[Answered] Examine the reasons why mere laws are insufficient for women to access justice. Critically analyze the need to reform the gendered culture and court environment itself.

Introduction

Despite India enacting 40+ women-protective laws since Independence (NCRB, 2023), only 7% of women report violence (NFHS-5), showing that legal provisions alone cannot ensure meaningful access to justice for women.

Why Mere Laws Are Insufficient for Women to Access Justice

1. Procedural Barriers and Systemic Delays: Women face chronic delays—pendency of over 4.7 crore cases (NJDG, 2024). Example from article: A survivor waited eight years after leaving a decade-long abusive marriage. Delays create justice fatigue, financial burden, and dependency on the very families they escaped.
2. Patriarchal Attitudes Within Legal Institutions: Courts often reproduce social prejudices rather than neutral adjudication. Examples:

• Lawyer telling woman to “untie her hair”.
• Mediator trivialising suffering through beauty stereotypes.
• Advice to “compromise” in domestic violence cases.

These align with the idea of “institutional patriarchy” highlighted by the Justice Verma Committee (2013), which argued that insensitive court culture often deters women more than perpetrators.

3. Power Asymmetries Between Lawyers and Women Litigants: Women—especially from poorer backgrounds—lack bargaining power. Fear of losing representation leads to silence even against harassment by their own lawyers. This mirrors the “gendered client–counsel dependency” highlighted in FLT (Feminist Legal Theory).
4. Economic and Social Vulnerabilities: Accessing courts involves: litigation costs, travel, lost wages, child-care burdens. Women often struggle financially after leaving abusive homes. UN Women (2021) notes that economic vulnerability is the single biggest barrier to legal redress for women across developing nations.
5. Lack of Safe, Supportive Court Infrastructure: Many courts lack: gender-sensitive waiting areas, child-care rooms, counsellors, women-friendly police desks. Article shows women feeling unsafe inside the court itself—revealing how intimidation, surveillance, and male dominance shape the space.
6. Societal Norms Encouraging Compromise Over Justice: Women are repeatedly advised to “adjust,” even in cases of sexual abuse. This culturally ingrained valorisation of female endurance is noted in NFHS-5 findings where 45% women justify some form of domestic violence.

Why Reforming Gendered Court Culture Is Essential

1. Humanising the Justice System: Empathy training for judges, prosecutors, and police is necessary. Justice Verma Committee recommended mandatory gender-sensitisation modules and accountability mechanisms for insensitive conduct.
2. Building Trauma-Informed Courtrooms: Trauma-informed approaches reduce re-victimization through: confidential spaces, victim advocates, protection from aggressive cross-examination. This aligns with global best practices from the UN Handbook for Women’s Access to Justice (2016).
3. Increasing Women’s Representation in Judiciary: Only 13% of High Court judges and 36% of lower court judges are women (2024). More women on benches improves trust, empathy, and interpretation of gender-sensitive laws.
4. Strengthening Legal Aid and Community Support: Effective legal aid, paralegal volunteers, and trained counsellors can reduce dependence on exploitative lawyers. NLSIU’s access to justice studies show women are more confident when accompanied by trained support workers.
5. Creating Accountability and Citizen Feedback Mechanisms: Complaint cells against insensitive court officers, public audits, and internal disciplinary action can transform court culture from within.

Conclusion

As Amartya Sen argues in The Idea of Justice, laws matter only when institutions embody fairness. Reforming court culture is essential to ensure women experience justice not as text, but as lived reality.