The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : `We have much to learn from original cultures'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`We have much to learn from original cultures'

Staff Reporter

MAKING A POINT: Noted journalist Gloria Steinem addressing the fifth annual meeting of the Network of Women in Media, in Bangalore on Friday. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Bangalore: Noted journalist Gloria Steinem says she accedes that the world is divided into two kinds of people. But is quick to add that it is divided into "those who divide the world and those who do not."

Speaking at the Fifth annual meeting of the Network of Women in Media, here on Friday, Ms. Steinem said that a look into our "collective past" would reveal that for most of human history, we were not dictated by such "cultural and political inventions as patriarchy, monotheism and nationalism."

"The subjugation of women later became a model for all forms of discrimination — including that of race and class — the understanding that some people were just born to serve others," she said.

"Modern media, carbon dating and DNA have now revealed to us that different forms of human organisations did exist, and that original cultures in all continents have similar characteristics," Ms. Steinem said.

Visiting "our shared history" would reveal that "things have not always been this way", she said, adding that we have much to learn from "original cultures" across the world. "Native cultures in my own continent were in fact the inspiration for the suffrage movement there", she said.

The Anupama Jayaraman Memorial Award was awarded to journalist Sunita Agarwal from Pune at the meet.

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