He can be brutally honest, can senior counsel Shreehari Aney. Which is perhaps one of the reasons why his interviews (Part 1 and Part 2) on Bar & Bench garnered the number of views it did. .That interview did touch upon a few topics that, in an ideal world, should have been dealt with in greater detail. Which is how the Breakfast with Shreehari Aney idea came about: an honest discussion on topics that are crying for attention, from someone who has seen the legal profession up close. .In the first of a six-part series, the former Advocate General of Maharashtra sits down with Bar & Bench’s Associate Editor Anuj Agrawal, and speaks his mind. This time around it is about the status of women in the legal profession..Anuj Agrawal: One of the things you mentioned in your interview was that the legal profession is very unfair to women..Shreehari Aney: I called [women] the untouchable caste in the legal profession. If lawyers were a nation, women are second class citizens..Anuj Agrawal: Why?.Shreehari Aney: It obviously has something to do with our historic perception of women; we have never treated them as equal. And if one were to talk about law, under English law, women were considered property. So in terms of an intellectual heritage if nothing else, women are second class. They just don’t have the same status as men do..Individual women of course make it to exceptional heights. But when you look at women lawyers as a class, as juxtaposed to male lawyers as a class, women lawyers are seen as being (pauses) well, actually they are invisible.. I mean they are all around, the percentage is steadily rising but the fact is that mere numbers mean nothing. It is like cannon fodder; ultimately who commands the army matters. Who gets killed in the ranks – how does it matter?.The status of women in society does translate itself, to an extent, to the role they exhibit in the legal profession. So whatever prejudices society has against educated women, against working women, are all carried into the legal profession..This is why I call them the “other” caste or the “other” nation – they don’t belong to the mainstream of the legal profession. There is a built-in behavioural block that people have with reference to women in the legal profession..Anuj Agrawal: Could you be more specific?.Shreehari Aney: If a junior were to walk into a senior [lawyer’s] office, and if he happened to be male, he would get a treatment which would be different from if a lady junior walked into the chambers. .This is not deliberate mind you, but the senior would tend to give more responsible work to the male junior rather than the lady junior. Now this may be ‘at the threshold’ kind of situation. Eventually she may even get equal responsibility. It is a very, very rare case where she would get more responsibility even if she was very, very capable..Anuj Agrawal: That is very discouraging..Shreehari Aney: Of course it is!.But mind you, despite this handicap, women have prevailed. I am surprised at the strength of that tribe. May it increase..Somehow (pauses) you know my own senior KH Deshpande, a very reputed designated senior counsel from Nagpur, once told me that women come to courts to “dabba khayela” which means they come to eat their tiffins in the afternoon..Now he was not belittling them, he was stating a fact. When I joined, and I am talking about 1974-75, there were exactly two women in the Nagpur High Court Bar. One of whom, Kumkum Sirpurkar became the president of the Nagpur Bar, and a senior counsel. The other, Mira Khadakar, went on to become a judge of the family court..Back then, what they were essentially doing was coming to court at ten, going back at four fifteen, and working with their seniors. Despite their obvious talent, they hardly had any appearances, whereas their contemporary male juniors were already in there, appearing in courts, day in and day out..Kumkum’s own husband went on to become a judge of the Supreme Court. And it was not like he was preventing his wife from arguing in court. After we got married, my wife completed her LLB and LLM – seven gold medals, incidentally – and came to the bar. .She quit in one year. The fault was probably mine, because I could not give her the foothold needed..In the rough and tumble of our everyday existence, we don’t even stop to consciously consider that we, male lawyers, have to secure equal treatment for women..In the rough and tumble of our everyday existence, we don’t even stop to consciously consider that we, male lawyers, have to secure equal treatment for them. We seniors just get on with the business of lawyering, and in that process, juniors both men and women are largely ignored and left to find their own place. Both men and women juniors have it bad, but the women have it worse. .Whereas the courts might listen to a reasonably good argument made by a male lawyer, in order to secure similar attention, women lawyers have to work twice as hard and must make an exceptionally good argument..Anuj Agrawal: You have seen this happen?.Shreehari Aney: This happens. We have this mental block, that goes back a long way. There was this story shared by Justice Sujata Manohar, the first woman to be elevated as judge of the Bombay High Court..A long time ago, when the Bombay High Court was still under the British, there used to be a lady lawyer named Tata. She was a barrister, and she would come to the court daily, but had no cases to argue. This went on for many years. .One bright day, a solicitor came to her with a brief and said, “Madam, my client would like you to argue this matter.” She was surprised but curious. She said. “I will argue it, but you must tell me why your client wants me to argue the brief.”.The solicitor hemmed and hawed, and avoided answering. But when she insisted, he grudgingly said,. “My client gave me two reasons: one, that our appeal is so good that even a lady cannot lose it. The second reason was that my client wanted to see the opponent humiliated at the hands of a woman lawyer.”.Things are not so bad now, but we still don’t afford the class of women lawyers the same esteem that we accord to men. .Anuj Agrawal: So one is the mental block, the other is more quantifiable. Like infrastructure for instance..Shreehari Aney: Yes. We are still almost in the Victorian style of courts as far as India is concerned. I mean if you read the court scenes in The Pickwick Papers, you see great similarities to an Indian court in 2016..In that melee that is a daily feature in every court room, how easy do you think it is for a woman lawyer to push through the throng of lawyers who are out there to mention at eleven in the morning? To push through to the front and speak to the court? It is a physical challenge there. .Just the act of forcing yourself out there in the front takes a great deal of energy. The other problem is carrying briefs. Unless you are in a huge solicitors office where you have your peons, imagine having to carry bulky briefs or books up and down the courts..Women come to the legal profession, brilliant women. And before you know it they are doing something else. Connected to law no doubt, but not in courtrooms. It is not an easy thing for women to practice, and lack of infrastructural support, or even attitudinal support is lacking. .It is very difficult to change..To be continued..
