The gender of a sound byte

Dear Barkha,

This is taking up from where we last left off.

The last time we met at a dinner party in Mumbai, you had enquired why I always turned down requests to appear on your show, and I had mumbled something about "speaking too softly, not being able to shout, feeling awkward to interrupt other people etc," to which you'd replied, of course correctly, that those were other shows and that you did not conduct slanging matches and in fact gave everyone a fair chance to speak, etc.

It's then that I had prematurely introduced the thought that had been engaging me for a while. "It is my belief," I'd said in that busy room, barely audible "that the sound byte is essentially a male construct. Women do not speak in sound bytes. We are ditherers, when asked a question we like to elaborate, expand, consider all possibilities and try out new ideas even as we speak. This comes across as hesitation, faltering, vacillating on TV where you're expected to say your bit in under 20 seconds," I'd said. "A classic case is Kiran Bedi. Ask her a simple question on camera and she goes off in a hundred directions and sounds crazy. It's a woman thing."
Of course, a cocktail party was the wrong place to introduce an idea such as this, that required much more time to develop.

But it is to your credit and your genuine interest and curiosity about people and ideas that makes you such a very fine journalist, that you didn't gloss over the conversation or look for the next person to talk to. "I'm a ditherer too," you had said. And then, you laughed, as the penny dropped. "Ahh... but I get to ASK the questions!" you'd said.

"I'll write you a letter about this," I'd promised, before we were engulfed in a sea of people.

So here it is.

The more I think about it, Barkha, the more I am convinced that there exists a profusion of traditions and practices that are basically male constructs, designed by men, to cater to their needs and natures, and the short format TV interview where someone is expected to offer up a pithy, perfectly constructed, linear response on a subject of national import, is only one such.

Put a group of women together, and they will want to bond, to use the occasion to go deep within themselves to excavate their deepest truths to see where and how they fare amongst their peers. Like divers searching for rare pearls, they will search out the meaning of themselves and their lives and come up with rare gems.

They will consider this and that. There will be many "on the other hands" and "buts" and "ifs" and they will need time and an atmosphere of encouragement and security to do this.

Put a group of men in a studio with cameras stuck in their faces and they will shout, wrangle, compete, battle, joust and jockey going head-to-head in combat.

Perhaps this is why women make such good interviewers; they know how to gently tease and coax answers out of their subjects the way they would like to be handled themselves.

Perhaps that is why men dominate the national discourse; they are much better at the short, pithy sound byte, as it shows them up to their best advantage.

Which got me thinking, dear Barkha, about how many other male constructs and practices exist in our work, which, so naturally give men the upper hand, and which we are not even aware of?

Perhaps most of what we live with, our education system, the way our homes and offices are designed, the rigours of travel politics and war, the ideology of banks and big businesses have a built-in advantage for men.
Isn't it time we start calling them out for what they are? Isn't it time we stopped trying to fit into systems where we're naturally disadvantaged and create somewhere women will flourish and thrive?

But of course that's the subject of another letter. I'd promised to write to you explaining why I thought that the sound byte was a male construct and why I don't appear on TV shows and here it is.

By the way, your recent Town Hall with Arvind Kejriwal was one of your most brilliant shows in a long line of brilliance. But then, not only do you get to ask the questions, but you know the right questions to ask!

Until next time then.

With every good wish, etc
malavikasmumbai@gmail.com