Only 15% lawyers in India are women: Govt tells Parliament
India Today
The government on Friday told Parliament that only 15 per cent of lawyers in India are women.
The government has released data on the number of women lawyers enrolled in the country. Only 15.3 percent of lawyers in India are women, according to data tabled by the Law ministry in Parliament on Friday.
The other states where data is not available are- Delhi, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura.
The government in its reply said that data was called from the 24 State Bar Councils on the total number of lawyers and the number of women lawyers. The data was given in response to a question asked by MP Jayadev Galla in the Lok Sabha on the number of women in the Legal profession and the reasons for their attrition from the profession.
According to the data, with 821 lawyers enrolled with the Bar Council, Meghalaya has 59.3 per cent of women lawyers, the highest in the country. Uttar Pradesh stood at the bottom with merely 8.7 per cent women lawyers of over 4 lakh lawyers. No data was provided for the high courts of nine states, including Delhi.
Bihar stood at third position with 1.2 lakh enrolled lawyers but no data was available of women lawyers.
Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said that the data is based on information given by the Bar Council of India. With regard to the high attrition rate- which shows women lawyers leaving the profession, the Ministry has said there is no study being done regarding this.
"Government has not conducted any study regarding this. It may be submitted that entering and choosing the study of law and thereafter getting into a job in the academics, legal profession, judiciary etc is totally an independent choice and depends on the interest of the individual. Furthermore, the prevalent social and family circumstance also determine such decisions", Kiren Rijiju told Parliament.
