Delhi HC Women Lawyer Forum organises webinar on “Evolving a Feminist Jurisprudence”

THE Delhi High Court Women Lawyer Forum yesterday organised a webinar on "Evolving A Feminist Jurisprudence" to discuss the evolution and the challenges women face in India.

Speaking about the infrastructure problems faced by women in Indian Courts, Justice Asha Menon of the Delhi High Court pointed out that courts lacked waiting rooms along with food and water facilities. Women with small children found it difficult to attend court hearings. Indian Courts should address this issue as soon as possible, she said.

Highlighting prejudices of court orders against women issues, she said, "How cases come before court causes a certain kind of response from the court." Citing the example of promise to marry cases, she believed that many false cases have led to the Judges taking a genuine case suspiciously.

Unlike men, women in most cases have to choose between career or family post her marriage. She suggests that Lawyers Associations must demand monetary compensation from the governments for these women who take a break from their careers to look after the family.

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Taking forward the discussion, Nishtha Satyam, Deputy Country Representative of UN Women, India, said that the country needs to move from gender sensitisation to gender response. All institutions, according to her, including the UN and the courts are products of the old thinking which is customised to think in a particular patriarchal way of thinking. She emphasised the need for soft infrastructure for women, where the women feel safe and work freely.

However, she felt that The Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women(CEDAW), adopted by the UN in 1979 was instrumental in describing and setting goals for nations to end discrimination against women. The convention led the nations to move in this direction quickly. "If it's not for women, it's against women" she remarked.

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Expressing concerns about the rising cases of violence against women since the outbreak of the pandemic, she felt that it has reversed the gains made in this direction before the pandemic.

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The Panchayati Raj System, brought by the 73rd and 74th amendment of the constitution, was a game-changer for empowering women at the grass-root level.

Narrating one such incident, she said that she once took Helen Clark, the then United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) head in India for a field visit in Rajasthan to witness the work done in bringing women into leadership roles. Sunita, a Sarpanch (head of the Village Panchayat) in one of the villages in Rajasthan was the beneficiary of the UNDP program.

Earlier, she had no say in the affairs of the village as her husband managed the panchayat on her behalf."The problem with our society is that everyone likes an empowered woman till it is next door," she said.

The webinar was conducted in collaboration with the legal portal Livelaw.