Missing: Women judges in India's higher judiciary

The Supreme Court of India was inaugurated 71 years ago, but it is yet to see a woman chief justice. Indeed, male judges have always outnumbered, by a distance, female judges on the apex court bench. Same has been the case with most of the country’s 25 high courts.

That women are underrepresented in the higher judiciary is not unknown. But what’s the scale of the underrepresentation? To find out, Newslaundry looked at the gender composition of the Supreme Court and the high courts. We relied on the websites of the courts, news reports, publicly available lists to compile a database.

Here’s what we found.

Click on the dropdown menu in the chart to see the gender composition of the Supreme Court and each high court.

Gender composition as on September 15, 2021.

Gender composition as on May 10, 2021.