Reconstructing Gendered Space and Identity: Indian Women Legal Professionals’ Struggle for Existence in Pandemic Times

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has redefined the legal landscape through virtual hearings and remote work, placing Indian women lawyers at a critical juncture of professional precarity and gendered expectations at home. Existing scholarship highlights the challenges women face in asserting legal identities within a male-dominated profession; the pandemic has amplified these tensions. This study draws on narrative interviews with 50 female lawyers practicing at the Calcutta High Court, exploring how digital courts and work-from-home routines have disrupted their spatial autonomy, deepened unpaid care responsibilities, and renegotiated their professional identities. Through qualitative analysis, the research traces how respondents navigate diminished case opportunities, blurred public-private boundaries, and entrenched patriarchal norms. The findings illuminate how pandemic-era legal adaptations have intensified existing gender inequities, prompting urgent questions about recognition, access, and agency in contemporary Indian legal practice.