“She’s got hold of this again”, the commentator exclaimed while the Australian batter Elysse Perry stepped out of her crease and heaved a flighted delivery over the deep mid-wicket boundary. “She’s smashed a window…. of the Tata Punch.EV …. straight through…Elysse Perry….they got to be sending you a bill”, the commentator further cried out along with the thunderous crowd at Bangalore’s M.A. Chinnaswamy stadium witnessing RCB’s encounter against the UP Warriorz in the WPL 2024.
As predicted by the commentator, the team at Tata Punch.EV did reach out to Elysse Perry 10 days later, to not claim for damages, rather to celebrate her as a window breaking warrior with the “Perry Powerful Punch” memento made up with the broken glass pieces.
Just as the team at Tata Punch.EV celebrated the breaking of their glass window, this article is dedicated to the instances when powerful leaders went on to break the glass ceiling in various domains of our country. First things first, before moving on to the inspirational stories, let’s understand the context of the “Glass Ceiling” and its origin.
The Glass Ceiling: Definition
The glass ceiling refers to invisible social and workplace barriers which prevent women or other groups from growing to senior levels. These could be unfair attitudes, culture, policies, and work practices. The term was coined by Marilyn Loden in 1978 while speaking for women’s exploitation at work in the US.
Organizations across the globe acknowledge the importance of breaking the glass ceiling and ensuring fair representation of women in the decision-making process. Most often, this phenomenon becomes deeply rooted in the behavioral practices of the society and calls for a celebratory milestone each time such a glass ceiling is broken.
Below mentioned are some of the key domains where women have gone on to leave their mark and have tabled an inspirational note for the future generation.
Cricket
The player with the number 18 jersey in the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) women’s cricket team, laid her hands on the prized winner’s trophy in the second edition of the Women Premier League (WPL) itself, while the male counterpart with the same jersey number still awaits a reversal of fortunes since the last 16 editions of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The players being talked about are Smriti Mandhana and Virat Kohli respectively, who represent the RCB team in the WPL and IPL tournaments respectively.
The life journey of Smriti Mandhana quite resembles the scenario mentioned above. Smriti used to accompany his elder brother to cricket training camps and got attracted to the game. Her father aspired that either amongst Smriti or her brother should represent India on a national level as he couldn’t pursue cricket as his profession due to his family’s circumstances.
Social Media
It takes special courage and determination to sustain fame and admiration in the digital content creation space, as social media users look for relatable, genuine and useful information. In the food category, there is a popular YouTube channel that ticks all the required checkboxes. The channel being talked about is the renowned food content channel: “@KabitasKitchen”, boasting of a remarkable subscriber count of 13.8 million people.
The founder of the channel, Mrs. Kabita Singh, was recently bestowed with the winner prize in the National Creator Awards 2024 (Food Category) by the Honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi. She has also featured in the Forbes top 100 digital creators list — India 2022.
Picture Credit: @KabitasKitchen Youtube Channel
Picture : Elysee perry with the “PerryPowerfulPunch” Momento
Mrs. Kabita mentioned her Mother-In-Law as her motivating figure, as she shared her wisdom about embracing a world where gender should not be a barrier to pursuing one’s dream and responsibilities.
Mrs. Kabita belonged to a humble background and started her culinary influencer journey in 2014 as a recipe guide to her friends and family. But her easy-to-understand recipes with readily available ingredients became a massive hit with the YouTube community and she amassed a million subscribers within just 3 years. Mrs. Kabita was able to break stereotypes typically associated with homemakers by turning her passion of cooking a variety of foods into her full-fledged profession.
Politics
Hillary Clinton once famously quoted: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”. While running for the US presidential race she publicly exclaimed multiple times about her dream of shattering the “highest and the hardest” glass ceiling, pointing to her vision of winning the US presidential elections. The US still counts itself out of the exclusive countries which have voted a woman premier to the Nation’s highest office.
In the political sphere, India counts itself amongst the most liberal nations as our history accounts for multiple dynamic leaders right from the times of struggle for freedom, to the post-independence era when the nation demanded a strong and visionary leadership in governance. Our country got its first female chief minister of state in Smt. Sucheta Kriplani in the year 1963 itself and our first female prime minister in Smt. Indira Gandhi in the year 1966. For the highest diplomatic post of our country, Smt. Partibha Patil was elected as the first woman President of India in 2007.
In 2022, the chair of the president of India was again honored by a woman, Smt. Draupadi Murmu. Smt. Draupadi Murmu holds the unique distinction of being the first tribal woman to adorn the highest civilian post in the country. The reason for looking up to Smt. Draupadi Murmu is not only because of her humble and tribal background, but because she possesses a character of steel.
Smt. Draupadi Murmu: The 15th President of India
Very few people know about the strength with which Smt. Draupadi Murmu withstood a turbulent political and personal life for nearly half a decade. Smt. Draupadi Murmu had a great and respectable political career as she was consecutively elected as an MLA in the Odisha legislative Assembly and even won the best legislator award in the year 2007. But between the years 2009 and 2014, Smt. Draupadi Murmu lost the elections twice, lost her husband and also lost her two sons. A devastating loss as this would shatter most of the people, but she didn’t let personal setbacks come in the way of her organizational responsibilities and took oath as the first tribal woman governor of the state of Jharkhand in 2015 and went on to serve the post till 2021.
Women leaders or Just Leaders?
Each of the domains we just crossed, be it cricket, politics or social media, is fraught with instances of inherent prejudices bonded on the basis of gender. In September 2023, the Indian parliament passed the women reservation bill mandating one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and the State legislative assemblies to be reserved for women. The global average representation of women stands at about 26%, while that of the outgoing 17th Lok Sabha merely stood at 15%. The move was hailed as historic as the reservation bill had been tabled multiple times during the years but was not passed by both houses. The bill however still doesn’t apply to the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, leaving unanswered questions on the table about the intended move of promoting leadership roles for women in the governance system.
Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta / Facebook famously quoted: “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”, envisioning a future where the leadership would be defined by skill, not gender. Hence, the need of the hour is not just to promote proportionate representation of women as leaders in various domains, rather we should create an inclusive environment where women could bring in their diverse perspective and skills without compromising on their individuality.
References:
RCB-W’s short documentary reveals the meeting that changed it all for Smriti Mandhana and co. in WPL 2 (royalchallengers.com) : RCB Official Site
Kabita Singh Creator Stats, Biography | About Kabita Singh — Forbes India : Forbes
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