By Sharanya Gopinathan

In late June, it was reported that RSP leader and Lok Sabha member N K Premachandran had won the Best Parliamentarian award, given out by the Lokmat Media Group, which publishes newspapers in Hindi, Marathi and English.

What those reports failed to mention, and what Twitter user @carolespary pointed out to us, is that there were many more awards given out to parliamentarians by the Lokmath Group, except they made up some senseless categories.

#Parliamentary awards for #parliamentarians and ‘woman’ parliamentarians. So kind* All male judging. #manel Debut awards for women only. pic.twitter.com/mpNum13az7

— Carole Spary (@carolespary) July 19, 2017

Yup, that’s right, there’s a separate award category for Best Parliamentarian and Best Woman Parliamentarian. What does that mean? That the Lokmat Group sees parliamentarians in general as men, and women in Parliament a whole, distinct category that needs to be indicated separately. It just reinforces the belief that the normal baseline for everything is male, and women are an add-on that got tacked on somewhere along the way. Gross!