Attorney-General has told the Supreme Court that more women judges in constitutional courts would certainly improve gender sensitivity in the judiciary.

Q.Women judges could bring a more comprehensive and empathetic perspective of gender sensitivity in the judiciary. Discuss.

Women in Judiciary: A dismal figure

• The Supreme Court has only two women judges as against a sanctioned strength of 34 judges.
• There has never been a female Chief Justice. This figure is consistently low across the higher judiciary.
• There are only 80 women judges out of the sanctioned strength of 1,113 judges in the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
• Only two of these 80 women judges are in the Supreme Court and the other 78 are in various High Courts, comprising only 7.2% of the number of judges.
• There are six High Courts — Manipur, Meghalaya, Patna, Tripura, Telangana, and Uttarakhand — where there are no sitting women judges.

A short timeline

• The first female Judge appointed in Supreme Court was Justice M. Fathima Beevi from Kerala in 1987.
• She was later followed by Justice Sujata V. Manohar from Maharashtra in 1994 and in the year 2000, Justice Ruma Pal was appointed from West Bengal.
• And in the year 2010, Justice Gyan Sudha Misra from Bihar was appointed.
• In 2014, Justice Ranjana Desai from Mumbai was appointed and currently, Justice R. Banumathi from Tamil Nadu is the only woman judge in Supreme Court.

(Note: This data might be useful for State PSCs or other exams. UPSC aspirants need not remember this.)

What did the A-G say?

• Improving the representation of women could go a long way towards a more balanced and empathetic approach in cases involving sexual violence.
• Judges need to be trained to place themselves in the shoes of the victim of sexual violence while passing orders, said the AG.
• There is a dearth of compulsory courses in gender sensitization in law schools.
• Certain law schools have the subject either as a specialization or as an elective.

Why need more women in Judiciary?

• The entry of women judges into spaces from which they had historically been excluded has been a positive step in the direction of judiciaries being perceived as being more transparent, inclusive, and representative.
• By their mere presence, women judges enhance the legitimacy of courts, sending a powerful signal that they are open and accessible to those who seek recourse to justice.
• They could contribute far more to justice than improving its appearance: they also contribute significantly to the quality of decision-making, and thus to the quality of justice itself.
• Women judges bring those lived experiences to their judicial actions, experiences that tend toward a more comprehensive and empathetic perspective.
• By elucidating how laws and rulings can be based on gender stereotypes, or how they might have a different impact on women and men, a gender perspective enhances the fairness of the adjudication.

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