India’s Women Legal Academics: Who They Are and Where You Might Find Them

Abstract

Legal institutions in India have historically been inhospitable sites for women (Mossman 2006; Sorabji 2010; Mishra 2016; Rajkotia 2017). Unlike the trend of increasing feminisation in legal professions around the world, women constitute less than 10% of all lawyers in India, a percentage that has not changed in the last half century (Michelson 2013; Ballakrishnen 2019). And outside a few small pockets of exceptionalism (Ballakrishnen 2017, 2018), systemic biases and gendered hierarchies continue to be relevant for today’s lawyer. Not that much is different in the legal academy: despite some recent increases in the gender ratios, Indian law schools are, and predominantly have been, led by male torchbearers. Men are more likely to be academic deans and vice-chancellors than women. Men are more likely to have tenure and be represented in academic councils. They are cited and referenced in the classroom more frequently – because they are both likely to be curating the teaching syllabi for these classrooms and because they are more likely to have written the books that are considered canonical for students of law. Together, this combined positionality has made the authoritative male voice, in the classroom and curriculum alike, not just predominant, but also ‘natural’.