TOI correspondent from Washington: As a little girl growing up in Calcutta, Sharmila Mona Sinha was often reminded of a familiar Indian “disappointment”: she was the third daughter. In a society where the arrival of a son was treated as a family dividend and another daughter as a deficit, she absorbed the message early and decided to do something about it. “I wanted to be a boy and do what boys did,” she recalled.
Last week, the Kolkata-born daughter entered the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York - the cradle of the American women’s-rights movement - becoming only the second woman of Indian origin to receive the honour, after former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. It is a fitting destination for a woman whose journey has taken her from Kolkata to Smith College, Wall Street, corporate America and, ultimately, the global campaign for women’s equality.
