Banalata Bipani

All diplomats are not gentlemen.

some are ladies! It has been a long journey for Indian women to show their effective presence at South Block, the building, where India's Ministry of External Affairs office is located in New Delhi.

It was 60 years ago in 1949, a woman named Chonira Belliappa Muthamma stunned the male-dominated foreign ministry by becoming India's first female career diplomat.

For us in India, Mrs.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit as the Madame Ambassador in 1946, representing India in the United Nations, began the transition.

But then she was not career diplomat, but a political appointee, eventually serving as the Indian ambassador to USA, UK & Russia and other countries during her 15 years as an ambassador.

Even for the USA, only in 1943, Ms.

Ruth Dobson was the first woman to be appointed to the Foreign Service and it took 54 years before Madame Madelaine Albright reached the all time high appointment of being the Secretary of State/Foreign minister for USA, to be followed later in 2005 by Ms.

Condolezza Rice.

It is not realized, that in many Latin American countries (recently more than 50 percent of their ambassadors in India were ladies) and many African nations (especially South Africa, whose High Commissioner to India is Ms.

Maite Mashabane) give these top diplomatic assignments to ladies.

Today a check up shows that there are now 92 women diplomats, almost 15 percent of the 620-strong Indian Foreign Service (IFS) cadre and they are heading 26 Indian missions and consulates out of 153 around the world.

This compares not so well with other major countries like USA, where women in 2007 held approximately one-third of the 146 ambassadorships.

In the case of China of the 160 Chiefs of Mission, 22 are women.

In Britain currently, of the 183 Chiefs of Mission, only 23 are female.

But in Pakistan, considering the fact that feudal laws, honour killings and domestic violence...

sums up the pathetic state of women in Pakistan, it is remarkable that nine lady diplomats are currently serving as Pakistan's ambassadors in countries ranging from France to Morocco.

Nearly 11 percent of career diplomats - 41 of the current 370 serving officers in the ministry of foreign affairs Pakistan - are women.

Pakistan's Foreign Services Academy is headed by Ms Fauzia Nasreen, a senior diplomat, and she briefly became the first woman to serve as acting foreign secretary last year, though only for a few days.

But it has been a hard struggle for the Indian women to come up in the diplomatic ladder.

In 2001, when Ms.

Chokila Iyer was appointed to the top post of Foreign Secretary, Ms.

Muthamma, the first woman entrant in the IFS cadre in 1949 (first in the IFS list and third in the All India list), wrote about her experiences and how she had to face innumerable "imaginary problems" created by the IFS male hierarchy.

In her book, Slain by the System: India's Real Crisis, she recounts, "When the rule permitted a single head of mission to take a close female relative at government expense as a hostess, I was refused permission to take my mother, since the rules referred to a "he" not a "she"".

Again in the 1970's, another reason the higher ups advanced, against making me as an Ambassador was, that often the diplomats (especially in the African countries) had to go to the airport, at 3 a.m in the morning (for seeing off the local Head of State on his foreign trips), and it would not do to have the Indian Ambassador raped by highway robbers!".

Finally, tired of being shunted out of the list, whenever important promotions as the Indian Ambassador came in her way, Miss.Muthamma, successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of India, and the Government of India had to change its policy of gender-discrimination.

Even then, Miss Muthamma was promoted only at the last moment, as the Ambassador to Ghana, so that the Government of India can make a submission to the Supreme Court, that they were not showing any discrimination.

Believe it or not, those were the era, when if as a lady diplomat you got married, you had to leave the IFS.

This laughable rule was not applicable to men! As such the question of posting together, when the lady diplomat and her spouse were both in the IFS did not arise.

It's also sobering to recall that less than 30 years ago, the then foreign secretary, Jagat Mehta, didn't think twice before shooting off a three-page letter to women diplomats, which told them that if they wanted to continue in the service, they couldn't expect to be posted where their husbands were serving.

But today, at consul levels, couples can be accommodated in the same embassy.

Otherwise they are posted as near as possible.

In the higher echelons recently His Excellency Mr.

Hardeep Puri, was the Indian Deputy High commissioner in London, while his wife Her Excellency Madam Lakshmi Puri was the Indian Ambassador to Hungary.

But in the protocol Mr.

Puri was higher in rank, although he is only the Deputy Chief in London.

Today our lady diplomats are posted in an impressively large number that includes the hitherto forbidden Arab world, where even the West rarely sends women diplomats.

Lengcha Lhouvum is India's ambassador to Lebanon (where she has seen bombs explode from her balcony).

Meera Shankar represents India in Germany, and is seen as a frontrunner for the position of India's next permanent representative at the UN in New York.

In China, it's Nirupama Rao who reads the intricate tea leaves for India, managing the often tense relationship between two Asian giants Today as the Government of India proposes to double the number of senior staff from 620 to 1400 by the year 2018, it is hoped that the number of woman diplomats in the service would raise to 33 percent from the present 15 percent.