Gender Equality: Legal Protection to Women

The position of women in India has transformed over the decades. Great strides have been made in ensuring equality for women in Indian society. However, contradictions and gaps in protecting certain basic rights of women continue to exist. The Government has actively – both through law and policy – sought to improve the status of women. Keeping in mind the regional variations, religious, caste and class-based differences that have a definitive impact on women in India; we draw some broad generalisations on the major socioeconomic developments that have impacted women in the country.

In spite of women contribution in all spheres of life and they enjoy a unique position in every society and country of the world, but they suffer in silence and belong to a class which is in a disadvantaged position on account of several barriers and impediments. India, being a country of paradoxes, is no exception. Here too, women, a personification of Shakti, once given a dignified status, are in need of empowerment. Women’s empowerment in legal, social, political and economic requires to be enhanced. However, empowerment and equality are based on the gender sensitivity of society towards their problems. The intensification of women's issues and rights movement all over the world is reflected in the form of various Conventions passed by the United Nations. Gender equality is always escaped the constitutional provisions of equality before the law or the equal protection of law. This is because equality is always supposed to be between equals and since the judges did not concede that men and women were equal. Gender equality did not seem to them to be a legally forbidden inequality.