India, Dec. 20 -- It seemed appropriate at the end of the year to hear the unmistakable sound of a glass ceiling crashing down.

The blow was struck by a Supreme Court bench headed by chief justice Surya Kant and justice Joymalya Baghchi who were hearing pleas filed by women lawyers Yogamaya MG and Shehla Chaudhary.

The women pointed out the painful, and frankly embarrassing, fact that in the six decades since it was set up in 1961, the 20-member executive committee of the Bar Council of India had never elected a woman. Across India, only six of 441 elected representatives in 18 state bar councils are women. And 11 of these bar councils have zero women executive members.

This exclusion is "structural, systemic and constitutionally indef...