India, Sept. 7 -- Finally, the Supreme Court is working at its full strength of 34 judges. Only one of them, Justice BV Nagarathna is a woman. It's as good a time as any to remember that the last time a woman was appointed to the apex court was August 31, 2021, when not one but three, Hima Kohli, Bela Trivedi and Nagarathna were sworn-in on the same day. In the four years since that "historic" day, not another woman. Earlier this week, 14 new judges were appointed to the Bombay High Court. Just one is a woman. As of March this year, 105 of the 779 high court judges across the country were women, according to the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR). Justice is blind, you could argue, so what's the big deal if it's also gender-blind? Yet, it can hardly be a coincidence that India's top-performing high courts, Telangana, Sikkim and Manipur are also our most gender-representative ones, finds CLPR. In Telangana, 10 of the 30 judges in March 2025 were women. And if you count the number of women in the lower judiciary, then Telangana has managed, incredibly, 50% female representation. In Sikkim, ranked second, 33.3% of the judges are women. Third-ranked Manipur has 25%. In case you're wondering, the worst-ranked - Meghalaya, Tripura, and Uttarakhand - had no women judges as of March 2025. We are a long way from 1937 when Justice Anna Chandy became India's first woman judge, appointed to the district court of Kerala. By now, women should have been more evenly represented in the higher judiciary, bringing their lived and diverse experiences into the adjudication process. Representation matters not necessarily because women are progressive and feminist and men are not. In fact, in some cases, the reverse has proven to be true. But it matters because judges from diverse backgrounds apply their lived experiences to cases, says senior advocate and CLPR executive director Jayna Kothari. "It leads to a better set of judicial outcomes," she said. India's male, dominant-caste, upper-class, majority-religion dominated Supreme Court has been adjudicating on some of the most significant gender issues of our time, from marriage equality to the criminalisation of marital rape. Surely, these judicial pronouncements must be more reflective of the women of this country. "All democratic institutions must respect the diversity of the country," says senior advocate Indira Jaising. And, while "representation is an end in itself, women bring to the table the unique experience of being historically excluded which gives them empathy with others similarly situated." In the 75 years since the Supreme Court came into existence, it cannot be anybody's case that there are no capable women to fill its bench. But, says Kothari, women are judged by a different standard. When the name of Sunanda Bhandare, incidentally my mother-in-law, was proposed for elevation from the bar to the Delhi High Court in 1984, then chief justice Yeshwant Chandrachud objected on the grounds that, at 42, she was "too young". And yet, Chandrachud was even younger when he was elevated to the Bombay high court at 40. Perhaps it's time to rattle a few cages and adopt a quota system - as Parliament finally did with the women's reservation Bill. Sharing power does not come naturally to men; we need an institutional policy that actively mandates that women be elevated to the higher judiciary, says Kothari. And then there's Ruth Bader Ginsburg's famous reply to when there would be enough women judges on the nine-judge US Supreme Court bench: "When there are nine." Maybe, it is time for women in India to echo that and ask for all 34....