National Law Universities – Bringing gender equality into the Indian legal profession?

“When I went to law school, there were very few women there. And if you don’t see anybody who looks like you, you begin to think ‘Maybe I don’t belong here’ you know.”.Fulbright scholar Prof. Sophie Sparrow.In the interview, Professor Sparrow was talking about her time as a law student in America several decades ago, but her description of her time in law school can very well describe the state of the Indian legal profession..In August last year, consultants Swagata Raha and Sonal Makhija released the results of a study of women legal professionals across three cities. Their report, titled “Challenges faced by Indian Women Legal Professionals”, revealed inter alia that 36% of women lawyers surveyed had faced some form of gender bias while working. This view is supported by senior lawyers such as Rajani Iyer in Bombay, who has said that perhaps women lawyers face an “in-built resistance” in the profession..Women, at least in India, do not find the legal profession a particularly easy one to enter..But things might be changing..In May last year when the country’s largest law firm, Amarchand Mangaldas announced that 13 of the firm’s lawyers were being promoted to Partnership, 9 were women. Of 16 lawyers who made Partner at JSA this year, 5 were women. Admittedly, such promotions are far and few in between, but they may well indicate a sign of things to come..There is no publicly available data on the exact number of women lawyers in the country. In fact, there is no concrete data on the exact number of lawyers practicing in the country either. The idea behind this paper is to examine the level of gender equality at one of the many sources of the next generation of lawyers: National Law Universities..Before continuing though, a disclaimer is in order. The small, (“frequently incestuous”) world of NLUs is just that – small. In an interview with Bar & Bench, the Chairman of the Bar Council of India said that in 2013 there were close to 35,000 applicants for the All India Bar Examination (AIBE). All 13 NLU’s put together (in 2013) churn out less than 1,000 law graduates, or roughly 3% of the number of AIBE applicants. To say that the results of CLAT would mirror changes in the Indian legal sector would be misleading..However, it is a start. Apart from being a national-level examination, the CLAT also provides useful data on the gender, location, and age of the candidates; it is the kind of data that lends itself to potentially useful analysis..Some of the findings are as follows:.Of the 1,546 seats allocated, 719 (47%) of them were to female students. Within the “General Category”, out of the 779 seats available, 355 (45%) were allocated to female students. With close to half of all NLU students female, gender parity is clearly evident, at least at the entry level to law schools..Just to put that in perspective, a report released by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur stated that out of the 9,576 candidates admitted into the IITs, only 937 (9%) were female..This gender parity for successful CLAT candidates continues if one were to examine the comparative performance in the examination itself. For instance, the first 200 ranks have 98 female students (49%), the next 200 have exactly 90 (45%). A similar ratio is maintained right up to the final ranks..[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_original”,”fid”:”24368″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”width: 616px; height: 511px; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px;”,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”}}]].Which law school is the most “equal”?.Keeping in mind that this is the first year of the study, the answer to the above question is academic at best. This is compounded by the fact that the class strength of law schools varies immensely, from the 80 seats at NLSIU in Bangalore to the 160 seats at HNLU in Raipur..[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_original”,”fid”:”24369″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”height”:”482″,”style”:”width: 614px; height: 398px; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: 20px;”,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”,”width”:”744″}}]].There are some interesting observations to be made though– for instance at NALSAR, Hyderabad, the number of female students (40) outnumber the male (30). This is the only NLU to have this number. On the other hand, at the National Law University and Judicial Academy in Guwahati, the number of male students (38) is nearly double that of the female students (22)..The full report can be seen below or you can download a copy here.