Mr. Bond, Your Slip is Showing

Britain may cheer its first female MI6 chief, but Indian women have long been shattering glass ceilings without the fanfare.

Arundhati Bhattacharya

For the first time in its 116-year history, MI6 will be headed by a woman. Britain is celebrating. It has taken them over a century to prove that women are capable of more than just being Bond girls. For me, the news brought a sense of vindication. As a teenager in the 1970s, I never warmed to Bond movies. Women were portrayed as pretty distractions, meant either to entrap or entertain Mr. James Bond. The other token female in the films was hardly better: she handed him gadgets and arms, playing the support act all along. The core detective work, the glamour, the glory—those were always Bond’s domain. Well, Agent 007, today the job belongs to a woman.

And not just any job. Running MI6 requires strategic depth, discretion, and the ability to operate in the murkiest geopolitical swamps. It is arguably Britain’s most secretive and high-stakes role—hardly a backdrop for a Bond girl in a backless gown. Blaise Metreweli, the first female chief of MI6, got to the top because she stuck to her work. That is the real secret.

When women persevere in their chosen paths, they rise. Too many, however, opt out unlike men. I explored the reasons in my first book, Have the Women Left Venus? Decoding Gender @Workplace. The biggest disservice women do to themselves is dropping out—not necessarily because of patriarchy, but because of belief. And the consequences are visible.

From a nationalist standpoint, Indian women have quietly been scaling barriers for years. The world’s first woman to head a public sector bank was Arundhati Bhattacharya, an Indian. No mean feat given banking is generally a standard marker of intelligence. Kalpana Chawla, who journeyed to space in 1997, did so as the first woman of Indian origin, and paid the ultimate price in the Columbia disaster.

While Chawla fortunately lingers on in popular memory, the names of top scientists and engineers like Ritu Karidhal and Muthayya Vanitha, who played pivotal roles in India’s Mars and lunar missions, barely register beyond a fleeting news mention. Recently, India’s President, Droupadi Murmu, appointed a female aide-de-camp. Long before their Western counterparts, Indian women were flying planes and leading entire cockpit crews. They have been launching space missions and piloting them too. In 2017, an all-women Navy crew circumnavigated the globe in the INSV Tarini by battling storms, isolation and doubt. These are not token gestures but unique triumphs.

But these feats vanish from the news cycle as fast as they appear. And women rarely raise a fuss. The silence is both learned and internalised. Too often, women are conditioned to underplay success, lest they seem boastful.

I find the financial press particularly culpable. Women achievers barely make the cut. At a recent conference, when I challenged an editorial head on this count, his response was telling. “Women only want to read about shopping.” Really? Is that what we believe women care about?

I have lived in the economic world. I chose a corporate career at a time when the stereotype said pretty girls belonged either on runways or in airline cabins. I religiously began reading The Economic Times at 14, and I still do. But little has changed. Back then, stories about women were filed under ‘empowerment.’ Today they appear under ‘diversity.’ When, exactly, will women be part of the mainstream? I am the mainstream. Why is news about women still not treated as such?

I don’t care about Metreweli’s marital status. Whatever it is, she got here by overcoming the odds. But in India’s private corporate sector, such facts change everything. As a hiring professional, I see how married women are treated. They are dodged like a liability, on the assumption that they aren’t fully available for the job. That myth, however, collapsed when I was researching and doing interviews for my second book, The Shattered Ceiling. The women who reached the top did so not because of the assumptions about them, but despite them.

So, women, voice your demands. Say what YOU want. Speak out about what you expect to see, feel, and be. Our reality will not change unless our expectations are made visible. I am done being a diversity number. I am mainstream.

Treat me like one!

(The writer is an award-winning author, hiring expert and an emotional intelligence and diversity trainer.)