This Blog is written by Mohini Pandey, a Law Graduate of Deen Dayal Upadhyay University Gorakhpur

INTRODUCTION

It has never been simple for women to tackle this world easily in any field so women lawyers are also suffering from many challenges in their field. It's not that easy for women to practice law in India. Women encounter numerous obstacles related to safety and security. One of main reasons the women do not choose the legal field or legal profession is the inner politics of the male advocates who always want to silence the voices of women.

It's not only about the legal field in another field also the male dominance clearly shows among the people because from the beginning the society is patriarchal and they never accept women as putting their opinion on anything in the society.

So, society cannot handle the fact that women are equally able to work as men.

History of women lawyers in India

Cornelia Sorabji was the first woman lawyer in India and Britain. She was the first woman to study law at Oxford University and the first to graduate from Bombay University. She was born in 1866 and worked for Pardahnashin women.

Women in India were not allowed to practice law until 1923 when the Legal Practitioners (Women) Act was passed.

Pioneer women like Mithan TATA were the first women to practice before the Bombay High Court and Anna Chandy became the first woman judge in India in 1937 which cleared the path for the next generation.

The problem faced by the women

· Gender biases and discrimination: The legal system as well as the senior advocate think that women cannot work as leaders or take women lawyers for granted and they do not provide more opportunities for women to work as leaders.

In many companies and legal associations, women are still underrepresented in leadership roles.

There is a lot of discrimination between male advocates and women advocates as they prefer women as weak candidates to work as legal professionals.

· Unequal compensation: The women do not get an equal amount of stipend as men work with them

· Managing work and family: This is also the main hurdle faced by the women advocates as somewhere they are not allowed by their families to choose this profession because they think it's not safe for their daughter to work in that environment.

Secondly, if they are allowed somehow or the families are supportive then they juggle between the work responsibilities and family responsibilities they are not able to manage handily because they are human not robot. So that is the reason, the career of female advocates does not flourish more as male advocates.

In many cases, the women advocate only take the education of law and even don’t pursue work in the legal field because of the struggle they have to face in this field.

· Maternity leave: The careers of women advocates may be impacted negatively by maternity leaves. A sizable portion of women working in corporate, legal firms, and litigation say that taking maternity leave affects their career paths.

· Barriers in courtrooms: Many women lawyers complete their work early before dark to reach home as early as possible because of safety issues.

Sometimes women lawyers face biases from their clients also because many times the clients only want male solicitors to handle their cases even if they don’t give the opportunity to female lawyers this is very disappointing for female advocates to face these kinds of issues in litigation especially.

Sometimes the senior solicitor only wants to hire male junior associates and they even don’t give preference to female legal representatives that’s more disappointing for women lawyers.

Even with great progress made in the direction of gender equality women are still underrepresented in senior positions in legal firms as well as in the judiciary.

ARE WOMEN IN LITIGATION DISPROPORTIONALLY AFFECTED BY MENTAL HEALTH CONCERNS

Many of us know very well that litigation and the hard work to get recognized well in litigation for legal professionals is not easy. It takes a lot of time for a legal representative to be a known advocate in litigation or an experienced advocate in litigation.

The question that arises is that does it affects the mental health of the advocates whether it is a male advocate or female advocate so for the concern of mental health affected by litigation on 10 February 2024 the Delhi High Court women's lawyer's forum organized a compelling discussion on mental health and happiness for legal professionals.

So, after many discussions in court professionals concluded, yes female lawyers face many challenges in balancing their careers and families.

In being professional field, they have to work as professionals and do their job properly and finish their work deadline when it comes to personal lives they have so many responsibilities to take care of as being daughters, mothers, wife they have to multitask and handle all the problems on their own.

This is not for women lawyers to balance between personal and professional lives, they also have to deal with safety issues daily as well as societal pressure.

In this discussion, one female lawyer told about one more fact that tends to disturb female lawyers which are lawyer shared that sometimes being a female we start from a low volume to argue and because of that the opposing male counsel gets a chance to overpower us by shouting during an argument they think that we are not able to increase our volume so we don’t know the facts well but it is not truth and we start in a mellow tone so they start to argue loudly and shouting us down and then we are coerced to raise our voices in the courtroom.

CONCLUSION

Recognition concludes that women face so many problems in this society to get recognition in personal and professional life both because this society always thinks that women are only meant to take care of their house and family members and not for work.

Women face problems in every profession not only in the legal profession to be equally treated and compensated for their work.

But nowadays women have come so far from the earliest society through hard work in the legal profession as well as other professions and one day they will reach the highest.

Reference

1. https://www.legalserviceindia.com › …

Challenges For Women Lawyers In India

2. https://www.scconline.com

Are Women in Litigation Disproportionately

3. https://www.juscorpus.com ›

CHALLENGES FACED BY WOMEN LAWYERS IN INDIA

4. https://thelegalquorum.com › the-c…

The Challenges Faced by Women Lawyers in India

5. https://www.yourlawarticle.com › t…

THE CHALLENGES FACED BY WOMEN LAWYERS IN INDIA