Talking Heads with Raveena Raj Kohlli

Sheetal Patel - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Raveena Raj Kohlli, as a woman never faced any sort of discrimination in her career. The only time she ever felt that she is a woman, was when she began heading a news organisation (Raveena Raj Kohlli's earlier stint was as President of Star News), where she was not the traditional prototype chief executive.

Everybody expected a man from a journalistic field or a woman who really didn't care about her looks, to fit into the role as head of a news organisation. For someone like me to fall somewhere between the two categories, was a real challenging task. In the sense one had to face a lot barbs and sarcasm, which I didn't particularly mind at the time because I had expected that to happen from the very first day at work.

That was the only time when I felt that people on the outside have more complexes than people on the inside. It was the only time when to my horror, I realised that there will always be a few nasty people who will discriminate against women, no matter what her qualifications and experience are. Having said that, my experiences during my career have convinced me that women make fantastic professionals. I say this because I realise that a woman who enters an active professional life, does so for reasons that are far more committed and individualistic than those of their male counterparts.

Now, this does not imply that I am biased against men in professional life. In fact, they make great colleagues and are also competent workers. But women are just far better professionals, especially in a space which is very demanding on time. And in the news organisation that I ran, I have found women particularly to be very quick to learn, very quick to rise to challenging situations and being totally fearless in their approach. And that is the reason why I have become more inclined to work with women than with men colleagues.

Looking at the attitude towards women in India, I think it has already changed a lot. What's more, this change has baffled and left a lot of men completely bewildered and blinking madly. I feel that a lot of this change has come about, thanks to older women in the Indian family system. For the past few years, older women in families have increasingly become far more supportive and encouraging to younger girls in their vicinity, and thus have been the harbinger of change in their status. And that is what I believe, has brought commendable change in the status of young women in India. I have never seen such a thing happen anywhere else in the world. However, let me add that saying this does not mean that I deny the importance of male support to women, which is just as critical as ever.

One thing that I have been extremely against is reservation. In my view, reservation is the most demeaning thing that can ever happen in a civilised society. If you are giving reservation to women, it simply symbolises that she is not capable of achieving it through fair competition. It sounds like compensation for her handicap of being born a woman, which is an insulting proposition.

Summing up, women are simply great and the best thing that ever happened to the workforce. Take for example, women like Indira Nooyi (CEO, PepsiCo) or just look at women political leaders in India, who are rapidly breaking traditional moulds. All the jobs that people said women can't do, they are doing, and doing them well. In my industry, the media, women are rising so fast and are adding such amazing value to the business that my message to them is: don't stop and the world is yours.