Veteran journalist Barkha Dutt on what being a woman means to her

Emmy-nominated journalist Barkha Dutt (@barkha.dutt) on the first-ever international edition of #WeTheWomen, celebrating women achievers in the UAE.

Transcript

00:00 Hello and welcome to Khaleej Times. We have with us the trailblazer journalist, Emmy nominated

00:15 journalist Barkha Dutt with us today in Dubai. Thank you so much for joining us Barkha. It's

00:19 an absolute honor. It's a pleasure to be here. We're here at the inaugural edition of We

00:23 the Women in the UAE. How do you feel now that the event is over? How was the outtake

00:28 and what is your biggest takeaway from this? I'm really, really excited to bring the first

00:32 international edition of my festival We the Women to the UAE. And I have never seen such

00:39 an engaged, diverse audience and also such a diversity on stage. I'm sure you felt that

00:45 today. I mean, we had not just a sort of multi ethnic, multinational, multicultural representation

00:51 on stage, but just the kind of issues we were addressing, how personally everybody opened

00:57 up, how people were willing, women were willing to share their vulnerability, their points

01:00 of weakness, how to convert weakness into strength, it was all exhilarating. What is

01:05 the one thing that you learned about women in the UAE from this venture? Extraordinarily

01:10 strong, very interesting, very non stereotypical. Everybody has an individual and an authentic

01:18 story and it was also really revealing to see the statistics around women in the UAE.

01:24 95% literacy rate, 78% enrollment in secondary education. The fact that there has been a

01:33 military college for women here since 2014. The fact that this is the country polled to

01:37 be the country where women feel the safest. The fact that you already have 50% political

01:42 representation for women. All of these were really eye opening points that I discovered

01:47 in my time here. That's so true. Also, you know, on a personal note, what does being

01:50 a woman mean to you? I think for me, it means a little bit of battle every day. Let's face

01:58 it as women, we have to battle every day, but also great joy and celebration and all

02:01 that I've achieved and all that's still left to achieve.

02:04 [Music]