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 Home » Of Special Interest To » Women » National Constitutions and Gender Equality

Women's Rights in the Courts


Women may wonder how putting rights for women in the Constitution helps them. There have been a number of interesting cases in which the Supreme Court has issued orders to protect women's rights. Of course going to court is not usually cheap, nor is it necessarily very quick. But if women organize well, and with the help of lawyers choose their cases well, they may be able to use the Constitution to make some real changes for women.

Just to take a few examples: in one case the court instructed the government to take measures (within a month) to end discrimination against women who are menstruating. In Western Nepal women are often considered unclean at his time of the month and are required to leave the house and sent to sleep in cowsheds. This case was decided in 2005. There is a brief account at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4250506.stm

In 2006 the Court said that a law that allowed men to divorce their wives because they were infertile was unconstitutional. There is an account at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4863560.stm

In 2002 the Supreme Court held that sexual intercourse between a husband and wife without consent of the wife is a crime equal to rape and that the section of the Country Code (Muluki Ain) that said otherwise was unconstitutional - see the case on the website of Forum for Women, Law, and Development: http://www.fwld.org.np/marrape.html

In another case the Court issues an order to the Government to draft a bill giving due consideration to family law related to property and consulting women's organisations, sociologists as well as jurists and to present the same before the legislature within one year, in order to comply with the 1990 Constitution (see a summary of this case in a set of summaries of cases prepared by INSEC and Interights and available at http://www.interights.org/doc/Nepal%20SC%20case%20summaries_final.doc (this case is number 13).

There are various other cases summarised in the last document mentioned.

On February 22, 2007, the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partner, The Forum for Women, Law, and Development, filed a case in the Supreme Court to require the government to make the right to abortion - which exists in theory - a reality. See http://www.reproductiverights.org/worldwide.html#nepalfiling.
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