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Ms. Naina Kapur highighted an example of the impact of judicial equality education in
decision-making. It was the case of Vishaka vs. State of Rajasthan which she litigated. The case
was about the gang rape of a social worker advocating against child marriage by her own
colleagues in a village in Rajasthan and the failure of local officials to investigate. Womenûs

organizations encouraged her to file a criminal case but Ms Kapur, as the Legal Counsel for
the case, did not agree because in many of these cases she thought that judges have
certain assumptions about the victims of sexual violence. Instead, Ms. Kapur helped her file
the case of equality rights to work. This was filed in 1992 when CEDAW was not ratified by India
and it took 5 years to be concluded. In 1997, the Judge who endorsed a judicial education
programme (the Asia Pacific Forum on Judicial Education on Equality Issues) gave a decision using
General Recommendation and CEDAW, which became a landmark for a gender sensitive judicial
decision.
Ms. Kapur highlighted judicial creativity that was shown in this case. Although there were a lack of

domestic laws in India regarding sexual violence and India had not ratified CEDAW yet, the court
took the quantum leap by exercising judicial creativity based on the idea that if there is a
constitutional guarantee of equality and equal rights, we can read international laws into it. The
judicial creativity made sexual harassment visible and made us realize the true concept of
gender equality, the right to work with human dignity (focused in the rights to equality,
to non-discrimination and to practice oneùs progress) and the right to life, and the protection against
sexual harassment implicit in their rights.

She summarized the lessons learnt from the case that:
■ International law can be used to expand existing constitutional guarantee,
enlarging human rights or filling the gaps in laws
■ Gender sensitive judicial decisions can change social attitude
■ çStrain the law in order to do gender justiceé
■ Promoting equality is about prevention of such violence by changing social
attitude and creating redress.

SESSION FOUR : ESTABLISHING THE MECHANISM

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The 4 session on establishing the mechanism aimed to introduce the participants an effective
judicial gender equality education module. The session was facilitated by Justice D.R. Campbell
with support of Ms. Naina Kapur and Ms. Smita Bharti.