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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Indian women start with 50% representation in law school. It dips below 6% at Supreme Court

At every transition, the profession loses women. Not because they lack competence or ambition. But because the institutions they enter were designed by men, for men.

Walk into any National Law University in India today, and you are likely to see a near-equal representation of men and women. Women comprise 45 to 50 per cent of law school classrooms. In higher education overall, the Gross Enrollment Ratio for women, 30.2, has now surpassed that of men, 28.9, according to the MoSPI report released on 29 April. This apparent parity is an encouraging reflection of changing aspirations and widening access to legal education.

Yet this fades sharply beyond the classroom. Step into a district court. Then a high court. Then the Supreme Court. At each level, watch the numbers collapse.

Of the approximately 17 lakh advocates enrolled with Bar Councils across India, only 15 per cent are women. This was confirmed in 2023 by then Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in a reply in the Rajya Sabha. As of that year, there were 2,84,507 women advocates on record. The Department of Legal Affairs published state-wise data showing a ratio of roughly 20 men for every three women. Of 24 State Bar Councils, only 15 provided gender-disaggregated data. Nine did not bother to count. The drop from 50 per cent at entry to 15 per cent at enrollment is the first fracture in the pipeline. It is not the last.

The view from the bench

One of the authors of this article served in the Delhi judiciary for 31 years. From that vantage point, the absence of women was not a statistic. It was a daily observation. In matters relating to gender justice, dowry, sexual harassment, and family law, women’s perspectives are essential not merely for diversity but for the quality of adjudication itself.

The Supreme Court of India has had 12 women judges in 35 years. Currently, two of 37 sitting judges are women. Justice Fathima Beevi, the first female judge in the SC, appointed in 1989, said she “opened a closed door.” Thirty-six years later, the door remains barely ajar. India has never had a woman Chief Justice. Justice BV Nagarathna is expected to hold the position in 2027, but her tenure will last precisely 36 days.

In the high courts, women hold 105 of 779 positions: 13.47 per cent, as per CLPR data from late 2024, up from 11.4 per cent in 2017. Only 12 women have served as Chief Justices of High Courts out of 242 total appointments since Independence through 2025. That is less than 5 per cent. The Centre for Law and Policy Research has documented that women from marginalised backgrounds—Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, and first-generation lawyers—are almost entirely absent from the higher judiciary. The Collegium system, which operates without published criteria or transparent deliberation, has been identified as a key structural barrier.

The district judiciary tells a different story, and an instructive one. Women now constitute 38.3 per cent of district judges, according to the India Justice Report 2025, up from 30 per cent in 2017. This is the only level that approaches reasonable representation. The reason is structural: District judges are recruited partly through competitive examinations—typically 50 to 67 per cent of vacancies depending on the state—and partly through promotion from the subordinate judiciary. The merit list is transparent. The process is impersonal. And women consistently dominate it. Samridhi Talwar topped the Delhi Judicial Service examination 2023-24. In the UPSC........

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