Women’s legal rights in India have witnessed important reforms in recent years, yet many laws remain under-implemented, and significant legal gaps persist. While statutes promise protection—on reproductive health, workplace safety, or sexual violence—on the ground access, enforcement, and recognition are often inconsistent. This article explores recent legal advances, identifies critical barriers, and suggests concrete changes needed to make those legal promises a lived reality, especially for marginalised and vulnerable women.
Legal Reforms & Progress
India has undertaken key legislative changes aimed at expanding women’s rights and ensuring greater autonomy. These reforms reflect growing recognition of women’s agency and attempts to address previously neglected areas of women’s health, dignity, and safety.
Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Act, 2021
- Expanded legal grounds for abortion: increased gestation limit from 20 to 24 weeks for special categories (rape, incest, minors, differently abled). Allows termination in case of contraceptive failure regardless of marital status.
- Confidentiality protections added: identity of women undergoing abortion cannot be revealed except by lawful authority.
POSH Act (Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace), 2013
- Requires companies with ≥10 employees to set up Internal Complaints Committees (ICCs).
- Increase in complaints in large, blue-chip firms in FY25 showing somewhat more trust / awareness.
Key Constraints & Gaps in Implementation
Even though the legal texts have evolved, systemic and social realities continue to limit their reach. Inequality in access, weak enforcement, and societal attitudes often undermine what the statutes envisage.
Access to abortion services remains uneven
- Lack of accredited clinics/providers in rural or remote regions.
- Social stigma, cost, and scarcity of providers for non-medical or social-grounds abortions create barriers.
POSH Act compliance is patchy
- Small businesses are often non-compliant: many don’t have ICCs, or don’t report cases; the informal sector largely excluded.
- Delay in resolution: pendency of complaints increasing.
Marital Rape: Legal Status & Debates
One of the most glaring gaps in Indian law is the non-recognition of marital rape. Despite wide public debate, judicial scrutiny, and human rights arguments, the law currently upholds an exemption that excludes non-consensual sex in marriage from being legally treated as rape.
- The Indian Penal Code (IPC) still contains Exception 2 in Section 375: sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife (above a certain age) is not considered rape (i.e. marriage provides an exemption).
- Government’s position (as of late 2024 / early 2025) is that there is no proposal to criminalise marital rape. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (which replaced/updated parts of IPC) preserves the marital rape exception.
- Courts have had some rulings extending the interpretation of other laws to cover harms within marriage, but criminal rape in marriage remains unrecognised legally.
International Influence & Emerging Issues
India’s legal debates do not occur in isolation. Global human rights norms, new technology, and evolving notions of privacy, consent, and access are pushing forward changes—both for what the law says and for what it must do in practice.
- Global human rights norms, treaties, and conventions (e.g. Istanbul Convention, UN decisions) help set standards for protection and justice.
- New legal policy challenges with digital harms (deepfakes, non-consensual sharing of private data), and telehealth & availability of abortion drugs are areas where law is evolving / under pressure.
- Intersectional risks: Women who are rural, migrant, caste-marginalised, disabled, or economically disadvantaged are doubly burdened.
What Needs to Change
To turn legal progress into real social protection and equality, several reforms are urgently needed—both in what the law states, and in how it is implemented, enforced, and supported socially and institutionally.
Legal definition changes
- Explicitly criminalise marital rape by removing Exception 2 in Section 375 / BNS 2023.
- Clarify and expand definitions of consent, sexual violence, digital harms.
Access & enforcement
- More accredited clinics, trained providers especially in rural and underserved areas.
- Better functioning ICCs, covering the informal sector or smaller enterprises under POSH.
- Speedier legal processes, more affordable legal aid, safe shelters, trauma-informed policing.
Tech & privacy laws
- Laws should require consent for use of images, protection from image-based abuse, penalties for platforms allowing misuse.
Cultural & social change
- Education campaigns (gender equality, consent, digital privacy etc.).
- Engage both women & men to shift norms.
- Amplify voices of survivors/public interest litigation to push for legal reform.
While India has made commendable steps in reforming laws around reproductive rights and workplace safety, major structural and legal gaps remain—especially regarding marital rape, enforcement of POSH, and equitable access to abortion and privacy protections.
True equality demands more than statutes; it requires political will, institutional reform and cultural change. Laws must be accompanied by accessible services, sensitive implementation, affordable legal aid, safe reporting mechanisms, and strong social norms that respect consent and dignity. Only then will legal rights be more than promises on paper—they will become lived realities for all women, particularly those facing overlapping disadvantages.