Law Is Not Equality: The Gap Between Rights on Paper and Women's Reality

Mihira Sood discusses her book Courting Equality and the limits of legal reform in India. She argues that gender justice depends on social and political change beyond the courts.The Gap Between Rights on Paper and Women's RealityNew Delhi,Sep 26, 2026 12:33 ISTWhat happens when the law promises equality but society continues to operate differently?That question runs through lawyer and author Mihira Sood's conversation with Aneesha Mathur on Booked. Sood's book, Courting Equality: Landmark Cases in the Battle for Women's Rights, examines nearly five decades of legal battles involving gender equality in India.Her starting point is that law does not operate in a vacuum. Court judgments are shaped by the political, economic and social conditions of their time. At the same time, those judgments can influence the society around them.The relationship is particularly visible in cases involving violence against women. Sood discusses the Mathura case and the Criminal Law Amendment that followed, as well as the Nirbhaya protests of 2012 and the criminal-law changes that followed them. But legal reform, she argues, is only one part of the story.Gender inequality exists in areas that may appear disconnected from violence: inheritance, employment, marriage, religious access and women's autonomy. Sood cites examples including the battle over guardianship rights, women's inheritance and the Sabarimala debate. The connections between these issues are important, she suggests. Unequal access to property, economic dependence, social expectations and violence cannot necessarily be treated as separate problems.This is also why she is wary of relying on law as the sole mechanism of social reform.Law can establish rights and create powerful precedents. The decriminalisation of homosexuality, she notes, is an example of a court judgment providing an important impetus to a wider process of social change.But legal rights can also be evaded or undermined in practice.Watch the video here: The conversation turns to the MeToo movement and the different responses generated by allegations against powerful or privileged men. Sood argues that public reactions to sexual violence are not always consistent and that some forms of violence generate more outrage than others.She also discusses how women's rights can become incorporated into political messaging. Issues such as women's representation, uniform civil codes and slogans around women's empowerment can acquire a feminist vocabulary while being contested over their underlying objectives and effects.Cinema and popular culture form another thread in the discussion. Sood sees films not simply as entertainment but as reflections of the social attitudes and economic conditions of their time. She also discusses how censorship can reflect competing ideas about women's sexuality, agency and “Indian culture”.The central question running through the interview is therefore not whether law matters. Sood's answer is clearly that it does.The question is what law can and cannot accomplish.For her, meaningful gender equality requires legal reform alongside sustained social and political change. The courtroom can be an important arena for the battle, but it cannot be the only one.- Ends