India-Pakistan border skirmishes will always have two narratives depending on which side of the Radcliffe Line you are on. What doesn’t seem to be debatable though is that if prime time news TV is anything to go by, only men are deemed equipped to comment on the subject.

Since October 5, when tensions on the border started escalating, almost every prime-time debate on news channels has carried a segment on the issue. Across the country’s five most-watched English news channels  – Times Now, NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and News X –  there have been more than two dozen panels (often repetitive, though) which have passionately discussed the latest border skirmishes. However, only on two occasions has there been an Indian woman on a panel.

Radha Kumar, one of the three interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir appointed by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) appointed by the last government in 2010 had featured on NDTV’s “Left, Right and Centre” hosted by Nidhi Razdan on October 5. The only other instance when a woman spoke on national television during the course of the week on the subject was when NewsX got Leela Ponappa, a former Deputy National Security Adviser to be part of a debate titled “Who’ll Defend Our Indefensibles”, held on October 6.

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In 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted  – in hindsight – Resolution 1325 (2000), expressing concern that women and children accounted for the majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict.  One of the two key goals of the resolutions reads:

Resolution 1325 (2000) calls for strengthening women’s agency as peacemakers and peacebuilders, including their participation in conflict prevention and peace processes, early recovery, governance and in peace operations.

On October 29, 2003 the Council met once again to commemorate three years of the adoption of the resolution. In an unexpected development, Masood Khali, Pakistan’s representative in the meeting, spoke twice. The second time was in response to the Indian representative VK Nambiar. Incidentally, Nambiar’s speech, as recorded in the official press release, was in itself a sort of rebuttal to Khali’s original address.

The meeting is a telling comment on both nations’ approach to everything Kashmir-related.  More importantly, it speaks volumes on the countries’ seriousness about achieving the primary goal of the resolution: letting women stakeholders have their say on issues that have affected them equally if not more.

More than ten years later, in 2014, as India and Pakistan exchange fire at the contentious Line of Control again, things remain exactly the same. Not only are the two countries not any closer to solving the Kashmir quagmire, women continue to have little or almost no say on the issue. The Indian media, often annoyingly self-righteous when it comes to gender-related issues, is more than doing its bit to ensure status quo prevails. After all, what otherwise would explain the dismally low number of female commentators invited to participate in the innumerable discussions on the issue? Print has been equally guilty too: between October 5 to October 10, you will not find a singly op-ed on the topic written by a woman in any of the major newspapers.

Ajai Shukla, a retired Colonel of the Indian Army and a regular face on debates pertaining to Indo-Pak conflicts told Newslaundry that since the bulk of the discussions on TV have involved retired army professionals, it is only natural that it was men-centric, owing to the rules of the Indian Army apropos women.

So, does that mean a testosterone-driven situation is dealt with best by men? Examples in history tell a different story, though. In this extremely poignant TED talk, Halla Tomasdottir talks about how her financial company survived the economic crash in Ireland because of what she calls incorporation of “feminine values” into the world of finance – a space where approaches are almost always testosterone-fueled.   Tomasdottir says: “Though we do work in the financial sector, where Excel is king, we believe in emotional capital. And we believe that doing emotional due diligence is just as important as doing financial due diligence. It is actually people that make money and lose money, not Excel spreadsheets.”

While it is not to say that “emotional capital” is exclusive to women, diversity of approach that invariably comes along with difference in gender is imperative to a well-rounded response to almost every situation. And armed combat is no exception. Plus, shouldn’t half the population be allowed to air their opinion on a situation that is potentially disastrous? The absence of a woman’s perspective in discussions and debates relating to the India-Pakistan standoff is conspicuously glaring.

According to WomenWarPeace.org, a website that seeks to consolidate data on impact of armed conflict on women and girls, women in recent years have represented fewer than eight per cent of participants and fewer than three per cent of signatories in peace negotiations. Given that the army (themselves not known for their extreme sensitivity to gender issues) of either countries is going to be the last institution to zero in on the fallouts of war vis-à-vis women, isn’t it only fair to get female representatives to talk of an aspect which has been completely ignored amidst the macho posturing and chest-thumping? And even if our feminine counterparts are going to warmonger and pant for blood as well, at least their voices need to be heard.

It’s the same old thing – men get to talk politics, economics and war. Withdraw in a haze of coffee and cigars. Or as Nivedita Menon, who teaches political thought at Jahawarlal Nehru University puts it:  “News channels get women only to discuss what they think are ‘gender issues’.”

A testosterone-based approach (read angry mustached ex-generals arguing with each other over the same thing) has not got the countries any closer to finding a reasonable solution to the Kashmir stalemate. Why not give women a chance? Having at least one woman on the panel every time it deliberates on the issue wouldn’t be a bad start. Besides it definitely toned down Arnab Goswami’s inner Sunny Deol when a woman from Paksitan was on the panel. That has got to be worth something.