Sexism along the court corridors
During the years of my litigation practice, my mornings were chaotic. I used to turn up at work already haggard with the morning traffic. I had a list of things to do before I scampered off to attend courts for the day. In those tumultuous moments, I wore my band and my blazer, swung my black robe across my shoulder, picked up the list of cases to appear in for the day and gulped down the hot coffee on my desk before vanishing into a vortex of courts. In hindsight, it was perhaps these nonchalant morning exercises which kept my passion for litigation alive and kicking. The thrill of chasing cases to their end — day after day, over a period of months or years, along the long, winding corridors of a court and finally winning cases amidst arduous weeks of sleepless nights, physical and mental exhaustion and tears, validated my experience as a lawyer. Yet somehow, this passion has its own price to pay because of my gender.
Sexism in court corridors is so pervasive and well entrenched that sometimes I’ve had difficulty in identifying it even. From condescending male opposing counsels asking me to bring my senior to argue an interim application (which I was perfectly capable of arguing on my own) to a criminal mansplaining me outside a court hall on how to cross-examine him inside the court hall, sexism reeked with such casualness that it was appalling. In those years, I was fairly abrasive and quick to react. Sure enough, once I got the hang of trial court litigation, I was found almost always assiduously embroiled in a shouting match before a judge against male opposing counsels who tried intimidating me with their burly physique or their hoarse yelling. My shouting match although stemmed from all the pent-up rage against their unacceptable behavior, was always limited to defending my clients in the court.
The most infuriating of these experiences was the “inadvertent”mansplaining by my male colleagues and their need to “mentor” a female colleague regardless of their own teetering knowledge of law. For one, I’d dedicated most part of the formative years of my profession to constitutional law, being trained by one of the best constitutional law experts in the country. But if I had a penny for the number of times, I have been mansplained by a man with absolutely zero knowledge or experience on the subject, I’d be rich.
After four years of litigation, I decided to move abroad for further studies and work. My experience abroad however was refreshing. Sure, sexism exists across the globe and across professions. Although, in my experience, my female colleagues abroad were more outspoken and quicker to call out sexist behavior than my Indian counterparts. One time during a team meeting, a senior male colleague casually joked that his associate’s role in refurnishing her parents’ house would be to serve coffee to her brothers and father while they built the furniture. The other female associates instantly reprimanded the male colleague’s remarks. The effect was so immediate, that the male colleague instantly apologized for the “joke”. I cannot imagine women calling out sexist behavior nor a man acknowledge his problematic behavior (apology remains a long climb) if this incident were to unfold in an Indian workplace.
Recently, after my return to India, I casually spoke to a partner of a law firm about working with him. During the conversation he told me that the position at his law firm should not be viewed as a stop gap arrangement — this was coming from a man who had jumped law firms himself and had quit his previous law firm after working there for not more than thirteen months. My immediate thoughts were: would he have the same audacity to patronize a man in my place? I guess I am making progress in atleast identifying sexism in India now.
As I re-explore my options to move back to the Indian litigation scene, my interaction with men in this profession triggers my intolerance towards sexism and the general toxicity surrounding it. It increasingly reminds me of why I quit pursuing my passion in India in the first place. If I indeed restart my career in India, I will have to draw heavily from the example of my outspoken female colleagues abroad and perhaps this blogpost is the needed head start in that direction!
Blog update (28th September, 2022): I’ve returned to practice since writing this post. Thus far sexism only reeks outside of office.
