By Tejaswi Ravinder

Hyderabad, March 6, 2020:On a humid November morning, I walked inside the Bar Council building on the premises of Telangana High Court at Hyderabad. The first thing that caught my attention in the building was the huge wooden board hanging on the wall in the guest lounge. A long list of names of advocates who chaired the board and their tenures were painted legibly on it.

Section 3 of the Advocates Act, 1961, makes it mandatory for each state to have its own Bar Council. The members of the Council would elect a chairman and vice-chairman every two years.

To my surprise, the board listing the names of the esteemed members who were elected for the honorable position to lead the bar had only male. That means, there has not been a single female elected so far.

I was shaken. How can it be possible that no female member could reach the top? Were they not interested in positions or responsibilities that would be put on their shoulders? Or are they not competent enough or capable enough to lead?

The Telangana Bar Council boasts of having more than 35,000 advocates on rolls, and each year hundreds of fresh law graduates, both male and female, throng the building to enroll as advocates. The board stands as a reminder that no female achieved “this.”

Women’s representation in Judiciary is no different. The Supreme Court of India – the supreme, impartial and independent authority also widely regarded as the final interpreter and the guardian of the Indian Constitution — could not exercise equality in accepting women to adorn the chair of the Chief Justice of India. Ironically, it takes up the responsibility of protection of the Fundamental Rights of Citizens which include equality.

The principle of gender equality is inscribed in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles that in simple terms summarizes as every aspect of the Constitution. But the fact that it took nearly 40 years to have the first woman judge and 68 years to have one directly appointed female Judge raises eyebrows on its seriousness towards promoting gender equality. Let’s keep it blunt, the Indian Supreme Court never had a female Chief Justice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the woman who led the first Woman’s Rights Movement said, “The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives, in the religion, she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.”
Stanton called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the equal right to vote. She opined that a government of the most virtuous educated men and women would better represent the whole and protects the interests of all than could the representation of either sex alone. Thanks to the Woman Suffrage Movement, although it has been over a century and a half since its launch, it has been inspiring countries globally to extend not only the right of equality to vote but also to participate in social, economic and advanced scientific technology spheres.

But the woman representation sadly had been limited to a participant, and the spaces of authority, the power-houses of decision making have been occupied by men.

The parliamentary form of governance established in India has granted its decision making powers to its Constitutional head and the Executive head. The executive power of the Union vests in the President whereas the Prime Minister is the chief advisor to the President. It has been difficult for women to thrive in political settings as well. In the last 72 years of independence, Indira Gandhi was the only female elected as Prime Minister and Pratibha Singh Patil was the only female President of India.

While on one side women aspiring for positions of power face rejection, the problem seems much bigger than just not wanting women to lead. Their existence also is a man’s choice.

The United Nations Population Fund found that sex-selective abortions have grown in India in the past two decades causing the imbalance between girl-boy gender ratios. Indian households’ patriarchal preference for a male child over a female child, selectively, either at first order of birth or second and most frequently at third order, had been rampant even among well-educated and rich (Source: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/UNFPA_Publication-39857.pdf).

Although the Indian government implemented the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act to prevent the misuse of techniques used for sex-determination making it sex-selective abortions illegal in India, about half a million female fetuses are terminated each year because of cultural preferences for a male child. [According to a national survey of 1.1 million households, Lancet, 2006, 367(9506):211–218]

Celebrating Women’s Day would end up as yet another day of ceremonial practice without addressing the deep-rooted problems of misogyny and gender-discrimination in all spaces and at all phases from birth to work-space. Let’s start celebrating woman’s day by putting an end to sex-selective abortions, and by making every girl-child’s birth a joyous celebration. Let’s celebrate women’s success at work-spaces in governance and judiciary. Let’s also take that there is an exclusive day to celebrate women’s day because every other day is a man’s day.

(Tejaswi Ravinder is an advocate practicing at the High Court of Telangana at Hyderabad.)