There Is A Gender Bias In Legal Profession And Judiciary: Justice Indu Malhotra

“There is a gender bias....People think women judges are not good enough to grapple with complicate commercial matters....sometimes, even a senior judge would turn around to say that you would not understand it....so you have to work twice as hard; you have to fight it out and struggle your way through!”At a panel discussion hosted recently by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in collaboration with the Oxford University, Supreme Court Justice Indu Malhotra provided an insight into the position of “Women in the Legal Profession” in the face of the stigma that attaches to their gender.“Even though I came from a legal background, this profession was not a cakewalk for me. My father was a senior advocate but when I had started out, he was on the decline so there was no clientele as such that I inherited from him....although I did have the benefit of the infrastructure and a vast library that he had built....”, began the judge.https://youtu.be/6P0JcXbpbic“At that time, women were not recognised as Counsel and that is why I took the AOR (Advocate-on-Record) exam to get a foothold in the profession....After twenty years of practice as an AOR, when I applied for senior designation, I was told by two of my friends, bonafide, that it is a male-dominated space and that as a counsel I will suffer as clients mostly want to be represented by men lawyers....However, I applied anyway- even the judges had encouraged me to- and finally after some thirty years of my practice as an AOR, I was designated a senior....,” she narrated.Justice Malhotra advanced how she had to “start afresh at the base” in the profession again when, despite having handled commercial matters as an AOR, she was initially only engaged in family matters, MACT and land acquisition cases as a senior, to be trusted with commercial matters only in her last six years as a Senior Advocate. She added that her contemporary males even commanded a much higher fee.“There is a gender bias....People think women judges are not good enough to grapple with complicate commercial matters....sometimes, even a senior judge would turn around to say that you would not understand it....so you have to work twice as hard; you have to fight it out and struggle your way through!”Enumerating the travails of women advocates, she advanced that ensuring a “work-life balance” is a challenge for them, which requires enormous family support, in view of the legal profession being a “jealous mistress” that takes up a lot of time.She elaborated on the hesitation of Female lawyers to “network”- “The legal profession has grown to become a commercial business and you can no longer sit in your office and say it is a noble profession....I used to appear for a MNC which told me that I was getting off the hook. When I asked what happened, they said, ‘you should see the presentations which your male colleagues come and make’....”“Women find it hard to lobby for such posts as the Solicitor General, the ASG etc. It was only in 2009, after over 60 years of independence, that a female ASG was appointed for the first time and only because the Attorney General had a very high opinion of her legal acumen. Even in the High Courts, which is the base area, women are not commonly appointed as ASGs....No doubt that These are political posts, but they are a very good platform for exposure to diverse matters and for recognition....”, she continued.In his turn, the fourth senior-most Supreme Court judge, Justice A. K. Sikri, was of the view that though there has been progress on the gender equality front, it still feels that we are lagging behind and that we have achieved hardly anything- “the issue (of gender equality) has Remained relevant in the last hundred years, and Till such time, gender equality is achieved in real terms, in India and in the world, it will continue to be relevant....”Indicating the irony of how the legal fraternity, which is responsible for enforcing the right to equality as embodied in Article 14 and being a part of the universal legal rights, is itself grappling with gender inequalities at the stages of legal education, the profession and the judiciary, he narrated an anecdote on the same lines- “when I was the Acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, a petition was filed before us that inspite of their being a law prohibiting the practice, child labour is prevalent as domestic help and in factories. What was shocking to us what that in the High Court only, which was supposed to be the Temple of Justice, there were kiosks selling refreshments and stationery which employed child labourers!”He quoted some statistics showing the poor representation of women at the bar and the bench, as revealed in the research conducted by Vidhi- only 10% of the Advocates in the lower judiciary are women, while the percentage of female Senior Advocates in the Supreme Court is a meagre 2.9%. Further, since 1950, there have been only 8 female judges in the apex court; even the present number of three...

There Is A Gender Bias In Legal Profession And Judiciary: Justice Indu Malhotra

MEHAL JAIN

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