The Finger Wrap: Constituencies, Confidence and Comedy

Journalist Revati Laul takes us on a “whistle-stop tour” of the female constituency in India, which is caught in the chest-hair machismo of the Indian Election 2014.

In other election news, of the 239 candidates contesting polls in Rajasthan from the 20 seats polled last week (Rajasthan has 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in total), only 17 are women. Five of Punjab’s 13 constituencies have no women candidates at all. On the other hand, provisional data with the Election Commission shows that in five states/union territories that have completed polling, a higher percentage of women showed up to vote than men.

Still more election news. Here’s how there came to be so many women in Bihar’s local bodies. And in a rare display of sensitivity, the EC posted women polling staff in Gulbarga to the Assembly constituencies in which they were working, and gave them the option of staying at home the night before they had to report for duty.

In a major step, the Supreme Court has recognised transgenders as a third gender. This piece tells you why it’s “one of the most rights enhancing decisions in the Court’s history”, while this piece is a reminder that the ruling isn’t as inclusive as it could have been. Meanwhile, have you heard of Bharathi Kannamma, a transgender from Madurai who’s campaigning for the first time for a Lok Sabha seat?

Guess what? Those images you have in your head of a wet Colin Firth as Darcy emerging from a lake in the Pride and Prejudice series aren’t real. Hear it from the man himself. (Bonus: pics of the creepy 12-ft statue of the thing that never happened.)

An infographic called “We Can Do Better” shows the extreme under-representation of women in tech firms. Dropbox, for instance, has a men-to-women ratio of 134:9.

Earlier this week, The Atlantic ran a piece on how women are less self-assured than men and dished out advice to help them. Three pieces cropped up in response: The Forbes piece points out that it isn’t about confidence, it is just that women are (justifiably) cynical. The Al Jazeera piece asks, “Why do we define testosterone-induced competitive overconfidence as the mark that women need to meet?” And the piece on PolicyMic says that The Atlantic piece encourages women to “fake it till you make it”.

The Wire points out that “despite (or because of) the fact that women are underrepresented in business and tech power rankings, editors make sure to get an attractive mid-list woman (or women) on the cover“.

Meanwhile, Amy Schumer nails Aaron Sorkin with: “A woman’s life is worth nothing unless she’s making a great man greater.” She delivers the line pitch-perfect in a parody of The Newsroom (which also stars Josh Charles from The Good Wife).

And finally, the superfun Aditi Mittal talks about sanitary napkins and the once-a-month science in your chaddi.