Engendering Laws: Essays in honor of Lotika Sarkar
... Hindu daughters were given easier access to their shares of ancestral property, indigent divorcees were given alimony rights, and more stringent measures were adopted to punish those who demanded dowry, received dowry, or inflicted domestic violence. Moreover, family courts were established in many cities and towns to expedite matrimonial adjudication (Agnes 1999; Menski 2001; Parashar 1992; Dhanda and Parashar 1999; Epp 1998). The changes since the 1970s extended beyond Hindu law. ...
... Challenges emerged from women's organizations and rights organizations among both Muslims and Christians. They urged some Muslim religious elites to oppose the immediate recognition of unilateral male repudiation and pressed Christian churches to accept more equal and extensive divorce rights (Dhanda and Parashar 1999; Menski 2001; Gandhi and Shah 1992). Finally, this interpretation assumes that religious laws and group-specific family laws are hard constraints to gender-equalizing change. ...
... Hindu daughters were given easier access to their shares of ancestral property, indigent divorcees were given alimony rights, and more stringent measures were adopted to punish those who demanded dowry, received dowry, or inflicted domestic violence. Moreover, family courts were established in many cities and towns to expedite matrimonial adjudication (Agnes 1999;Menski 2001;Parashar 1992;Dhanda and Parashar 1999;Epp 1998). The changes since the 1970s extended beyond Hindu law. ...
... Challenges emerged from women's organizations and rights organizations among both Muslims and Christians. They urged some Muslim religious elites to oppose the immediate recognition of unilateral male repudiation and pressed Christian churches to accept more equal and extensive divorce rights (Dhanda and Parashar 1999;Menski 2001;Gandhi and Shah 1992). Finally, this interpretation assumes that religious laws and group-specific family laws are hard constraints to gender-equalizing change. ...
Group-specific family laws are said to provide women fewer rights and impede policy change. India's family law systems specific to religious groups underwent important gender-equalizing changes over the last generation. The changes in the laws of the religious minorities were unexpected, as conservative elites had considerable indirect influence over these laws. Policy elites changed minority law only if they found credible justification for change in group laws, group norms, and group initiatives, not only in constitutional rights and transnational human rights law. Muslim alimony and divorce laws were changed on this basis, giving women more rights without abandoning cultural accommodation. Legal mobilization and the outlook of policy makers—specifically their approach to regulating family life, their understanding of group norms, and their normative vision of family life—shaped the major changes in Indian Muslim law. More gender-equalizing legal changes are possible based on the same sources.
... Since this law came into force after the completion of fieldwork, this analysis does not cover the PWDA. 24 For further discussion see Danda and Parashar (1999), Deshpande (1984), Kapur and Cossman (1996), Jaising (2001), Solanki & Post (2001), Sunder Rajan (2004). life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman; or (b) Harassment of the woman where such harassment is with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such demand.]' ...
Domestic violence is a serious issue in India with 37% of women reporting being beaten at some
point in their lives in national surveys. While this is likely to be an undercount given the stigma
associated with intimate partner violence and women’s lack of access to the justice system, it is
noteworthy that conviction rates continue to be extremely low even for the those cases that end
up in the Courts. Drawing from critical legal anthropology and feminist jurisprudence, I argue that
legal language, procedures and discourses attempt to normalise domestic violence by deploying
discursive strategies such as consistent and pervasive use of the passive voice diminishing
perpetrator responsibility, trivializing violence by avoiding the use of violent attributions in
describing violent acts, and shifting blame to victims. Of the 787 cases registered under Section
498(A), disposed by the Bombay High Court between 1998 and 2004, just 6% obtained a conviction
where the victim was alive, and 35% to 39% were convicted where victims had committed suicide
or had been murdered. Conviction rates were extremely variable with many judges acquitting all
the cases that they tried and just two judges convicting a third or more of the cases brought for
trial. This disparity was further consolidated by procedural inconsistencies including the treatment
of evidence, extent of documentation required to prove a history of abuse, the classification of
interested witnesses and retractions by medical examiners, who were seldom cross-examined. The
findings present a very troubling picture for gender justice in India, suggesting that what we need
are not additional laws but a gender-aware approach to the implementations of existing laws.
Women, a girl, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, overall woman is a key of a family. World can never be absolute without a woman. Law is the set of rules imposed to govern the behavior of people. From the beginning of this world women is treated as a weaker section of the society and they are the wounded of the crimes like rape, eve teasing, female infanticide, dowry, domestic violence and child marriage. They were only allowed to live under the shoes of their husbands and fathers. Laws are being made to secure the lives of the women from the violence of their families and societies and to provide them with their rights of which they are the owners. This paper covers the aspect of women from past history to the present world. It shows how the law of our country has contributed its best to change the lives of women, to make them live with pride and respect not as a slave.
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