Sexual division of labour basis of patriarchal order: Justice DY Chandrachud

Supreme Court judge Justice DY Chandrachud recently noted that the Constitution of India is a transformative document that seeks to remedy the structural inequality stemming from patriarchy despite which judges of the apex court see injustice against women on a daily basis..He pointed out that our society works on sexual division of labour between men and women which forms the basis of its patriarchal order and such division is considered natural. He, however, found that this division has larger implications on our society.“Women owe unpaid domestic labour to their families out of love. A very distinguished scholar, Nivedita Menon has said that sexual division of labour is not just a technique to divide work but it conceals the fact that men’s work is considered human while women’s work is perceived as determined by their nature,” the judge said.The Supreme Court judge was speaking at the nationwide launch of legal awareness programmes by the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) in collaboration with the National Commission for Women (NCW)..Justice Chandrachud observed that any departure from heteronormativity is seen as deviance and he took the examples of gender non-conformance expressed to trans or non-binary identities or sexual orientation. This happens since they erode very basis of the gender binary and resulting gender roles, he explained..He also took examples from his work as a judge citing real life situations where there was a divergence between the ideals of law and the real state of society today.“You come across a case of a daughter in law being thrown out from the house in a matrimonial dispute and then when she complaints under the Domestic Violence Act, she is informed that the husband has no right title or interest in a joint family home. When the award of maintenance is sought to be enforced, the woman is told that the business belongs to a joint family and the husband is only a salaried partner in the business,” he said..Hence, the judge stressed on the need for an intersectional approach to discrimination and violence that women face. “In a recent judgment which I delivered involving discrimination against Scheduled Caste women, I observed that identity of a woman intersects with her caste, class, religion disability and sexual orientation, (and) she may face violence and discrimination due to two or more grounds,” he said..While speaking about public intolerance in the country, attention was drawn to the recent advertisement representing karva chauth of a same sex couple which had to be taken down on the grounds of “public intolerance”..Even though our laws create rights for women and the Constitution recognises these rights, women need to be made aware of how to access them, he emphasised.“Those rights extend to matters such as property and succession, workplace. But it is important for us to spread legal awareness among women about how they can get into the workplace in the first place,” the judge said. .Watch full event here.