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
4 March 2025
THE upcoming International Women’s Day seeks to ‘Accelerate Action’, to amplify and expedite the sedated movement towards gender equality across the globe. While the global movement for gender parity continues to claim and reclaim spaces, the Indian judiciary struggles to move beyond its predominantly ‘Male, Stale and Pale’ disposition. The higher judiciary operates under a collegium system, which has become more opaque, prone to effectively brandishing more bias in the name of ‘representation’.
Traditionally, law as a profession was deemed inappropriate for women. As time has progressed, so have women, and today women pursue this career of their preference. Nevertheless, we do not have enough women in our judiciary, and certainly not enough in the higher judiciary. Judges play a crucial role in the administration and delivery of justice as their judicial decisions significantly influence social structures, public order, and the systemic inequalities that exist within the system. At the entry level, women law practitioners are not only confronted with the daunting challenge of outperforming their men counterparts, tackle instances of sexual harassment, and manage social responsibilities, but, peculiarly, when women lawyers or judges advocate for their equal rights, convenience of archaic practice dictates them to be labelled as aggressive, difficult and sensitive.
Nevertheless, we do not have enough women in our judiciary, and certainly not enough in the higher judiciary.
Only 11.5 percent of High Court judges are women
As of 2023, women constitute approximately 36.3 percent of judges in subordinate courts, up from 27.6 percent in 2018. The representation of women judges in High Courts has increased slightly from 10 percent in 2018 to 13.4 percent in 2023, with only 11.5 percent of judges being women. The Supreme Court remains the least diverse, with only 9.4 percent (3 out of 32 judges) being women as of December 2023, a marginal increase from 4 percent in 2018. There are a total of 367 vacancies in the High Courts.
The High Courts of Punjab and Haryana, Delhi, and Bombay have the highest number of women judges. Conversely, states like Orissa, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh have only one woman judge each, while Patna and several others have none.
With women's heightened participation in public life, underrepresentation in leadership roles eviscerates the entire movement towards equality. In reality, a comparatively limited number of meritorious women have been or currently are involved in the judiciary, especially in high-ranking judicial leadership roles. The frenzy surrounding ornamental representation has left meritorious women lawyers trepidatiously orphaned by a system that prides itself in ‘elevating’ women to the bench.