[calvinbhai]

I hope anyone (including you and the author) talking about India is aware that it is a country of 1.3 billion people.

So you can find a Germany+Austria+Italy equivalent number of poor people in desolate conditions, but there also a UK+France+Spain+Nordic-countries equivalent number of people who are doing much better and have access to many resources.

So one's view of India totally depends on which European country equivalent you interfaced with, unless they have travelled to every region/state in India and lived there for a few months/years, without having a political/religious/NGO entity planning their itinerary.

In support of the author, I agree with what she says. Those women who do make it to engineering / tech / high-skilled professions tend to do so without having experienced the pink-elephant phenomena. In fact, I can totally empathize with what the author is saying in her post.

PS: I just made up the list of countries and equivalents, but I hope my analogy helps in understanding how vast India is, in terms of population, the demography, including the languages spoken, scripts written, religions / cultures followed by people.

[danaliv]

Absolutely agree. India is a huge place. I may not have been strong enough in my caveats: this was a delegation with a specific purpose and fixed meetings; we visited two regions only; the use of the word "local"; and obviously none of us on the delegation are even from there, so what do we know, really? I just wanted to point out that I've heard stories from Indian women that are different than this one.

As a woman I can also empathize with the author and would of course prefer to have my work valued on its merits. I just don't think that's contradictory to having a robust diversity effort.