Ladybug's field notes

A noted lawyer and women's rights' activist visited our office the other day. While leaving she said, "If I would have been a black skinned person from the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s' South Africa and you as a white skinned had told me to be patient about change, almost everyone around the world would have felt I was justified in slapping you hard. But, just because I am a female, you can still hold this unrealistic notion about my level of patience and ask me to wait for the change...forever". I looked down to hide my smile. Here is another impatient one. 20 years my senior and still equally impatient! I have been reminded time and again about this particular virtue. I am quite well known by my characteristic lacking of this one in particular. But then I regularly get data that makes this virtue completely redundant. Lets take the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Succession_Act,_1956 . The Act only recognized m...

I was thinking the other day about the lectures I get from time to time about how I should dress, what I should add to my get-up to give myself a more acceptable (according to patriarchal standards) and/or serious (read, older woman) look, how I should conduct myself, why I should not laugh out loud and the list just goes on! The list is so long that if I actually maintain it for a year, I may not find anything 'right' about me at all! And then there are always those doubts and disapproval about the "right". Was that the "right" place to be? the "right" time to be there? and the "right" reason? Too confusing? Allow me to explain. All my female readers might find it easier to understand.  Please think of the last time you were harassed on the road. No! I am not talking about those every day incidents that we have all learnt so well to ignore, the same way we ignore barking street dogs! It is not about those. I am talking of the in...