American journalist and feminist Susan Faludi once wrote, “The backlash is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finishing line.” In India, that strike often comes not from adversaries, but from the very institutions meant to uphold equality.
In March 2023, a Holi Milan celebration complete with vulgar display and dance at Delhi’s Patiala House Court turned into a spectacle that outraged the legal community particularly women lawyers. When I signed the protest petition condemning this gross violation of professional dignity and textbook case of workplace sexual objectification, what struck me most was the sheer tone-deafness of it all: this was a court complex, in the heart of the national capital, reduced to a stage for sexist spectacle.
Worse still, what made the incident at Patiala House Court even more galling was the collective apathy of the legal fraternity. None of the organisers saw a problem with hosting an “item number” dance inside court premises, not during planning, not during execution, not even after the backlash.
Many attendees watched without protest. Those of us who raised objections early on were told to “stop overreacting” or asked why we were being “so touchy” about it, as if demanding dignity in a workplace was an emotional overreach.
It revealed a deep cultural rot, where objectification is normalised and women lawyers are expected to either laugh along or quietly look away. That silence is not accidental.
It is enforced, by ridicule, by gaslighting, and by the unspoken threat that speaking up means being labelled unprofessional, difficult, or humourless.
A Judgment That Highlights What POSH Excludes
The Bombay High Court recently rejected a PIL seeking the establishment of Internal Complaints Committees (ICCs) in Bar Councils and Bar Associations. The Court’s reasoning? Advocates, being independent professionals, aren’t technically “employees” under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act, 2013. Therefore, these institutions have no legal obligation to establish redressal mechanisms under POSH.
The court held that POSH Act simply doesn’t apply to inter-advocate misconduct within court premises. Instead, it pointed complainants toward Section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961, a disciplinary route that treats harassment as professional misconduct, not as a gendered harm or violation of dignity.
In other words, it offered a procedural detour in place of a structural remedy. The petition filed by the UNS Women Lawyers Association highlighted the lived realities of female advocates: harassment in court corridors, inappropriate, silence, shame, and a complete absence of institutional support.
The petitioners asked for what should have been obvious: a grievance redressal mechanism in the very places they worked. Section 35 of Advocates Act is no substitute for POSH. It is not victim centric. It does not promise confidentiality. It is not designed for timely or trauma-informed redress. It is, in essence, a tool for punishing misconduct not for protecting dignity, enabling healing, or ensuring accountability.
Legal Loophole or Legislative Blind Spot?
Under Section 2(f) of the POSH Act, the definition of “employee” is intentionally broad covering individuals engaged in any capacity: regular, temporary, ad hoc, daily-wage, direct hire, or through contractors. It even accounts for probationers, trainees, apprentices, and volunteers, irrespective of pay.
On paper, this seems inclusive. But there’s a catch. Section 2(o), which defines “workplace”, is similarly expansive, appearing to cover everything from government offices to informal setups and even virtual spaces.
Yet, despite this facade of universality, the law continues to be structurally anchored in the existence of a formal employer-employee relationship.
The result is a law that, by design, excludes vast swathes of the contemporary workforce: independent professionals like lawyers and consultants, gig workers, and platform economy participants, freelancers and creative collaborators, interns and volunteers without contracts, and remote workers who work “with” but not “for” an organisation.
This isn’t a minor legislative gap, it’s a systemic exclusion. And in a post-COVID world where hybrid teams, flexible staffing, and decentralised work are the norm rather than the exception, the implications are not just outdated, they’re dangerous.
While this judgment pertains to the legal profession, its resonance is far wider. Today, the most visible work happens in co-working spaces, Slack channels, and Zoom calls across locations, employment statuses, and even jurisdictions.
POSH was drafted at a time when the workplace was still a building with biometric gates and structured hierarchies. That workplace no longer exists.
Legal practice today is no longer confined to hierarchical chambers with formal employment contracts; it is sprawling, decentralised, and structurally informal. Junior lawyers often work in unregulated setups, across courtrooms, chambers, client meetings, and late-night drafting marathons without any of the institutional protections available in other professions.
The judgement, though couched in legal framework and interpretation, signals that the law is content to protect only those who fit within 20th-century employment models, while the rest—freelancers, interns, litigating lawyers—are left to fend for themselves.
A Broken Law Doesn’t Excuse Broken Systems
The suffering of women lawyers is not anecdotal, it is institutional. It begins at the entry point, where junior women advocates, fresh from law school, are expected to "adjust" to working environments steeped in patriarchal norms.
In chambers across India, mentorship often blurs into coercion, and professional hierarchies become cover for gendered power plays. Many are subjected to inappropriate remarks, unsolicited attention, and degrading comments under the guise of casual banter. In court corridors, it only gets worse.
The workspace for a litigating lawyer is not a cabin or a boardroom; it is a public, male-dominated arena with no real safeguards. From the way women lawyers are looked at, spoken to, or deliberately excluded from serious briefs, every layer of the system quietly enforces the message: you do not belong here unless you conform, comply, and stay silent.
The very architecture of the court open, unmonitored, informal becomes a site of vulnerability. There are no HR cells, no formal reporting structures, and, as the Bombay High Court has now confirmed, no ICCs.
Women lawyers internalise silence as strategy. They downplay experiences of harassment to avoid being labelled “difficult.” They leave litigation entirely, move to corporate law, or abandon legal practice often not because they lacked merit, but because the system lacked spine. The profession, in turn, loses voices that could have made it better.
This is not just a women's issue. It is a structural indictment of a profession that preaches justice, but fails to practise it within its own walls.
The Bombay HC judgment has, inadvertently, offered India’s institutions an opportunity: To realise that the law is no longer enough. That justice cannot be postponed until Parliament wakes up. And that leaders who claim to care about women must prove it where it matters in structure, in access, in accountability.
The POSH Act was born from the Vishaka Guidelines, which themselves arose from a case of brutal violence and a systemic vacuum. It was meant to be a floor, not a ceiling. But a decade on, it is creaking under the weight of a workforce it no longer understands. To cling to definitions that exclude real people, facing real harm, is not neutrality. It is complicity.
(The author is partner at Tatvika Legal, A full-service law firm based in Delhi NCR. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)