The Supreme Court now has three women judges, up from two, yet women constitute only 8.1 percent of its working strength. Critics argue the Collegium system, which self-selects judges from among senior advocates and sitting judges, structurally disadvantages women by relying on informal networks dominated by men. No woman has ever served as Chief Justice of India, and representation at High Court level remains similarly low, raising questions about whether judicial self-appointment reproduces existing gender hierarchies.

The Collegium system governs judicial appointments to the Supreme Court and High Courts through a body of the five senior-most Supreme Court judges, led by the Chief Justice. It emerged from the Three Judges Cases — S.P. Gupta (1981), Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (1993), and the Presidential Reference (1998) — which progressively shifted appointment power from the executive to the judiciary in the name of judicial independence.

The system has no statutory basis; it operates through constitutional convention and Supreme Court interpretation of Articles 124 and 217. Crucially, it has no mandatory diversity criteria, no transparent shortlisting process, and no obligation to consider gender representation.

This matters for CLAT PG because the examiner tests understanding of how structural design — not just explicit discrimination — can produce gender-unequal outcomes, linking directly to indirect discrimination doctrine and the reasonable accommodation principle. The 8.1 percent figure is not merely a statistic; it is evidence that an institution can formally prohibit discrimination while its selection architecture systematically filters out women.

For UPSC, the static angle is the constitutional framework: Articles 124 and 217 govern Supreme Court and High Court appointments respectively; the Three Judges Cases are the precedent backbone; and the NJAC judgment (2015) is the most recent constitutional moment where the Supreme Court struck down Parliament's attempt to replace the Collegium. The tension between judicial independence and democratic accountability — including gender diversity — is the live policy debate the examiner anchors questions to.