There Has Never Been A Female Chief Justice Of India, The Attorney General Pointed Out
If we were to strictly look at the facts, as per the last report published on world population, it was estimated that out of 7,550,262,000 people in the world, almost 50.4% are men and 49.6% are female. Yet, somehow even with that almost equal statistic, women across the world are suffering with an underrepresentation in the workplace. Despite their efforts in moving shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts, there remain many male-dominated fields that are yet to be penetrated by women, one of them being that of law and justice.
Brought up in an important conversation with the Attorney General K K Venugopal on Wednesday, where he pointed out to the Supreme Court the fact that there has never been a female Chief Justice of India, he spoke about the need for a stronger and better representation of women in the judiciary. And we would agree.
Owing his suggestion to the idea that with more female judges in the judiciary, there is a chance of navigating towards a more balanced and empathetic approach in cases involving sexual violence, K K Venugopal raised a very imperative issue for all of us to take notice of.
While taking note of #GenderInsensitivity & stereotyping of women prevalent in courts, Attorney General for India K K Venugopal told the #SupremeCourt that improving the representation of #women in courts is the need of the hour pic.twitter.com/IlmAYKEBUp
— Mirror Now (@MirrorNow) December 3, 2020
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He said, “Improving the representation of women in the judiciary could also go a long way towards a more balanced and empathetic approach in cases involving sexual violence. For instance, this Court only has two women judges, as against a sanctioned strength of 34 judges. There has never been a female Chief Justice of India. This figure is consistently low across the Higher Judiciary.”
Along with this, K K Venugopal also told a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and S Ravindra Bhat that there has been no record maintained up till now on the number of women in tribunals or lower courts. This came after he witnessed a High Court hearing by a bench that granted bail to an accused in a molestation case on the condition that he requests the alleged victim to tie a ‘rakhi’.
K K Venugopal said that there are only 80 women judges out of the total sanctioned strength of 1,113 judges in the HCs and the SC.
https://t.co/mztjl7heB6— Deccan Herald (@DeccanHerald) December 3, 2020
He presented alarming stats that showed there were only 80 women judges out of the total sanctioned strength of 1,113 judges in the High Courts and the Supreme Court across India. And out of these 80 judges, only two were in the Supreme Court. In his submission he also mentioned, “Of the 26 courts whose data was accessed, including the Supreme Court, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has the maximum strength of women judges (11 out of 85 judges) in the country, followed by the Madras High Court (9 out of 75 judges). There are eight women judges in both Delhi and Bombay High Courts.”
We as a country need a fairer and more distributed representation of women in the workplaces, especially judiciary, considering we can’t have people making judgements where the dignity of a woman who has been a victim to a crime like that of molestation or rape, is mocked by asking her to tie rakhi to her offender. K K Venugopal has a point and we stand with him.
