This international women’s day, we must ask why gender representation continues to elude our judiciary
Data dictates that just over 11 percent of our High Court judges are women, several states have only one woman on the bench. The Supreme Court’s seven years minimum ‘continuous practice’ requirement for district judge appointments, which overlooks the fallouts of invisible care work by women lawyers in domestic set-ups, may be one of the reasons. On several broader aspects, the legal community must introspect.
Mahalakshmi Pavani is a Senior Advocate. She was the first woman from Karnataka and the sixth woman to be designated ‘Senior Advocate’ by the Supreme Court