Getting ahead

Thanks to women, India is ahead of the US in at least one area ? information technology. The latest studies by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and the Information Technology Association of America show that the number of women IT professionals in India has been increasing, while that of their US counterparts has been decreasing. While 41 per cent of the IT workers in the US were women in 1996, the number decreased to 32.4 per cent in 2004. The decline is being attributed to the fact that one out of three women IT professionals fall into administrative job categories.

Though the men-women ratio in the Indian IT sector is currently 76:24, Nasscom says this ratio is likely to be 65:35 by 2007. Figures from Infosys and Wipro agree with the prediction. The female population in Infosys rose from 17 per cent in March 2001 to 24 per cent in June 2005, while that in Wipro increased from 18.75 per cent in April 2004 to 21.22 per cent in April 2005.

But in the ITES sector, men had better catch up fast: the men-women ratio here is 31:69.

Bigger cake

Home minister Shivraj Patil’s proposal for the Women’s Reservation Bill may reassure many an insecure male MP. Patil’s formula is to increase the size of Parliament, and then reserve a third of the seats for women. So men get to keep their share of the seats. Patil is yet to hear from the BJP, but the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal have stuck to their old demand ? they want to reduce the reservation from 33 per cent to 15-20 per cent. The more important question is: will the Bill be introduced during this session? Well, at least the Prime Minister says it will.

Sister act

Talk about cocking a snook at the establishment. Nine North American women have declared themselves priests and deacons after an unauthorised ordination ceremony aboard a boat on the river St Lawrence in Canada. The “priests” were anointed by three female bishops, who said they themselves had been secretly ordained by their male counterparts previously, in a traditional Roman Catholic ceremony. The women risk excommunication by the Vatican as the Catholic church does not accept women priests.

Man drought

Australian women may soon run out of men to marry, so says a recent study by the consultancy firm KPMG. The study, which relies on data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, has thrown light on the gender imbalance in Australia. Men in their 20s and 30s have been leaving the country in search of jobs overseas and then settling there. In the plus-30 age group, for instance, women outnumber men by 20,000. This has led to a women-driven consumer culture in Australia, where they are doing everything on their own, from buying an apartment to taking a financial loan.

Dispelling darkness

Can you think of an African woman without automatically conjuring up the image of an enslaved and oppressed person? Andrea Cornwall hopes that Readings in Gender in Africa, a collection of essays by scholars and activists that she has edited, will change such stereotypical notions. The book focuses on many contemporary gender issues in Africa like women and Islamic fundamentalism. It talks about how women enjoyed greater freedom in pre-colonial Africa and how colonialism changed all that. It also stresses the fact that though Africa shook off colonialism, it hardly made any difference to the lot of women.

Overheard: Men, keep those expensive gifts on hold. Wining and dining work best when it comes to wooing women, say researchers at the University College, London. Well, wining and dining is fine, but we wouldn’t mind the odd expensive gift either!