Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) Sonepat now has more women in its faculty than men, after a consistently implemented diversity strategy, claiming to be a more gender-equal law school than any other.
Out of JGLS’ 86 full-time faculty members, 45 are now women, making up 52 per cent of totals. The figures exclude visiting faculty and honorary professors, but include research associates who must all have LLM qualifications and are allowed to teach under Bar Council of India (BCI) norms.
By contrast, according to the data collected by JGLS from the websites of NLSIU Bangalore, Nalsar Hyderabad and NUJS Kolkata as broadly confirmed by Legally India, only 25 per cent of faculty are women at most.
Update: Amity Law School Delhi appears to have 22 female faculty as against 13 men, according to its website. ILS Pune also appears to have more women than men in its teaching faculty of 15, according to its website. Army Institute of Law Mohali also has more women than men in its faculty.
JGLS dean Prof Raj Kumar told Legally India that getting to this gender ratio around two months ago was the result of a “very serious effort at diversifying” to ensure that new hires would be made in a fair gender ratio, while nevertheless only recruiting “women who are highly qualified and have distinguished qualifications”.
Global problem
The situation is similar abroad, according to data collected by JGLS from the websites of top foreign law schools, where only between 20 and 40 per cent of faculty members are women.
Harvard, Cornell and Yale law schools came in the lowest in the equality stakes with ratios of less than 25 per cent, while UK universities performed better with up to 40 per cent women in Oxford University’s and University College London’s (UCL) law faculties.
Kumar added in a statement: “It is rather unfortunate that universities and law schools around the developed and developing world have performed in an embarrassingly poor manner to ensure faculty diversity and gender balance in their universities and law schools.
“We are very conscious of this disturbing global trend, and more conscious than most reputed law schools in the USA and other countries to ensure better gender balance in our faculty hiring and in all our institution building initiatives. We cannot achieve gender diversity, if we cannot walk the talk about women’s empowerment.”
He said that he was delighted to have achieved this goal within five years of founding the law school.
Furthermore, Kumar added that exactly half of the leadership positions at the college – vice dean, associate dean and some assistant deans – were women, which was also important.
OP Jindal Global University registrar Prof YSR Murthy commented that there was a “need to go beyond tokenism” by entrusting women with “leadership positions”, which is “where many institutions around the world are lacking”.
Global law school faculty gender ratios
| Law Schools | ?Total full time faculty as per their website on 18th August 2014 | ?Number of female faculty among them | ?Percentage women |
|---|---|---|---|
| INDIA | |||
| JGLS Sonepat* | 86 | 45 | 52% |
| NLS Bangalore | 30 | 7 | 23% |
| Nalsar Hyderabad | 38 | 9 | 24% |
| NUJS Kolkata | 35 | 9 | 25% |
| USA | |||
| ?Harvard Law School | ?121 | ?24 | 20% |
| ?Yale Law School | ?83 | 19 | 23% |
| ?Stanford Law School | ?86 | ?25 | 29% |
| ?Columbia Law School | ?91 | ?29 | 32% |
| ?Cornell Law School | ?53 | ?11 | 21% |
| UK | |||
| ?King’s College London Faculty of Law | ?75 | ?24 | ?32% |
| University of Oxford Faculty of Law | 87 | 35 | 40% |
| University of Cambridge Faculty of Law | 140 | 41 | 29% |
| ?University College London Faculty of Law | ?40 | ?16 | ? 40% |
| ?LSE, Faculty of Law | ?62 | ?23 | ?37% |
| Singapore | |||
| ?National University of Singapore Faculty of Law | ?75 | ?24 | ?32% |
*Editor’s note: The JGLS website had not yet been updated with new hires at the time of going to press, according to Kumar, reflecting a gender ratio of only 46 per cent women. Data in table supplied by JGLS, and roughly corroborated by Legally India via Indian institutions’ websites.
Comments
I don't see why people have actually downvoted you. If people could back their concerns with comments and not only [i]objections[/i], that would be great.
But credit where it's due - JGLS shared these stats with us, which appear genuine, interesting and worth reporting on, and hopefully also raising awareness of gender inequality in legal academia, which I don't recall having been discussed before...
Also, if RAs, etc., are included, then I'm pretty sure I can think of more than 7 at NLS
On NLS, our own count got to around 6 female assistant professors and 2 female professors out of a total of 29, but again, that was a very vague count.
At Nalsar, our count is the same as the one in the table. At NUJS, our count was 11 women rather than 9.
In short, I wouldn't vouch for the figures in the table fully, taking into account new hires, etc, but the Indian law schools at least all seem to be in the right ballpark.
We were going with Jindal's claim that they are the first out of the world's top law schools, which is why the headline attributes the claim to JGLS.
Claims like world's first are easy to undermine though, as you just need one counterexample to prove it wrong. Do please share any examples of colleges that have more women than men in their faculty.
Can someone confirm?
www.amity.edu/als/faculty.asp
13 men to 22 women... Will clarify in the article...
"First law school in the world to have more female teachers than male ones" would have sounded much better.
Only being gender neutral in this abuse of grammar. :)
http://www.legallyindia.com/Blogs/unlike-katju-i-think-lady-lawyers-must-be-banned-from-the-courts
The recent india, the overly sensitive to everything one, diplomacy and madeup sensitivity to all issues to ensure all sorts of correctness at the cost of getting the job done (and well) may not necessarily be the correct thing always.
If there are competant women professors who apply for positions, I would be surprised that the law schools (Especially the N ones) would discriminate. If they do, then its wrong and a shame. However, just stacking numbers to prove a point is a no brainer. Students have not joined universities to be taught by men professors or women professors, but the best professors- whatever their gender might be.
So, a Prof. Rajkumar who is seemingly (and boastfully) seeking out for women professors to the best in something in the world (however inconsequential to the students learning it might be) is just a sham.
I refuse to believe that universities like Harvard and Yale and the likes, would discriminate based on gender if one doesnt get the better of the other on competence. So the disparity there is just a statistic and a state of being- but necessarily not an indication of a thought for policy or discrimination.
In any case, you must also analyse what is the percentage of women who read law, who get into academics and then make this comparison. E.g. of the percentage of women who have read law as opposed to men is 40-60, then a 40-60 representation in academic jobs seem consistent. If it is 30-70, then a 40-60 representation is something to cheer for..and so on. Similarly, one has to see what is the percentage of women amongst the lawyers who have taken up academics. This would give a better idea whether they are adequately represented or not.
You say that because fewer women are willing and competent, give them fewer jobs.
Whatif, because they are given fewer jobs, fewer women are willing and competent.
Give it a thought, and perhaps you'll understand it better.
Prof Rajkumar should also take a look before blowing his on useless and incorrect trumpet. [...]
http://www.aals.org/resources_statistical.php
this is your assumption. it is not borne out by the article at all. Prof Raj Kumar reportedly said: "[...]new hires would be made in a fair gender ratio, while nevertheless only recruiting “women who are highly qualified and have distinguished qualifications” - this, to me, means that all other things being equal, they will try to choose the woman applicant over the man in order to maintain (at least a rough) equivalency in the genders of teachers.
whether you like it or not, women can and do experience the law differently from men. the lived experiences of women are important. it is important for institutions to try and weight the educational experience equally for students.
1. He said that some of the comments on gender were a bit off, with respect to quality, discrimination etc. He said that "it's a very conscious effort to identify the right faculty members who happen to be women", not to hire a woman just because she's a woman.
2. There's a bigger problem in academia, in that fewer women also pursue PhDs, etc, plus fewer women obviously make it to the top of the profession in litigation, partnerships, etc.
As such, the fact that they're looking to address the problem within academia is significant.
Some facts in support of this sneak attack: 1)Foreign nationals need to earn at least $25K pa from their job to get employment visa. http://mha1.nic.in/pdfs/EmploymentVisa_080114.pdf Many of the IITs and IIMs have been lobbying for relaxation of these rules but in vain. I support scrapping of the $25K limit for academics, we need more cross cultural input in classrooms. JGLS has a few teachers who have their primary degree from abroad, so presumably they might be foreign nationals (this is an assumption, they could well be Indian nationals but have done their LLB from abroad) and would reasonably be paid $25 pa 2) JGLS could not possibly pay all its 50 teachers $25K pa (even if they charge students as much as they do) 3) so prima facie there is discrimination
The point of the figures was to give a representative indication of the situation, he said, though it would always be possible to claim there were institutions that could be counterexamples, though it's also not necessarily transparent as to what is counted as full-time faculty at other institutions, etc.
He also said that Australia, in general, seemed to have better statistics than the US and the UK.
To be honest, though, I always read (and wrote) the 'world's first' claim as slightly tongue in cheek, but certainly out of the big law schools a 50/50 gender split seems to be rather rare, if not unique.
Commendations for becoming the 'first law school in the world to have more women teachers'. Well, in that case don't you think it would be a fine feather in its cap to not only have more women teachers but also be lead by one?
Open your eyes "legally India" and if they are open then please wash your face.