorrow!
To mark this milestone, I took some time to reflect on the past year, and to share with you what I learnt while curating this newsletter. I am also using this opportunity to share three ways you can help this newsletter grow going forward. Read on:
The Beginnings
I started curating #WomenLead in May 2020 in the middle of a stifling lockdown here in India. This was a time of fear, paralysing anxiety, grief and economic hardships. The Covid-19 pandemic was testing everyone in myriad ways, and women were bearing its brunt particularly harshly.
Yet, I saw something opposite in the world of politics: women leaders were shining at their brightest in this moment of crisis. From women Prime Ministers, to Health Ministers and local representatives, women leaders were being lauded far and wide for demonstrating what good leadership during a crisis looks like: proactive, steadfast, and compassionate.
But as the world suddenly discovered women’s leadership, there remained many more issues and stories that needed to be spoken about.
I had been conceptualizing a newsletter about women in politics for a while, and finally, on May 24, I sat down and curated the first edition of #WomenLead. I did not send it to anyone, nor did I really “announce” the newsletter. At the time I was full of questions and doubts. Will I be able to write regularly? Will this sustain beyond a few weeks? And most importantly, will anybody read this?
And here we are today: 50 weekly editions, and a handful of special editions down the line, with a community of readers spread around the world, across continents and timezones. In all this while, this newsletter has also been mentioned or featured in other publications including the BBC, Ms. Magazine, the India Development Review, The Indian Express and iKnow Politics, along with shout-outs in many other newsletters.
All this has happened only and only because of the constant love, support and encouragement from all of you, and I hold immense gratitude for all of you. I have learnt so much in the past year, about sustaining a publication as niche and focussed as this, and also about the world of women in politics. I’d like to share five key learnings I’ve had while tracking news about women in politics.
Some Reflections
1. Resistance to women’s full participation in politics is truly a global phenomenon.
We often tend to look at women’s experiences in politics in a very specific national or regional context. Of course, this is natural - most of us are most interested in the politics of where we live, and I was no different a year ago. But tracking women’s experiences in politics across the globe has helped me appreciate the commonalities across borders. While a handful of countries perform better, political representation remains skewed heavily in favour of men in most countries - regardless of their economic prosperity or political systems. But it’s not simply the numbers - women face resistance, abuse, violence and hardships in nearly every political context. The manifestations may vary with cultures, but the underlying similarities across the world are striking.
2. Drawing on this, I believe that women political leaders (as well as those who work on women’s political representation) have much to gain by collaborating with and learning from each other.
Politics may seem to be a country’s internal matter, but how women navigate patriarchal resistance is hardly specific to a region. Every abuse being hurled at a woman leader in a country right now has also been thrown at women in other parts of the world. Every barrier being deployed in one region today has been deployed elsewhere yesterday. And each successful response to these obstacles in one nation today can inspire someone in a very different corner of the world tomorrow.
3. Just as resistance to women in politics knows no national borders, it is also not limited to specific parties.
No matter what our political affiliations may be, parties across the political spectrum - Left, Right, Centre and everywhere else - are all guilty of building a political culture so hostile to women. Yet, our response to misogyny in politics is sometimes coloured by our political preferences. But the less partisan our response to misogyny and sexism in politics, the stronger and more consistent our voice will be.
4. Writing and talking about the stories of women in politics matters.
Every edition of #WomenLead this past year has overwhelmed me: stories of women navigating politics are rife with struggle, anger, abuse, and violence. But these stories are also brimming with perseverance, grit, determination, and hope. Each day, each week, women in all parts of the world are choosing to look at resistance to their full participation in politics in its face, and are turning it around on its head. Each of these powerful stories holds immense inspiration and an emphatic message of hope, yet they often get drowned in the din of electoral noise.
This was a strong motivation for this newsletter - I saw that just as political representation was skewed, media coverage did no justice to that scale of the problem. It is not that the media does not report on women leaders, but given the starkness of the gaps, and the pervasive toxicity against women, we need coverage that is way more regular, sustained and critical. It cannot simply be a footnote to electoral coverage.
My hope with starting this newsletter was to plug that gap in my own small way - however little it may be. I have been genuinely struck by how much it has resonated with readers. Readers often say the newsletter is helping them build more awareness about how widespread the barriers are, and how much is happening at the intersection of gender and politics. Many also find hope in the stories of women fighting back, and are discovering more and more leaders to learn from and take inspiration from. I must tell you - the feelings are mutual, and this journey of learning is a shared one.
5. The onus of finding this solution cannot and should not be placed on women political leaders.
This is not simply their fight alone, and they have enough on their plates already. Instead, I have learnt that the solutions can and will come from all of us. We definitely need institutional reforms, but we all can play a part in changing our politics for the better.
For example, we could work proactively to build awareness, support women leaders, engage in grassroots activism, and push for more representation through our work.
But we can also do much more in very simple and ordinary ways - by not judging the choices of women in politics, for example. Or by calling out misogynistic remarks and sexist tropes, and not contributing to toxic narratives. Holding male leaders who indulge in such misogyny to account is critical.
By being aware of what it takes for a woman to simply enter politics, and to find her name on the ballot box. By not setting unrealistically high expectations of our women leaders, and avoiding evaluating them any differently from how we evaluate our male leaders - there is a lot we can all do.
Important Announcements!
Over the course of the past twelve months, many readers have reached out to understand if and how they could support this newsletter and my work better. I am using this special occasion to to list out a few ways that you could do so:
From today, #WomenLead is opening up the option of paid subscriptions. Putting together this newsletter every week takes a considerable amount of effort and time, and if you have found value in this work, please consider purchasing a paid subscription. Please note: payment is optional. The newsletter is and will continue to remain free.
When you click the “Subscribe now” button, you will get three options:
Monthly (INR 350, less than USD 5)
Annual (INR 3,500, less than USD 50)
#WomenLead Champion (this plan lets you pay an amount of your choice, upto INR 7,500 or approximately USD 100). You can change the amount in the box that appears.
You could also pay via RazorPay. (If you face any issue, please write to me by replying to this email).
As I mentioned, all editions of #WomenLead will continue to remain free. However, as a token of gratitude to those who opt for paid subscriptions, the web archives (posts older than a month) would be available only to paid subscribers.
This will not impact emails in your inbox. So if you are not able to pay, and want to save past editions, your emails are with you in your inbox.
Please note: The intent is only to offer a little something extra to those who choose to pay, and not to block anyone’s access to the content. If you are someone who would like unlimited access, but are not in a position to pay (especially students, or people currently not employed), please send an email, and I will be happy to work this out for you.
One of my aims with the newsletter is to make it truly global, i.e. I don’t want it to be heavily focussed only on some countries or regions. However, since updates from many regions don’t get adequate coverage in mainstream and in English media, it becomes difficult to source that information.
Here is where you all could help. If you live in, or are familiar with the politics of a country where English is not a major language, sign up to be a #WomenLead volunteer, and help this newsletter do a better job of covering diverse parts of the world!
Lastly, not in a position to pay or to volunteer, but want to support my work? Yes, you can! One of the best ways you can support my work is how you have already been doing for the past year. Share the newsletter on your social media, with your friends, forward it to colleagues, and just help us reach more people. That is one of the best ways to help my work! And if you ever have any feedback, please don’t hesitate to write in - I absolutely love hearing from my readers.
That’s it, friends! Thank you for everything, and I hope I will continue to have the privilege of your readership and friendship for many many more years to come. I’ll see you next weekend with Issue 51 of #WomenLead.
Lots of love,
Akshi
My heartiest congratulations to you Akshi! Your incessant efforts in bringing about the stories of women in politics are praiseworthy. Keep it up!
Congrats for successfully keeping the pace of continuity of the Women Lead. It is great to bring the facts curated from around the globe to show how women can lead despite all oppositions in the patriarchal social set up. Women have the potential but are always diminished everywhere and remain devoid of their recognition. This is the mindset of the society no matter whether it is India or wherever else. Only a few men with power tend to promote the talent of their female peers who have dynamism and stand by themselves. The male dominated society take it as a threat to their prominence. Our society would be entirely different if male and female get equal opportunity to dream and fly. Women are free to dream but not to fly. Let them fly and explore a new horizon.