Opinion Miles to go
Delhi gets its first woman chief justice, but she is the exception, not the rule.
Delhi gets its first woman chief justice, but she is the exception, not the rule.
The appointment of G. Rohini as chief justice of the Delhi High Court is certainly historic, but gender parity at the bar and bench in India is still some distance away. Justice Rohini will be the Delhi HC’s first woman CJ in nearly half a century. Her elevation adds Delhi to the lean list of high courts in India — four out of 24 — where women judges preside. The Union law ministry’s figures from last year peg the number of women high court judges at 53 out of 614; the all-India male-to-female ratio stands at an abysmal 1:10.
There are two sitting women judges in the Supreme Court, which currently has a bench strength of 30. In the last decade, the SC has seen only three women judges. The numbers point to an institutional malaise in India’s legal circles that once comprised women like Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to read law at Oxford, and Anna Chandy, possibly only the second judge in the world to be appointed to a federal court (Kerala), after Florence Allen (Ohio).
The problem of under-representation of women in key judicial positions stems from the lack of an enabling environment at the bar. Women lawyers face an uphill task not just in navigating a successful career, but also in being represented at state bar councils and associations. Bar councils are powerful bodies, and their influential office bearers are sometimes even taken into confidence by judicial collegiums. In larger and politically significant states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana, bar councils have too few or no women members at all. Far from opening their doors to women, such all-male “clubs” have been outright hostile to them.
Sexism at the bar has also resulted in instances of harassment. Recent complaints from two women interns alleging assault by the Supreme Court judges they worked for have prompted serious introspection in the higher judiciary. Until late last year, though, the Gender Sensitisation and Internal Complaints Committees that HCs were to set up under the Supreme Court’s Vishaka mandate either remained on paper or dysfunctional.
If women lawyers are to rise through the ranks, and be elevated as judges, such conditions — which not only threaten women’s security but also encourage covert and overt discrimination — have to go. Until then, judges like G. Rohini will be the exception, not the norm.
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