So Few Women...

Here's an excerpt from our friend, Alo Sengupta's blog, 'Gladly Beyond Any Distance'...

"Maya was India’s best known woman political cartoonist, and as Manjula Padmanabhan (cartoonist, artist and writer) said about her in tribute:

Maya’s political opinions were expressed with a cool yet distinct humour — a sense of irony combined with an understanding of the political forces of the day. It’s a quality that cartoonists must have deep within them… She wasn’t pointlessly vicious and she often cut to the heart of the issue, just by the way she used symbols.

The World of Maya is her collection of work, spanning 15 years and over 5000 cartoons. Why is it that there are so few women political cartoonists? Or women cartoonists in general? And why should their gender identity preclude recognition of their political astuteness and artistic skills?"