Gender and Justice

Pro Public, to make the judicial system more equitable, especially towards issues concerning women, conducted a research entitled “Gender and Justice” in 12 districts of Nepal in 1999. The objectives of this research were to explore judicial attitudes with reference to Nepalese courts' judgments regarding cases of violence against women and document judicial perspective on violence against women through discussion based interviews. The research was conducted with the expectation that the report would provide an opportunity to the judiciary to get an in-depth understanding of the situation encountered by women suffering from violence and to act accordingly. The findings of the research showed that the 79 out of 200 judgments collected were rape cases. Over 67% of the victims of rape are under the age of 16 years. On the basis of the data collected it is inferred that 66.3% of the judges were insensitive or biased against women.