Last week, when Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi addressed the press during his visit to Delhi, what stood out was who wasn’t in the room. Not a single woman journalist had been invited to the press conference at the Afghan Embassy. This, from a country notorious for rolling back women’s rights. It took an uproar from editors’ guilds, women’s press bodies, and political representatives for the Afghanistan delegation to hastily convene a second press briefing. This time, women were conspicuously in the front rows, a perfect photo op that was circulated nationwide for “damage control”. 

“For the first press conference, we weren’t invited at all,” recalls Suhasini Haidar, a diplomatic affairs editor at The Hindu who attended the second briefing. “I was a bit disappointed in our External Affairs Ministry for not issuing a statement that they don’t condone such discrimination.”