This afternoon I was reading about cricketer Smriti Mandhana being honoured by Barbie as part of a global ‘Dream Team’ initiative around International Women’s Day, celebrating women who are role models in their fields. Almost instinctively, I turned to my daughter and said, “Wow, how wonderful! She is sharing space with such incredible women. We all must be so proud of it”. My daughter looked up immediately and said, very matter-of-factly, “No, Mumma. She is phenomenal. The others should be proud to share space with her”.

That one sentence, said so casually, set off a cascade of thoughts within me. For a long time, girls were encouraged to admire greatness, often from a respectful distance, especially when it came encased in global recognition. When someone from India appeared in those spaces, the sentiment was usually framed as representation. Look, someone from our country made it there. It was pride, certainly, but it also carried a subtle hierarchy.

Today’s girls, however, seem to be growing up with a slightly different instinct. Their first reaction is not comparison but parity. They are not thinking, how fortunate she is to stand beside them. Instead, they are thinking, of course she belongs there.

How much ever we might argue on this from the lens of marketing gimmicks or commercial symbolism, recognition from platforms like Barbie matters. Symbols and visibility matter. When a global cultural brand highlights a woman athlete from India, it sends a signal to millions of girls who are watching about what achievement can look like. But what stayed with me this afternoon was not only the announcement itself. It was my daughter’s certainty.

She did not see Smriti Mandhana as someone who had been included. She saw her as someone who had simply earned her place, unquestionably. That confidence does not come from global lists or brand campaigns alone. It comes from what children absorb every day – homes where achievement by women is spoken about without surprise, conversations where admiration does not automatically place someone above you, parenting that raises girls to see excellence not as distant but as possible. Because the real goal was never just representation. It was belonging.

So today I am proud of and hugely inspired by Smriti Mandhana, for the excellence that brought her here. But I am also proud of my daughter, and of the generation she represents, for instinctively knowing that women like Smriti don’t merely share space in the world. They define it. They own it. They shape it.