Posted on April 23, 2008 by Indhu Subramaniam
WORLD OVER, tax is the highest source of government revenue. Even as the finance minister in India was raising the ceiling on taxable income for women, there was a petition in the Madras High Court questioning this. The petitioner alleged that the provision of taxing women less violates men’s constitutional right to equality. The HC, [...]
Filed under: Justice, Law, Money, Women's Lives, Work Life | Tagged: economics, finance, income tax, indirect tax, Money, taxation, taxes, women's finance | 8 Comments »
Posted on February 11, 2008 by anita ratnam
FROM BEING an issue that was considered almost ridiculous just a decade ago, the campaign for land rights for women has gathered momentum in recent times, especially since the 2005 Amendment of the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. The Amendment establishes the rights of daughters and widows of sons to a share in ancestral agricultural [...]
Filed under: Exploitation, Justice, Law, Relationships, Society | Tagged: dowry, land rights | 2 Comments »
Posted on February 7, 2008 by Sharanya Manivannan
NOT ALL OF US may agree on whether or not abortion is ethical. Some may feel that it is sinful, but a subjective choice nonetheless. Others may approve in theory but with a dose of “abortion guilt”, to use Naomi Wolf’s term. Still others, I realise, may condemn it altogether. But wherever we stand personally [...]
Filed under: Law, Morality, Our Bodies, Sex and Sexuality, Society | Tagged: abortion, Law, reproductive rights, Sex and Sexuality | 21 Comments »
Posted on October 24, 2007 by Payal Saksena
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE had been dealt with half-heartedly throughout the history of human rights mechanism in this country. Till about 2005, the only recourse for victims was a criminal law, which provided for punishment against the abuser (but no remedies or relief for the victim) and applied only to married women. Worse, the law failed to [...]
Filed under: Domestic Violence, Institutions, Justice, Law | Tagged: Law, legal process, new domestic violence act | 3 Comments »
Posted on September 27, 2007 by Usha B N
KEROSENE, POISON and now, acid — the new weapon against women. Haseena, a 19-year-old girl from a middle class family was attacked with acid in 1999 by her boss because she turned down his marriage proposal and refused to continue working in his office. Two litres of pure sulphuric acid were poured on her. In [...]
Filed under: Law, Violence Against women | Tagged: acid attacks, CSAAW, haseena, Karnataka, noorjahan | 4 Comments »
Posted on September 21, 2007 by rebecca eapen
FOR THE LAST few years, I have been working on an Access to Justice programme or A2J (the cool new abbreviation for something civil society groups have been doing forever). Some questions pop up repeatedly in the course of my work: What is justice? Who defines justice? Whose prerogative is it to define justice? I’ve [...]
Filed under: Institutions, Justice, Law | Tagged: Access to Justice, equality, informal courts, lawyers, women's rights organizations | 2 Comments »
Posted on September 10, 2007 by Payal Saksena
From ancient Hindu myths to the Bollywood masala movies, justice has always meant the triumph of ‘good’ over ‘evil’. The multi-talented ‘hero’ wins over the ever-scheming and notorious ‘villain’. Perhaps, the concept of poetic justice has been transferred from ancient epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to give the masses their money’s worth of [...]
Filed under: Justice, Law | Tagged: labels, Morality, provocative dressing, sexual assault, sexual violence | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 30, 2007 by anita ratnam
A WORKING woman is a ‘housewife first’, said a recent judgement from the High Court (HC) of Karnataka. The HC was approached by a woman petitioner after her passport application was rejected by the Passport Office on the grounds that she had not disclosed her employment with SBI in the application form. The Court ruled [...]
Filed under: Institutions, Law | Tagged: high court, housewife, judgement, Sakshi study, working woman | 13 Comments »