Gender and Legal Education in India

October 19, 2005
12 pm - 1:20 pm
Room 503

Washington College of Law
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016



Law schools play an integral institutional role in promoting women's legal rights by shaping legal thinking, affecting and training future lawyers and policymakers, and by creating authoritative structures for legitimizing legal strategies to combat discrimination against women. In order to eliminate gender bias in the laws and in legal institutions, there is a need to incorporate women's human rights and gender issues into the law school curriculum.

Since 2000, the Women and International Law Program of American University Washington College of Law (WILP) has been working closely with legal educators and women's rights advocates in India to address the need for legal education that integrates a gender perspective. In close collaboration with law school professors and women's rights advocates from institutions throughout India, WILP has organized an exploratory Working Group meeting on gender and legal education with funding from the Ford Foundation in New Delhi in June 2003.


This Working Group will meet to discuss the role law schools and legal education can play in furthering women's rights within Indian society. Professors from several Indian law schools and from American University Washington College of Law will join Indian legal practitioners and NGO representatives involved in gender and the law, to identify obstacles to integrating gender into legal institutions; to assess the ways that legal education could contribute to change within other legal institutions; and to develop strategies for overcoming obstacles to change within legal education in India. Working Group participants also will explore possibilities for future collaboration among scholars, advocates and legal education institutions in India, and the Women and International Law Program at the Washington College of Law.


The Project’s participants include:

  • Dean Nomita Aggarwal, G.G.S. Indraprastha University, New Delhi*
  • Flavia Agnes of Majlis, Bombay (invited)
  • Prof. Asha Bajpai, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay*
  • Gangotri Chakraborty, West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata
  • Prof. V.S. Elizabeth, National Law School, Bangalore*
  • April Fehling, Coordinator, Women and International Law Program, American University Washington College of Law*
  • Hadar Harris, Executive Director, Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University Washington College of Law*
  • Naina Kapur of Sakshi, New Delhi (invited)
  • Sushila Kaushik of the Centre for Development Studies and Action, Haryana
  • Prof. Ved Kumari, University of Delhi*
  • Prof. Jaya Sagade, Indian Law Society Law College/ Institute of Advanced
    Legal Studies, Pune*
  • Professor Lotika Sarkar, University of Delhi, retired; (invited)
  • Prof. Ann Shalleck, American University Washington College of Law*
  • Kamal Singh, Governance and Social Justice, British High Commission, New Delhi
  • Prof. Brenda Smith, American University Washington College of Law*
  • Lalitha Sreenath, S.K. University, Anantapur
  • Prof. Leti Volpp, American University Washington College of Law*

(* denotes member of Planning Committee)


The Gender and Legal Education Program in India follows on the success of a similar project conducted by the WILP program in Latin America, “Transforming Women’s Legal Status in Latin America: Integrating Gender into Doctrine and Education,” that brought together practitioners, academics and legal scholars to create innovative strategies for integrating gender into education and advocacy work.  The project sought to address the significant problems of violence against women and gender bias in legal systems throughout the region.  It did so by awarding Teaching, Research and Advocacy Fellowships which brought practitioners to WCL to study for a specialized LL.M. degree in Gender and the Law.  In collaboration with these Fellows, the project also created the first Gender and the Law textbook written by Latin American legal scholars on gender issues and analyses. In addition, the project included workshops and conferences to bring together scholars and activists from North and South America to share experiences and concrete tools and strategies for integrating gender perspectives into academic curricula and activist agendas.

The Women and International Law Program, established in 1984 at American University Washington College of Law, aims to incorporate the experiences of women in all aspects of legal education, contribute to research and advocacy on women and the law, and promote awareness of the ways that laws affect women’s lives.  For more information, contact April Fehling, WILP Program Coordinator, at afehling@wcl.american.edu or 202-274-4089.