Institutional Sexism
Given that institutional sexism is pretty much gone (or very well hidden) from most western organisations these days, it's always morbidly fascinating to see a reminder of what it used to be like.
So I was flipping cable channels last night, and found something called "Mission Udaan", which believe it or not is a reality TV competition run by the Indian Air Force, presumably for recruiting purposes. They selected five competitors from the general public, who would compete in a series of trials, from dressing quickly in a 'scramble' to get geared up and into a fighter cockpit, to being winched from the ocean by a rescue helicopter, to parachuting from a helicopter, etc. The contestant with the highest final mark would win a ride in the backseat of a Su-30, India's top-line fighterplane.
It's not hard to guess they didn't want the women to win, because one of them was scared of heights. I shit you not -- an airforce competition, and of all the applicants, they chose one who gets dizzy any higher then five stories up. She had to pass on two events, obviously ruling her out of contention. The second woman, however, did annoyingly well... so well, in fact, that she was clearly neck-and-neck with another male contestant to win the final prize at the end. Whereupon, at the final presentation, some bigwig Indian Air Force dude stands before them on a podium on the tarmac, and announces that one woman has come last, and the other has come... second-last! And the men, of course, place third, second and first. I mean, the sheer lack of subtlety was breathtaking. They didn't even bother to re-edit it to make the second woman look like she was doing worse than she was. Just "I'm in command, and I say she came second-last".
This fits with everything else I've heard about the Indian Air Force, where they have a quota system of female pilots designed, as far as I can tell, not as an affirmative action plan, but to actively limit the number of women taken in. And of course they're not allowed to fly those Su-30s themselves, because the Indian brass, obviously knowning something most western airforces don't, have declared women aren't physically up to it. Here's hoping as India's defence relationship with America improves, some of these assholes find themselves in mock combat exercises against some of these girls, and get their backsides handed to them.
But it's instructive to recall that most Western institutions used to be like that, from law to medicine to you name it.
So I was flipping cable channels last night, and found something called "Mission Udaan", which believe it or not is a reality TV competition run by the Indian Air Force, presumably for recruiting purposes. They selected five competitors from the general public, who would compete in a series of trials, from dressing quickly in a 'scramble' to get geared up and into a fighter cockpit, to being winched from the ocean by a rescue helicopter, to parachuting from a helicopter, etc. The contestant with the highest final mark would win a ride in the backseat of a Su-30, India's top-line fighterplane.
It's not hard to guess they didn't want the women to win, because one of them was scared of heights. I shit you not -- an airforce competition, and of all the applicants, they chose one who gets dizzy any higher then five stories up. She had to pass on two events, obviously ruling her out of contention. The second woman, however, did annoyingly well... so well, in fact, that she was clearly neck-and-neck with another male contestant to win the final prize at the end. Whereupon, at the final presentation, some bigwig Indian Air Force dude stands before them on a podium on the tarmac, and announces that one woman has come last, and the other has come... second-last! And the men, of course, place third, second and first. I mean, the sheer lack of subtlety was breathtaking. They didn't even bother to re-edit it to make the second woman look like she was doing worse than she was. Just "I'm in command, and I say she came second-last".
This fits with everything else I've heard about the Indian Air Force, where they have a quota system of female pilots designed, as far as I can tell, not as an affirmative action plan, but to actively limit the number of women taken in. And of course they're not allowed to fly those Su-30s themselves, because the Indian brass, obviously knowning something most western airforces don't, have declared women aren't physically up to it. Here's hoping as India's defence relationship with America improves, some of these assholes find themselves in mock combat exercises against some of these girls, and get their backsides handed to them.
But it's instructive to recall that most Western institutions used to be like that, from law to medicine to you name it.
3 Comments:
ah, don't you love India? They do have a pretty good airforce, when all's said and done...
And a pretty good military, broadly speaking, as they inherited all the structure from the English. But they're going to have to get used to women for the same reasons the UK, America and Australia did -- as the economy booms, there's just too many other attractive jobs out there, and they're running short of qualified men.
institutional sexism is gone? what world do you live in, you idiot.....Get off your pc for 5 minutes and join the real world.
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