Legislation and Legitimization of Gender Discriminatory Practices
One of the many variables of social construction is law and gender. The debate of whether the law shapes the society or the society shapes the law can be understood through the inter-relationship between law and gender. As a social construct, Law plays its role through legitimizing the existing gender practices or condemning such practices. Whereas gender practices plays its role by showing the status of gender stratification in the society. In the study of inter-connection between gender and law, gender stratification provides a valuable insight of both the law and society. It helps to see whether the gender discriminatory practices are legitimized through the legislation or not. Gender discriminatory practices are not only unconstructive to the growth of society but also pose a serious threat to the wellbeing of people. Such Gender discriminatory practices stem primarily from customs, but when the law itself legitimizes these practices, it becomes increasingly difficult to curb such malpractices. The primary aim of the law is to secure the well-being of people. So why then, does the law itself legitimize such detrimental practices?
In this aspect, this paper will look into the historical background of gender discriminatory practices and how the Nepalese law has gradually institutionalized such practices. To show that in many instances, a defective law has been the easiest tool to legitimize discriminatory practices. The paper will further analyze the existing discriminatory provisions and its effect on the society. Furthermore, the paper will try to give a jurisprudential explanation of the reasons behind legitimizing such discriminatory practices. Finally, the paper shows how legitimizing such practices have an adverse impact on the society by continuing to allow space for discrimination based on gender. For this purpose, the researchers will be using various forms of secondary data including books and papers related to jurisprudence and the history of gender discrimination in Nepal. Relevant laws will be analyzed and the researchers will also use some important case laws to analyze the prevalent gender discriminatory practices and the judicial responses to such practices.