Published Paper Details:

ABSTRACT Keywords: Personal laws, Gender, Inequality, Women, Reforms. �Human rights are women�s rights and women�s rights are human rights� Hillary Clinton. India is a country with people of different communities, religion, caste, creed, etc. People are governed under their own personal laws in the personal matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, etc. The various provisions pose a serious threat against equality and are discriminatory in nature. Women are entitled to same rights as all other living beings. The framers of the Constitution of India were much inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This is evident from that the fact that they have incorporated many provisions of UDHR to protect these rights. Article 14 holds Equality before Law and equal protection of law, Article 15 prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste or sex. Moreover, Government of India acceded to Convention for the Elimination of all forms of discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979. Despite of all these efforts, inequality and discrimination against women in India is prevalent and one of the most important areas where this inequality is evident is in Mohmmaden Law. Personal laws have provided fewer rights to women. The Muslim law gave way to many problems faced by women like polygamy, triple talaq, early marriage, dowry, domestic violence etc. The Indian Judiciary also observed negative impact of Muslim Personal law on women in various of its judgements. These laws are borrowed from religious text which indicates favouritism to men. Women rights in relation to personal matters are not properly protected under these personal laws. This has resulted in violation of human rights of women. The present paper seeks to clarify how the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code in India would help in achieving Gender Equality. The authors would also examine the provisions of Muslim law which are discriminatory against women and suggest reforms vis-a-vis protection of rights of women.