Book review- Inferior, by Angela Saini

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story, 2017

As a woman who speaks about gender equity, I am often gaslighted by people saying "but you cannot deny that there is an intrinsic difference between men and women. Women are meant to be nurturers. Why would you want to claim equality when you are actually superior."

While my response to them is to attempt to explain that except child bearing and lactation, everything else is gender agnostic, 'Inferior' adds to my arsenal by giving evidence that the psychological differences that we see are largely shaped by culture and not biology.

Everything that Angela Saini says in the book, Inferior, is in public domain. What she does it put it all together in one place in a manner that is easy to digest and refer to later. The chapter I particularly liked was on Women, the Gatherer, where she gives examples to show that even in hunting, which is considered the one profession that was the exclusive preserve of men, women were more effective in bringing home a regular source of hunted meat.

It was almost frustrating to read about the sexist attitude of people like Charles Darwin who really should have known better-

"I certainly think that women, though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually, and there seems to me to be a great difficulty from the laws of inheritance (if I understand these laws rightly) in their becoming the intellectual equals of man."

You can feel her pain when she says, about how women in science- 

"science has failed to rid us of the gender stereotypes and dangerous myths we've been laboring under for centuries. Women are so grossly underrepresented in modern science because, for most of history, they were treated as intellectual inferiors and deliberately excluded from it. It should come as no surprise, then, that this same scientific establishment has also painted a distorted picture of the female sex. This, in turn again, has skewed how science looks and what it says even now."

While she talks at length about science, the same holds true in almost every profession. Women need to overcome many invisible challenges to enter and compete in most professions- to then use the fact that women are underrepresented to draw the conclusion that women are not suitable for the profession is an insidious self-reinforcing fallacy.

Angela Saini calls out the establishment that selectively uses data that reinforces their claims, while underplaying data that could discredit it. However, there are times when her own personal biases against certain researchers comes through- you certainly agree with her, because those people ended up doing a lot of harm, but the book would have been more powerful if she had let the data speak instead of sneaking in a few sly points. 

Overall, a book I am going to return to often, and one which I hope more people read before with an open mind. 

To end, a quote from the book- 

"equality isn't just a political ideal but every woman's natural, biological right."

Women deserve their own headlines

[First published in Women's Web as World Squash Champ Dipika Pallikal Is More Than A Cricketer’s Wife, So Let’s Not Say ‘Wife Of’ In News Headlines!]

"Dinesh Karthik's wife Dipika Pallikal powers India to HISTORIC World Doubles Squash C'ships titles", screamed the headline on Zee News, after the 30 year old squash champion teamed up with Saurav Ghosal and Joshna Chinappa to win both the mixed doubles and women's doubles titles at the World Doubles Championships in Glasgow.

30 year old Dipika Pallikal gained national prominence after she powered her way to three WISPA titles in 2011, and broke into the top 10 the following year.

Her career is peppered with many firsts- first Indian squash player of either gender to reach the finals of a ‘Silver’ event and the first to reach the semi finals of a ‘Gold’ event.

She, along with Joshna Chinappa, won the Squash Women’s Doubles Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and has been a part of the gold medal winning team at the South Asian Games in 2016, the silver medal winning team at the Asian Team Championships in 2016 and the silver medal winning team at the Asian Games in 2014.

Dipika Pallikal was the first female squash player to win the Arjuna Award in 2012, and had the Padma Shree conferred on her in 2014.

Anybody who follows sports in the country knows Dipika Pallikal, and how she has literally redefined squash in the country. Dinesh Karthik, on the other hand, though a decent cricketer, has lived in the shadow of his more illustrious teammates, and never achieved the kind of heights she did.

Yet, Zee News thought that the most appropriate way to headline an article about her success was by mentioning her cricketer husband.

While one can certainly argue that cricket is almost a religion in India, and even cricketers who are merely a part of IPL squads have greater brand recall than international level sportsmen in other sports, that is not sufficient reason to describe a person as someone’s wife, and certainly not in the headlines, which should celebrate her achievement, not his name.

When this was called out on social media, the responses ranged from the blatantly misogynistic. From “People don’t want to know what Dipika does. She is just Karthik’s wife”, to the absolutely inaccurate, “Physical differences between men and women makes it that way. Nobody likes a less physically dominated event”.

There was even a person who made a blatantly arrogant statement like “Women should stick to beauty contests”, despite the fact that women’s sport is as physically demanding as men’s sport, and that female sportspersons need to work as hard as their male counterparts to compete at the international level.

While most of the people defending the headline are seemingly unaware of the existence of any sport other cricket, it is also a case of blatant male arrogance which decides that women need to be defined in terms of a relationship. Zee News used Dinesh Karthik’s name in the headline because in India, a woman’s identity is defined in terms of being a daughter, a wife or a mother.

Happens EVERY time!

There was the time when an Indian publication referred to the economist Esther Duflo as Abhijeet Banerjee’s wife, conveniently ignoring the fact that Banerjee and Duflo shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019. While Banerjee is certainly more senior than Duflo, her identity is and should be independent of that of her husband.

Tennis player Sania Mirza brought laurels for India long before her marriage to a Pakistani cricketer, but his name is always mentioned in any article about her- the reverse is almost never the case.

This also manifests itself in small acts of internalised misogyny, in daily life.

When I speak to a school teacher, I introduce myself as the mother of their student. My husband, on the other hand, first introduces himself by name, and then mentions the name of the child. I used to think it was quite ridiculous, because the teacher doesn’t care who we are, but is concerned only about the student whose parent we are, but now I wonder if by not introducing myself by name, I am subconsciously negating my identity.

In a society which seeks to reduce women to relationships, maybe each of us should insist on maintaining our own individuality in every setting.

On the issue of Dipika Pallikal being headlined as Dinesh Karthik’s husband, however, there is hope. Noted cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle called it out on social media and said that the headline was demeaning to a campion like Dipika Pallikal.

Though a number of people accused him of being a ‘pseudo feminist’, the post was immediately retweeted by Dinesh Karthik.

More importantly, though it took them a few hours to do so, Zee News did edit the headline to ensure that the spotlight remained on Dipika Pallikal and her amazing success in winning two gold medals at the Doubles Championships.

We can only hope that in future media houses are more careful in how they refer to women who, despite being married to successful men, are also successful in their own right.

Author’s note: Screenshots here are of the original headlines, since they were subsequently changed.

When Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock, Did He Consider What Jada Pinkett Smith Wanted?

 [First published in Women's Web]

The Oscar Awards, 2022 will not be remembered for the Best Movie, the Best Actor(s) or the Best Director. It will go down in history as the ceremony where a Best Actor nominee slapped the person anchoring the show.

By now, we would have all heard the sexist, ableist and distinctly unfunny “joke” that Chris Rock cracked about Jada Pinkett Smith and her struggle with Alopecia. And we would certainly have seen Will Smith stride onto the stage, place a resounding slap on Rock and continue to utter profanities well after he returned to his seat. Maybe we would have heard Will Smith’s speech after accepting the Award for Best Actor, where he said that “love makes you do crazy things.”

The so called joke made fun of a medical condition, and was in extremely poor taste. Thankfully, nobody is defending the crass joke, but there are still three main reactions- 

• people defending Will Smith for “protecting the honour of his family”
• people condemning Will Smith for resorting to a public act of violence, instead of calling it out with words
• people calling out the people calling out Will Smith, though their reasons for doing so are not clear

Let us leave the last category out, and look at just the first two.

The people in the second category agree that the “joke” was sexist and ableist, and that ideally it should never have been cracked. However, they firmly believe that violence is not an appropriate response, and that if Will Smith wanted to be seen as doing something, he should have taken the mike and called out Chris Rock in no uncertain terms. As a public figure, Will Smith is, willy-nilly, a role model for young people, and this sends out the message that violence is justified when you perceive that the honour of “your” woman has been questioned.

Will Smith’s acceptance speech after winning the Award for Best Actor, they say, is quite problematic too. While he apologised to the Academy and the other nominees for the violence, when he said, “love makes you do crazy things”, he was in a sense justifying the act of violence. Violence is never an answer, yet Will Smith’s action and subsequent reaction send out a clear message that when you perceive that the honour of your family is threatened, you are allowed to indulge in acts of violence.

The people in the first category are drawing on their own experience of times when they were called upon to defend their loved ones to justify what Will Smith did. Though they say that they will not themselves slap someone in public, they argue that when you are enraged, you can be excused for over-reacting. There are people who are sharing stories of their loved ones who suffered from the same medical condition to tacitly justify his action. What this category of people doesn’t seem to recognise is that nobody is denying Will Smith’s right to be enraged; all that people are questioning is the manner in which he acted on that anger.

There is no justification for the physical and verbal violence unleashed by Will Smith, and people defending the action do not seem to be aware of the strong message that he has sent out to young people. Also, the only reason he was able to get away with it was because he is a top actor who was nominated for Best Actor- had it been a relatively unknown person, would the organizers or the audience be as charitable in defending him? 

If you look closely at the video, you see that when Chris Rock cracked the “joke”, Will Smith’s immediate reaction was to laugh. The camera was panning him, and he was enjoying the moment. It was only when he saw Jada Pinkett Smith roll her eyes and glare at him that his smile disappeared and he got up and strode to the stage. While it is possible that the laughter was not because he found the “joke” funny, but because the ‘Bro Code’ kicked in, the fact that he laughed undermines his future action- if you laughed at a “joke”, do you have the moral right to object to someone else cracking it? 

“Don’t you want a partner who will defend you the way Will Smith defended his wife?”, some people ask. 

Actually, no. I do not want a partner who first laughs at a ‘joke’ made at my expense, and then flexes his muscles to defend me. 

What Will Smith did was indulge in toxic masculine behaviour. By walking up and punching Chris Rock he behaved exactly like men throughout history have behaved when they perceive that their property is in danger. He didn’t really care about what Jada Pinkett Smith wanted - at that moment all he wanted to do was to show the world what a wonderful man *he* was, and how well he could protect *his* wife. 

That was certainly not how Jada Pinkett Smith would have wanted to deal with the issue. Her eyeroll was evocative. She would have certainly followed it up by either a sound byte, or an article or an interview where she would have spoken about the medical condition and how such jokes were inappropriate. The focus would have been on the condition and how such jokes were insensitive and potentially triggering. By choosing to walk up and punch Chris Rock, Will Smith actually appropriated his wife’s pain and made it about himself.

In his Acceptance Speech after winning the Oscar, though Will Smith apologised for the violence, he justified it by saying “but, love will make you do crazy things”. As an A-list celebrity who is a role model for young people, Will Smith should be aware of the impact of a statement like that. “It is love that made me do it”, is the standard excuse used by every perpetrator of domestic violence. By saying it on a global stage, Will Smith provided legitimacy to the standard excuse, and that is something women do not need.

The entire incident has exposed the fault line in how men perceive women. Unlike what men believe, women do not need knights in shining tuxedos to save them. Women are perfectly capable to defending themselves; all that they want from men is for men to back them up when required. Men, if they want to be allies, should take cues from women instead of appropriating their struggle for personal glory.