In 1994, when 18 women journalists decided to set up a space exclusively for their ilk, then prime minister P V Narasima Rao appreciated the idea and offered them a quaint, white bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi’s Ashoka Road – 900 metres away from a building housing the male-dominated Press Club of India.
No male journalist has so far been allowed as a member of the Indian Women’s Press Corps, where the only permanent male, according to an article in the Indian Journalism Review, “is said to be a date palm from Canary Islands”. “Journalism is not an easy profession for women. In those days, the Press Club of India was basically a watering hole where journalists ate and drank. When we set out to establish the IWPC, the idea was to set up something different from the PCI. It was to help women journalists network with newsworthy people, hold panel discussions, and find a sisterhood amongst each other,” explained journalist Coomi Kapoor, who was one of the 18 founding members.
