Shubhdarshini Tripathi Appointed Indian Ambassador To Kazakhstan

Indian Foreign Service officer Shubhdarshini Tripathi has been appointed the next ambassador from India to Kazakhstan, the Ministry of External Affairs announced Wednesday.

Shubhdarshini Tripathi, currently the Deputy Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, is a 1994 batch diplomat with over two decades of experience behind her. She has previously served as an Indian ambassador to Berlin and Jordan. She is expected to take up her assignment to Kazakhstan shorty, as per MEA's official press release issued January 27. 

1994 batch IFS officer Shubhdarshini Tripathi, presently Deputy Director General, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Kazakhstan: MEA

— ANI (@ANI) January 27, 2021

In an interview with a Jordanian magazine, Shubhdarshini Tripathi opened up about her role as a woman representing India in a diplomatic field. "I never felt being a woman affected my career. Our foreign minister is a woman, we’ve had a female prime minister and we’ve had female ambassadors posted in extremely challenging missions,” she was quoted saying.

Indian Women In Diplomacy

Nirupama Menon Rao, one of India's most prominent diplomats who formerly served as Foreign Secretary between 2009 and 2011, says while the representation of women in this field has increased, it still faces a noticeably disproportionate male to female ratio. 

In a webinar held last year October, on 'Gender Within International Relations,' titled Traditional Roles and Glass Ceilings, Rao remarked, "In the Indian Foreign Service, the numbers of women are going up steadily but nowhere even near half of the numbers of male diplomatic officers." She stated that out of 815 IFS officers, 176 were women out of whom only 19 held Ambassador or High Commissioner positions. 

Invoking the likes of historical icons like Sarojini Naidu and CB Muthamma, who were diplomats of their time, Rao added, "If women constitute fifty percent of the population, it is obvious that their representation in professions, and in leadership positions should be equal to or at least close to equal that of men who are similarly placed."

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