About Ms. Mahalakshmi Pavani
Ms. Mahalakshmi Pavani is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India, designated in 2015, and a long-standing leader of the Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association. She practises across constitutional, service, criminal and administrative law, and has worked extensively on women’s rights, gender sensitisation and access to justice. She spoke at Parul University on women and the Constitution.
The question that framed the talk
Ms. Pavani began by asking the hall directly whether women are equal, promising to ask again at the end. Her concern was not whether the Constitution guarantees equality, it plainly does, but the distance between, in her words, “what our constitution says and what our society allows.” She did not want to recite Articles, she said; she wanted students to weigh practical questions. Can a woman marry whom she wishes, or refuse to? Can she inherit equally, build a career, work late and be safe? She distinguished formal equality from substantive equality, and made the key point that identical treatment does not remove disadvantages that already exist.
“We don’t need any charity. We need a right.”
Work, representation and the limits of protection
On employment she was blunt that assumptions about marriage and family still shape a woman’s professional opportunities: on paper she cannot be denied an opportunity for being married, “but in practical life, she is.” She argued that women are meritorious enough for any brief, mining cases, corporate tenders, election matters, and that the task is recognition, not permission. On representation she noted that a legal provision is only one stage; attitudes and implementation decide whether it becomes real. Her sharpest principle came on the idea of protection.
“Protection cannot become another name for exclusion.”
She applied it directly to campus life, questioning whether curfews that restrict women’s movement can be called safety, and urging institutions to fix the source of danger instead, with a line the students took to heart: “Let us make Parul safe.”
Dignity, inheritance and an identity of one's own
She traced the evolution of workplace protection from the Vishaka framework to the POSH law, stressing that its aim was not only physical safety but dignity: “she has to be there with dignity.” On inheritance she described how social pressure makes a daughter feel greedy for claiming what the law already grants, and asked the room directly, “Do you have the guts to ask what your right is?” Her closing advice to the students, especially the young women, moved from rights to selfhood.
“Don’t get a degree only for your bio-data. Create an identity with it.”
She urged them to be financially independent while keeping respect in their relationships, and returned to her opening question with the line that framed the whole session: until mindsets change, nothing changes. Join the law courses such as B.A.LLB at Parul University that gives you insight into how law in India works.
