Legal Status of Kerala Women*

The much – publicized Kerala Model of Development with the help of social statistics asserts that women in Kerala enjoy a higher status when compared to their counterparts in other parts of India. It is putting Kerala closer to high-income developed countries than to its counterparts in the developing and low-income counties.

The indicators that contributed to higher status of Kerala Women include: favourable sex ratio, higher age at marriage, higher medical attention, physical quality of life index, infant mortality rate, number of children etc. In spite of all these factors established as positive and true, crimes against women in Kerala have been increasing at an alarming rate and this point towards the question of legal status of its women. Kerala is a place where rules and regulations are widely circulated through different media. Generally, it is regarded that people know about the laws affecting their life. It is important to note that in the Indian Constitutional law and subsequent laws and legislations enacted by the state government, gender equality is given high priority. Given this context of constitutional law and equality theory, the increasing crimes such as dowry death, dowry harassment, sexual harassment, kidnapping, rape etc question the relevance and validity of the established facts and urge the need to examine the various parameters of women’s living conditions, micro and macro factors which perpetuate gender discrimination in all sphere of society and makes women one of the most vulnerable and exploited sections of the people. Violence against women manifest in different forms is factors responsible for the phenomenon of marginalisation of women in the development process.

The difficulty for women to come forward to use law to solve their problems are mainly due to illiteracy regarding the laws which protect women and lack of faith in the law enforcing machinery, especially the police. In addition to this, in most of the existing laws there are loop holes which prevent the effective implementation of the provisions contained in the law. These laws have to be updated in accordance with the requirement of women.

* Source: Kerala Women’s Commission, Status of Women in Kerala, A Report Based on Sample Studies.