Kolkata: Veteran journalist Priya Ramani, whose allegations of sexual misconduct against a Union minister had triggered a storm, on Thursday said the #MeToo campaign has resulted in women speaking out everywhere about the sexual harassments they face.
Since the launch of the #MeToo campaign three years back, there were 35 million tweets the world over till 2019 on this issue, she said quoting a UN data.
Addressing a session of the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, Ramani said this is only the ‘tip’ of the overall situation. Around 200 women had spoken out as part of the #MeToo campaign in India, the scribe said. “We have reached such a stage where women are not afraid to speak out.”
Ramani has been fighting a defamation case for her charges against the minister who denied the charge and later resigned from the cabinet.
After the scandal involving Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein hit the headlines in the US in 2017, the #Me Too campaign began in that country in which celebrities spoke about their travails in the hands of influential people. The campaign soon spread to India especially in the arena of Bollywood and the Media.
Speaking on the topic “2020 Vision: Being Woman”, the editor and commentator said women were mostly seen in flights as attendants in the past, now one-third of the pilots of a particular private airline are women.
“Women are also flying fighter jets,” she pointed out. The journalist complimented West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee for fielding 17 women candidates in last Lok Sabha elections, many of whom had won.
Writer Githa Hariharan, whose ‘The Thousand Faces of Night’ had won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the best first novel in 1993, said “You need to teach your son equality and respect. Textbooks will help in educating a young boy.”
To a question, women’s rights activist Anuradha Kapur said, “I wonder if hanging Nirbhaya murder convicts will change society.”
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Source: News18