Activities

Colloquium on Gender Justice and Personal Laws, 14th - 16th December 2001

In our Second Colloquium between, 14th - 16th of December 2001, were invited participants from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to address the issue of transition from colonialism to constitutional self-governance and explore what this means for gender justice.

Questions which required investigation were, what is the content of the guarantee of equality for women, what is the relationship between the right to equality and the right to freedom of religion and can the right to preserve ones culture extend to protecting discriminatory practices. For example, in India, a Hindu male is entitled to a share in ancestral property at birth, whereas a Hindu female is not so entitled. Polygamy is recognised for Muslims and so is the right to a unilateral extra-judicial divorce by the man to a woman. In Nepal, daughters have virtually no significant right to inheritance from their natal families. Almost in all jurisdictions around the region there is no right to community of matrimonial property and no certainty of a guaranteed alimony on the breakdown of marriage. It is generally agreed that one of the major causes of the low status of women in these societies is their unequal legal status in matters relating to marriage and inheritance. This in turn led to questions being raised about the relationship between rights of minorities and majority ruling communities and the need to preserve culture as a constitutive element of identity. Given that all our countries had embraced the right to equality and non-discrimination based on sex, the right to equality for women was taken to be non-negotiable.

Most of the papers presented at the colloquium address the above-mentioned questions and document efforts by women's groups to find solutions within a constitutional framework.

Colloquium 2001 :-

1. Report [ See the attachments below ]
2. Participants [ See the attachments below ]
3. Abstracts of papers presented
4. Publication

Publication :

Publication - Men's Laws Women's Lives :

For about half a century now, South Asia has enjoyed independence and constitutional rule, but many countries have inherited a plural legal system as a legacy of colonialism. In all five countries of the region, constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are confounded by discriminatory personal laws that institutionalize gender inequality.

Contributors to this volume address this problem from the perspective of countries that are statedly democratic and secular, as well as those that are theocratic, and from the experience of maintaining plural legal systems. Specifically, the questions they pose are: has the adoption of secular constitutions in these countries, with guaranteed human rights, made any difference to the legal status of women? What impact, if any, does the adoption of a secular constitution have on the regime of personal laws? Has the transition from colonialism to constitutionalism in the era of human rights made any difference to the rights of women? Do constitutions that recognize equal rights make any difference to the institutionalized private/public divide?

The essays in this volume by distinguished scholars, legal practitioners and human rights activists, address these questions and document efforts by women's groups to find solution within a human rights framework. By doing so, they highlight the striking universality of women's inequality in South Asia, and the failure of our states to secure political and human rights for their female citizens.