Women and the Law

This chapter surveys the field of domestic violence law. What are the wins, debates and innovations in laws addressing intimate partner violence?

The first part is about the path travelled. We will see how certain kinds of violence against women, particularly sexual and physical violence, have been recognized in our laws, while others remained unacknowledged and trivialized.

The second part is about the current geography of the field, its crossroads and challenges. We will cartography developments in intimate partner violence law by identifying their breadth, depth and specificity, thus learning to read laws in three dimensions. This new perspective on domestic violence law sheds light on complex puzzles, such as coercive control legislation or the criminalization of rape by deception.

The third part is about the road ahead; it is about innovating and breaking with the past. We will go off the beaten track to explore criminalizing ordinary violence and displacing the incident model of crime. The former means recognizing that violent men are normal men. The latter means seeing rape and assault not as isolated, one-off events, but as part of a broader environment of violence, control, and inequality.

The goal is none other than liberation for all women.

ABSTRACT The study provides an overview of the worldwide best practices for rape prevention and for assisting women victims of rape. It reviews the international literature and offers selected examples of promising practices. It addresses the comprehensive range of policies in the fields of gender equality; law and justice; economy, development and social inclusion; culture, education and media; and health. It presents a wide-ranging set of examples of best practice. It concludes with a series of recommendations, based on the social scientific evidence presented in the study. The report is available online at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/femm/studies.html

This book is in its 4th ed. but no longer available from Pearson Pub. as we prepare a 5th ed. with a new pub. co. Unique to this book is a chapter on restorative justice, one on substance use, and a chapter on gender specific models. If you are a professor in need of the 4th ed. email me at katherine.vanwormer@uni.edu and I can mail separate chapters to you to use until the new ed. comes out.

While the French feminist movements campaigning to obtain the right to vote between the 1870s and the 1930s are well known, the struggles for women's access to higher education and professional work have not yet been studied in depth. Although the French Third Republic (1871–1940) claimed to adhere to the principles of equality, meritocracy and the ‘free competition of talents’, which translated concretely into the creation of a system of scholarships, competitions and professional degrees which provided access to many of the professional careers, these doors remained largely closed to the first women attempting to enter them. The controversies that this situation provoked are the subject of this article, which draws from professional, parliamentary, press and activist sources. More broadly, through examining this particular series of controversies, the article aims to give an account of the mechanisms and arguments that are generally used to make such discriminations publicly acceptable within institutional spaces that are formally governed by the principle of equal access.

Balancing between sex equality and religious interests has been a challenge for Israel’s constitutional law from the state’s inception. In recent years, however, the expanding repertoire of practices known as women’s exclusion has brought forth this tension with new formulations, intensity, and public sensitivity. This article maps the three decades of Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ or “the Court”) adjudication on women’s exclusion. The modesty requirements and sex-based physical segregation that have become rampant in Israel, require re-articulations of the scope and status of the right to equality, as well as other constitutional rights such as dignity and liberty. The thirty-year database compiled for the purpose of this article encompasses all women’s exclusion cases decided by the HCJ. The database was built based on a novel definition of women’s exclusion cases as a legal field, developed and explained in this article. The database reveals what might be defined as diminishing constitutional adjudication. In the nineteen nineties, the Court has labored in elevating sex equality, developing a doctrinal structure that guards it against religion-based demands to legitimize exclusion norms. In contrast, in the past decade, the Court has almost completely refrained from reviewing cases on the merit or writing reasoned opinions, adopting ad-hoc problem-solving approaches or taking dispute resolution approaches prompting the parties to find compromise, without delineating the legal framework that should guide the disputes.

This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyzes the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings. The book also reveals how many women went to law, how active they were, the discrimination they suffered, and the importance of the life cycle of marriage in determining their legal fortunes.

This article—which is based on my work of nearly four decades representing victims of sexual violence and harassment—explores how Title IX has helped to reduce such discrimination, the continuing problem posed by sexual violence and sexual harassment at American universities, and some suggestions for improving the system.

This book examines the prevailing legal discourse surrounding domestic violence law in India. It investigates the myths, patriarchal stereotypes, and misconceptions that undermine the process of justice and dilute legal provisions to the detriment of survivors.

Hardship of woman in every stage of life is always difficult to categorize as she is the only entity in the world that is facing such a changing phase in her life like birth as a girl child, becoming wife and finally becoming mother. In the era of 21st century, woman wants to be equal opportunities as man and foremost challenge is how to balance work and home. Gender bias, unequal pay, mental and physical harassment, insufficient leave is some of the key issues of working woman at the workplace. Apart from all these, woman must deal with almost all family duties like duty as mother, duty as wife, household and daily routine as well as many social duties. The main intention of this paper is to focus on such key areas and challenges faced by working woman in today's era and to put the psychological view of the issues, challenges and role of society to help for balancing the life of working woman in psychological, physical, social and mental aspects.

This is a report based on a survey of 81 women lawyers in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The survey specifically focused on women who have children. The study was confined to women lawyers who were mothers because women lawyers tend to opt out of the paid legal workforce or slow down after the birth of a child. The report offers insights on the barriers or biases that women lawyers faced in the profession and recommendations.

Section 498A was introduced in 1983 by the Criminal Law (Second) Amendment Act in the Indian Penal Code. It recognizes cruelty against a married woman by her husband and in-laws as a crime for which it lays down punishment of imprisonment which may extend up to three years and/or fine. Seen as a significant legal provision introduced after extensive pressure from women activists and lawyers besides being discussed in the Parliament during the 1980s, it criminalized violence within homes for the first time and empowered married women who faced violence in the marital house to raise their voice against such
abuse. Section 498A puts the onus on the State to remedy the situation of women facing torture in the `sacred’ private familial domain. However, over the years it has been seen that domestic violence is being treated as a lesser crime by the police as well as the judiciary who constitute the primary agencies for enforcement and implementation of this law. The state, in fact, is reluctant to act against the perpetrators of violence. Instead of addressing the existing social realities or expanding the definition of domestic violence to include other forms of crimes against women within homes, less attention is paid to abuse inflicted within the families. Rather, an unreasonable and baseless myth of abuse and misuse of Section 498A has been propagated to underplay the  seriousness of the crime committed within the four walls of the house. The state promotes the normative ideal of conjugality and in the process, ends up reinforcing gender injustice. This results in a scenario where those working with the victims of domestic violence use Section 498A as a strategic and pragmatic tool to bring the husband to the negotiating table to arrive at a samjhauta (compromise). Therefore, instead of punishing the guilty, the legal system is being manipulated
to arrive at a `settlement’ with the accused. One of the fallouts of such an action is a lower conviction rate. Instead of making a dent on the patriarchal social order, this legal provision has been used to reiterate existing biases and stereotypes against women. The situation today is that domestic violence is treated as a `social crime’ when compared with violence by strangers, even though it is much more severe in nature. Why is wife beating considered as a lesser crime by the state, society and the law? Why is the perpetrator of this crime not held accountable for his actions? Why are different parameters and standards of justice utilized when a woman is abused? Why has the criminal justice system failed to deliver justice to the victims of domestic violence? How effective is the strategy adopted by the women’s movement in India whereby a heavy emphasis is placed on legal reforms to achieve the goal of gender justice? Why has the state failed to see women as autonomous citizens outside the construct of family or kinship? Why could the remedies beyond the law, such as provision of shelter homes or material and economic support for women not be implemented? This study examines these questions while using secondary data and refers to the multidisciplinary research studies and reports on the issue from the perspectives of the survivors to focus on a `bubble up’ approach rather than the `top down’ style of understanding the issue of domestic violence.

Live-in relationship is prominently increasing in India as an easy way similar to marriage. It is defined as a domestic cohabitation between an adult couple who are not married. Apparently, it appears like a stress-free companionship without any legal obligations; conversely, it has many complications, responsibilities and legal liabilities. Recently attempts have been made to bring it in the ambit of some laws. It is no longer an offence in India and many guidelines pertaining to maintenance, property, the legal status of a child have been issued in various decisions of the Apex Court. Still it is a debatable issue in India. There are many grey areas which need appropriate attention like, official documentation, cultural issues, property rights, will and gift rights, anti-religion status, LGBT community and so on. The primary focus of the article is on to comprehend the concept of live-in relationship with the help of secondary sources. Thereafter, an attempt has been made to study the problems and challenges faced by the couples with the help of descriptive and analytic methodology. Lastly, the article argues on the need for framing a separate, secular and gender-sensitive law for the couple opting to cohabit in a live-in relationship.

This paper presents a feminist alternative judgment or a feminist (shadow) judgment to the Supreme Court of India’s judgment in Sarla Mudgal v Union of India and Ors. This shadow judgment is inspired by the Feminist Judgments Projects in UK, Australia, Canada, and other places to radically reimagine the role of a judge to adjudicate differently by remaining faithful to the legal and constitutional rules that bind her. The project situates writing alternative judgments to judgments that could have been written better or written differently by using a feminist lens. In Sarla Mudgal, the Supreme Court was specifically called to examine the validity of a Hindu marriage between a Hindu man and a Hindu woman and the issue of bigamy by the former after contracting a second marriage with another Hindu woman by a fraudulent conversion to Islam. However, instead of putting the responsibility of bigamy on the Hindu men, the SC blamed the act on the plurality of personal laws and the lack of a uniform civil code. Sarla Mudgal is an example how misplaced judicial zeal ends up as Hindutva’s uniform civil code stick to beat minorities with. The shadow judgment, written in the form of a separate but concurring opinion, explores whether there was any possibility of denouncing bigamy of Hindu men and holding the bigamous men responsible without ascribing their bigamy as a product of Muslim personal laws.

This book critically examines domestic violence law in India. It focuses on women's experiences and perspectives as victims and litigants with regard to accessibility to law and justice. It also reflects on the manner in which the legal process reproduces gender hierarchies. This volume: • Analyzes the legal framework from a gender perspective to pinpoint the inherent stereotypes, prejudices and discriminatory practices that come into play while interpreting the law; • Includes in-depth interviews and case studies, and explores critical themes such as marriage, rights, family, violence, property and the state; • Presents alternatives beyond the domain of law, such as qualitative medical care and legal aid facilities, shelter homes, short-stay homes, childcare facilities, and economic and social security provisions to survivors and their children. Drawing on extensive testimonies and ethnographic studies situated in a theoretical framework of law, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of law, gender, human rights, women's studies, sociology and social anthropology and South Asian studies. Shalu Nigam is an advocate, researcher and activist working at the intersection of gender, law, governance and human rights issues. She is currently practicing at the courts in Delhi and is associated with the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Delhi, India.

This module will help the reader to understand:
Major provisions of the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW);
The constitutional provisions that facilitate women's rights in India;
Major provisions on National Policy on Empowerment of Women;
Structure and mandate of National Commission of Women;
Major women-specific laws in India on Sexual Harassment at Workplace, Domestic Violence, Child Sexual Abuse etc.;
The interpretation of women's rights by courts
.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.

The need to stop rape is pressing and, since it is the outcome of a wide range of practices and institutions in society, so too must the policies be to stop it This important book offers a comprehensive guide to the international policies developed to stop rape , together with case study examples on how they work. The book engages with the law and criminal justice system, health services, specialised services for victim-survivors, educational and cultural interventions, as well as how they can best be coordinated. It is informed by theory and evidence drawn from scholarship and practice from around the world.

The book will be of interest to a global readership of students, practitioners and policy makers as well as anyone who wants to know how rape can be stopped.

The violence against women in Zimbabwe continue despite legislation because of various factors some can be be traced even during the liberation struggle. The UN General Assembly defined violence against women as any act of gender based violence, which results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women including threats of such acts according to Illika .Customary law, patriarchal and culture which is being instrumental in the continual of violence against the women .Also land reform facilitate violence against women and the perpetrators did not face the law which is why women are at the disadvantage. More so the ruling government also discourage the movement for women to gain equality through sabotaging and not financing women such that women will attain autonomy. Women of higher socio economic status in urban areas and do not report abuse and Ndebele and Shona do grant men sexual touching rights short of sexual intercourse which lead to the continual violence against women because the wife young sister will be afraid since guardian had agreed. The other issue for the continual of violence is that of Lobola which in modern sense transferred the women rights into a commodity which means the husband will abuse the wife any cost .Also few spaces are created for women in politics and organisation which means women still being treated as not equal.

Recently when the Bill to criminalize marital rape was introduced in India, it was turned down by the Parliament. According to some of the Parliamentarians, marriage is a sacred institution and touching it will leads to breakdown of marriages. They are of the view that India should be proud of its culture because `the nation has low divorce rates’. Statements have been issued against criminalizing marital rape without acknowledging the fact that most marriages in India survive because women silently endure violence and abuse within such relationships. The culture of `silence’, `tolerance’, `adjustment’, `compromise’ among women is propagated to `save and respect the `honour’, the `pride’ and the `values’ of the Indian family overlooking the fact that incest, violence, suicides, murders are the price women pay.  On the other hand there is a men’s group which is lobbying fiercely to highlight the fact the law against domestic violence has been misused by women and therefore should be diluted. They further propagated that the enactment of penal law against marital rape will also be abused by women. According to such arguments, a woman, who is not docile, subservient or compliant and complains about the continuous abuse within the conjugal relationship is an anti-family warrior breaking the sacred bonds while converting bedroom to a battlefield. Both the groups ignore the reality that most cases of emotional violence, sexual abuse, physical assault, mental trauma, all takes place within this `sanctified’ territory because women are powerless and vulnerable and have been socialized to be pliant, obedient and subservient. This essay attempts to unpack the everyday possibility as well as reality of the lives of women in the light of backlash on women’s rights and looks at the debate on criminalizing marital rape from the gender perspective. It concludes that this concept needs to be examined in the larger perspective of violence against women and should be dealt accordingly.

During the course of attempt of settlement, as has been
narrated above, it transpired that petitioner No.1 is residing with his two
married sons and respondent is staying with her father. In the light of
the observations of the Division Bench of Delhi High Court in Navneet
Arora's case (supra) if the concept of 'joint family' is taken into
consideration, daughters-in-law of petitioner No.1 are prima facie
members of the joint family. In these circumstances, attempt to solve
one problem may lead to another problem, which could spoil the
peaceful matrimonial life of daughters-in-law of petitioner No.1 as
nature of respondent is alleged to be quarrelsome. Respondent has
stated before this Court that she is ready to live in some other suitable
accommodation, however, same has not been accepted by her in the
counter-affidavit. This Court is of the opinion that while deciding such
like issues, the Court cannot lose sight of the day-to-day happenings in
the society and socio-economic conditions and prevalent customs.
In these circumstances, this Court is of the view that
respondent should be provided a suitable alternative accommodation. If
the provisions of PWDV Act are to be strictly interpreted, then this
Court would have to order that respondent should be allowed to reside
with petitioner No.1-husband as the property in question belongs to the
husband, which certainly comes within the definition of “shared
household”.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT
CHANDIGARH
CRM-M-40857 of 2012

Judgment delivered on: 21.04.2015
Avtar Singh and another
....Petitioners
Versus
Smt. Jaswinder Kaur
CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE PARAMJEET SINGH
Dated;April 21, 2015
Citation; 2015 ALLMR(cri) Journal 433

The laws dealing with intestate and testamentary succession in India are not uniform. A variety of laws are in vogue whose application depends on multiple factors. While the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and the Jews have distinct personal laws of their own, the Scheduled Tribes in India are governed by their uncodified customary laws of inheritance and enjoy constitutional protection of their culture and identity. Customary laws of tribals are majorly left untouched based on the assumption that it is in the best interests of the concerned tribal communities. The same, however, need not be necessarily true. Further, women empowerment and gender justice is a common phenomenon of modern democratic world which is receiving a high degree of popularity in all the societies but nevertheless, it must be implemented keeping in view social concerns and with the help and support of each and every component of society. A woman can be said to be truly empowered when she is economically so and this depends, inter alia, on their right to hold and inherit property.

The feminisation of the legal professions is occurring in the context of an increasingly visible role for women in the public sphere in Ireland. 

As in other countries, legal education in Ireland has changed dramatically over the last few decades with women the clear majority, making up over 60 per cent of current law students in many institutions. One of the objectives in producing this book was to document these momentous changes in a clearly quantifiable way.

Second, the process of historiography is itself an important one. It was important to document women’s experiences, particularly those of the early pioneers, using a qualitative approach and to capture the experiences of women lawyers currently in practice.

The paper presents an analysis of biographies of all women elected to sit on the Constitutional Tribunal since its creation in 1985. The interest in the gender, regarding the Tribunal, stems from the fact that while more and more women in Poland study law and work in the legal field (particularly in the common courts), as well as perform increasingly important roles in public life, they nevertheless hold few positions of power both within and outside of the legal realm. It is assumed that gender is as a significant factor of social diversification, which determines the actions of individuals and their chances in life. The paper attempts to answer why is there a glass ceiling which prevents women from occupying positions of power and prestige, such as that of judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.
The analysis shows that regardless of differing biographies, female judges of the Tribunal share a number of common traits, allowing to detect certain regularities with regard to the election of women to the Tribunal. The women in question are distinguished by obtaining, during the course of their professional careers, a variety of resources which are considered particularly valuable in the legal universe (i.e. academic titles). Also, occupying a position of power in other social spheres often works in their favour (politics, university posts etc.). The research leads to the conclusion that the factors behind the glass ceiling separating women from positions of power in the legal field can be inscribed into more general factors that block the progress of women’s careers, and the Tribunal is therefore just another example of a broader phenomenon.

This article analyses how inheritance is being addressed to enhance
socio-economic equity and opportunities in five sub-Saharan African
countries: Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda. Based on
interviews with governmental and non-governmental actors, as well as
policy analysis and reviews of the literature, it considers how inheritance
is understood as a public policy issue, and focuses attention on three
areas that offer opportunities for safeguarding women’s inheritance:
marriage; customary land governance; and local arbitration. Initiatives
to change policies and practices related to these areas are discussed,
together with the lessons that can be learned.

The study addresses the legal rules that allowed in Rome and in some Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, especially Egypt, women to serve as guardians or to assist the guardian of their prepubescent children. In Rome, mothers as guardians are attested during the second century by individual imperial concession, and the mother as manager in aid to the guardian is amply attested in the classical age. In Egypt, mothers could serve as guardians, appointed by a private act of the husband (since the beginning of the province until 212 AD), while in connection to the guardian (with the name ἐπακολουθήτρια) they appear only from the first half of the second century ad. the author questions the mutual influences between the two sets of rules.

Nel presente articolo si esaminano le norme giuridiche in base alle quali a Roma e in alcune province orientali dell'impero romano, soprattutto l'Egitto, la madre poteva essere tutrice o poteva svolgere fuzioni di ausilio al tutore dei propri figli impuberi. A Roma la madre tutrice appare attestata già dal secondo secolo per concessione imperiale individuale, e la madre amministratrice in ausilio al tutore è ampiamente attestata in età classica. In Egitto la madre tutrice, nominata con atto privato del marito, compare dalle origini della provincia e fino al 212 d.C., mentre, affiancata al tutore, con il nome di ἐπακολουθήτρια, è documentata solo dalla prima metà del secondo secolo d.C. In dottrina ci si è interrogati circa le influenze reciproche tra i due sistemi di norme. L'autore conclude che è legittimo ipotizzare che la scomparsa della madre tutrice egizia dopo il 212 sia stata causata dalla diffusione del diritto romano nelle province a seguito della Constitutio Antoniniana, mentre non sembra possibile rinvenire altre reciproche influenze. In particolare, si nega che la madre amministratrice romana sia derivata dall'ἐπακολουθήτρια egizia.

How can interventions by state institutions—supposedly meant to organize social solidarity—translate into stigmatization, loss of power, and domination? In a setting where these interventions increasingly depend on clinical assessment diag- noses, the superimposition of psychiatric, administrative, and legal categories address the logic of ownership and control more than the needs of the people they are supposed to help. In light of a biographical interview of one woman—herself a child of the youth protection branch and considered a negligent mother as an adult—this reflection is an incursion into a matrix of domination at the crossroads of socio-economic conditions, gender and psychiatric diagnosis. This article explores more particularly the nature of the respective functions of law and justice, on the one hand, and the psychiatric, legal, and administrative categories, on the other hand, within the domination process.
Comment les interventions des institutions étatiques supposées organiser la solidarité sociale peuvent-elles se traduire par la stigmatisation, la perte de pouvoir, la domination? Dans un contexte où ces interventions dépendent de plus en plus des diagnostics issus de l’évaluation clinique, la superposition des catégories psychiatrique, administrative et juridique répond davantage aux logiques de prise en charge et de contrôle qu’aux besoins des personnes concernées. À la lumière d’un entretien biographique mené auprès d’une femme elle-même enfant de la direction de la protection de la jeunesse, puis considérée comme mère négligente à l’âge adulte, cette réflexion est une incursion dans une matrice de domination à l’interface des conditions socioéconomiques, du genre et du diagnostic psychiatrique. Il s’agit plus particulièrement d’explorer la nature des fonctions respectives du droit et de la justice, d’une part, et des catégories psychiatrique, juridique et administrative, d’autre part, dans le processus de domination.

Nowadays, domestic violence, may it be it physical or emotional, is fiercely condemned both by both the law and the public opinion. In the eyes of society there is no justification for a husband or a wife to impose his or her thoughts by hurtful means. The repulsion one feels for home violence is an effect of the necessity to respect the human rights, among which sex equality is one of the most important. In the past, however, when gender equality was rejected even in legal texts, the society had a more permissive opinion on the use of domestic violence.

This paper aims to present a 17th century regulation, enforced by the ecclesiastical justice in Moldavia and Walachia, on the husband's right to beat his wife. We shall present in an accessible form the provisions of two very similar codes of laws (both ecclesiastical and secular) enforced by the Metropolitan Bishops and by the Princes of Moldavia and Walachia, on the requirements the violent husband had to meet in order to evade judge's punishment. Thus, we shall analyze the provisions of Article 23 of the Romanian Book of Learning from the Imperial Laws and Other Judgements (Moldavia, 1646) and of Article 185 of the Guidance of the Law by God That Has All the Canon and Imperial Judicial Authorities on All the Priestly and Secular Crimes – Walachia, 1652). The reader will find out that husband had the unrestricted right to beat his wife with his fist or palm, often or seldom as he pleased. But he had to hit his wife only when she was really guilty of a fault. If he had beaten his wife without fault or if he hit her with arms or sticks or with cruelty or without any restraint, the judge was compelled by the law to divorce them. The husband had the right to detain his wife in chains or in a cellar on two grounds: adultery and conspiracy for killing him.

These provisions should not be judged too harsh because at that time, anywhere in Europe, domestic violence was allowed by law and society.

El artículo presenta los principales argumentos de la reciente sentencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos sobre la prohibición de la fecundación in vitro en Costa Rica, sentencia que marca la irrupción explícita de los derechos reproductivos en la jurisprudencia interamericana.

The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the major questions, principles, concepts, texts, and critical methodologies pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; the relationship of biblical law with ancient Near Eastern and classical law; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among specialist

PRAXIS - The Official Peer-Reviewed Journal of the Alumni for International Human Rights Law.  This is the official version of the inaugural issue of PRAXIS.  This official version supersedes and/or modifies accordingly any and all versions, descriptor, announcement, communication and/or related matter appearing here and/or elsewhere.

Since the 1960s, women have begun emerging into the public sphere and the public/private divide has been eroding. However,
women's participation in the public sphere remains limited by the ongoing need to do two jobs (‘the double day’), working both in
the home and in the labour market. Thus, a study conducted into gender difference in the legal professions in Ireland [Bacik, Ivana,
Costello, Cathryn, and Drew, Eileen (2003), Gender InJustice: Feminising the legal professions?, Trinity College Dublin Law
School, Dublin.] found that, while women are entering legal studies in increasing numbers, they remain concentrated at the lower
levels of practice. Women lawyers have immense difficulty in achieving work/life balance, due to the long hours culture, an
ingrained hostility to flexible work arrangements, and to the fact that they retain a disproportionate caring burden in the private
sphere. Changes in the structuring of legal work are clearly required to address this gender imbalance and the associated work/life
imbalance—but cultural changes are ultimately needed to end the ongoing “struggle to juggle.”

To describe mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow-Maya Angelou, Motherhood not only make us realize of the relationship between child and mother but also it come up with health is concerned ,maternal and cmployment hild health issues still continue to be forefront of national and global health policies1.by study it is stated that India accounts for 22% of pregnancy related death worldwide.2A quarter of worlds unattended deliveries occur in India. On 11 August 2016 ,the mnister of labour and Mr. Bhandaru Dattareya introduced and passed maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill 2016 I Rajya Sabha in a voice vote. This Bill stems from an amendment to the Maternity benefit Act 1961, which was aimed at regulating the employment of women employees in certain establishments(factory ,mines, plantations shops and other establishments) for a fixed period before and after the birth of a child which gives maternity leave attached with more benefits.1961 Act aimed at protecting women's health and nutrition during their course of pregnancy and guaranteeing full paid leave of absence from the work to take care of their new-borns. Provisions Of Maternity /Paternal Leave Across Nation. When we tlk about " Maternity Leave " which dominates the idea where women should get leave as accordingly in recent generation the Idea " Paternity Leave " also originates it deals and revolve around the concept that the father should also get leave to help out /support mother to take care of the child and also wife. Though it's the mother who actually delivers the child, father plays an equally important role. A father is expected to be emotionally and physically available for both, mother and child, before and after the delivery.