Flavia Agnes
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Flavia Agnes is an Indian women's rights lawyer with expertise in marital, divorce, and property law. She has published articles in the journals ''Subaltern Studies'', ''
Economic and Political Weekly The ''Economic and Political Weekly'' (EPW) is a weekly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all social sciences, and is published by the Sameeksha Trust. In January 2018, academic Gopal Guru was named the new Editor of the journal. Guru will be ...
'', and '' Manushi.'' She writes on themes of minorities and law, gender and law, law in the context of women's movements, and on issues of domestic violence, feminist jurisprudence, and minority rights. She is also a lecturer.


Early life

Flavia Agnes was born in
Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...
, India, in 1947. She grew up in
Mangalore Mangaluru (), formerly called Mangalore ( ), is a major industrial port city in the Indian state of Karnataka and on the west coast of India. It is located between the Laccadive Sea and the Western Ghats about west of Bengaluru, the st ...
,
Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...
, where she lived with her maternal aunt. Her parents lived in
Aden Aden () is a port city located in Yemen in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, on the north coast of the Gulf of Aden, positioned near the eastern approach to the Red Sea. It is situated approximately 170 km (110 mi) east of ...
,
Aden Colony Aden Colony () was a crown colony of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1963 located in the southern part of modern-day Yemen. It consisted of the port city of Aden and also included the outlying islands of Kamaran, Perim and the Khuriya Muriya ...
with her four sisters and a brother, who passed away at an early age. Agnes was the only one among her siblings to stay in Mangalore. She studied in a Kannada-medium school until the 10th grade. On the eve of her Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams, her aunt passed away in her sleep and Agnes went to Aden, where she joined her parents. Following her father's death, she took up a job as a typist in a post office to help support her family. She returned to Mangalore with her mother and sisters when she was 20.


Personal life

Soon after they returned to India, her mother urged her to have an
arranged marriage Arranged marriage is a type of Marriage, marital union where the bride and groom are primarily selected by individuals other than the couple themselves, particularly by family members such as the parents. In some cultures, a professional matchmaki ...
. Her marriage was a "wreck" and she was mentally and physically abused. In 1980, Agnes became involved with a women's movement in Mumbai and with the support of the women in the group, she ended her marriage after 13 years. As a Christian, Agnes was not entitled to "divorce on the grounds of cruelty" under the Christian Marriage Act and had to ask for a judicial separation. Agnes had three children with her husband, and following her divorce, she took custody of her two daughters and sent them to a boarding school. She sold her jewellery to buy a small house in Borivali, Mumbai. The church provided an outlet for Agnes to become an activist. She became inspired by church lecturers and external speakers, particularly one entitled: "Christ the Radical" that covered the anti-rape movement. This event in particular led to Agnes joining the Forum against Oppression of Women


Education

Prior to her marriage, Agnes had only completed her SSC exams. Agnes' greater involvement in the women's movement led her to study further to obtain meaningful employment, live independently and secure custody of her children. As a result, Agnes completed the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University (SNDT) entrance exam and completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in
Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
with Distinction in 1980. Agnes then completed an LLB in 1988 and began to practice law at the Mumbai High Court. She later completed her
LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...
from Mumbai University in 1992. She received an
MPhil A Master of Philosophy (MPhil or PhM; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated MPhil (or, at times, as PhM in other countries). MPhil are awarded to postgraduate students after completing at least ...
from National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) in 1997. For her thesis, which was later published by
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, she worked on law and gender equality, examining the politics of personal laws in different religious communities, particularly those affecting women.


Career


Law

Agnes began working in the field of
women in law Women in law describes the role played by women in the law, legal profession and related occupations, which includes lawyers (also called barristers, advocates, solicitors, Attorney at law, attorneys or legal counselors), paralegals, prosecutor ...
in the 1980s, at the beginning of the second phase of the women's movement, and since 1988, Agnes has been a practicing lawyer at the Mumbai High Court. Her own experience with domestic violence inspired her to become a women's rights lawyer. She also advises the government on law implementation and currently advises the
Ministry of Women and Child Development The Ministry of Women and Child Development, a branch of the Government of India, is the apex body responsible for the formulation and administration of the rules, regulations, and laws relating to Women in India, women and Children in India, c ...
in
Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...
. As a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...
, she is concerned with
women's rights Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...
, particularly women's
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
rights. Her goal is to solve women's inequality and impoverishment within the Indian economic structure, especially regarding property ownership. She acknowledges that some
Hindu Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
women were not allowed any property, and other women were allowed a small amount in the pre-colonial and civil time in India under the British law. Women eventually gained more independence before marriage, but not in the sense of property law.


Teaching

Subsequent to her M.Phil., Agnes became a guest faculty at NLSIU. She is also a member of the visiting faculty at National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Hyderabad (NALSAR) and Jindal Global Law School. She has also taught in medical schools.


MAJLIS

Along with Madhushree Dutta, Agnes is the co-founder of MAJLIS, meaning 'association' in Arabic, "a legal and cultural resource centre." that campaigns for and provides legal representation for women on issues such as matrimonial rights and child custody. Since its inception in 1990, MAJLIS has provided legal services for 50,000 women.


Recognition

In August 2018 Power Brands awarded Agnes the Bharatiya Manavata Vikas Puraskar for her work with marginalized and disenfranchised women and children, her contributions to feminist jurisprudence, human rights law and gender studies in India, and for the work of her organisation, Majlis. On Saturday, February 10th, Agnes was awarded the 'Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Lifetime Achievement Award' in Udaipur for her exceptional contributions.


Views


Death penalty

While death in the Indian judiciary system is handed out in cases described as "rarest of rare", Agnes and her team of lawyers at MAJLIS have been prominent critics of the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
and oppose it for all cases. Sometimes their opposition has been controversial, as they opposed it for the accused in both the Nirbhaya case and the Shakti Mills case. Agnes talks of a class bias when it comes to convicting those accused of rape, and points out that as per the rules o
Section 376E
(which allows death penalty for cases of rape) the accused must be "unrepentant repeat offenders". In both the aforementioned cases, that was not the case and, according to Agnes, this type of judgement serves to "dilute" the 'rarest of rare' premise. Agnes is also against the concept that rape is worse than death or that a woman who is raped is a "zinda laash" (walking dead) pointing out that not only does this concept demean women but if rape is equated with murder, "more women will be killed after they are raped. Even worse, fewer women will report rape, particularly if it is committed by a near and dear one."


Sexual assault of men

Agnes has voiced opposition to making rape laws gender neutral, expounding that criminalizing rape of men "harm women more than men" and also said "we omen's groupsopposed it when they made child rape laws gender neutral."


The Global Feminisms Project

Flavia Agnes is a part of the Global Feminisms Project, an archive created in 2002 to explore women scholars and activists around the world. The initial Project focused on four countries:
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, India,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
, and the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, and was headed by the
University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
's Abigail Stewart, Jayati Lal, and Kristin McGuire. Three additional country sites (
Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...
,
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
and
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
) have been added. The project currently consists of seven countries and 79
interviews An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" re ...
. The interviews are focused on the women's experiences and their feminist activism.


References


Further reading

* POCSO
Articles by Flavia Agnes
at ''
The Asian Age ''The Asian Age'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper with editions published in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. It also prints an "international edition" in London. It was launched in February 1994. The same publishing company also pro ...
''
Articles by Flavia Agnes
at ''
The Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight y ...
''
Articles by Flavia Agnes
at ''
The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It was founded as a weekly publication in 1878 by the Triplicane Six, becoming a daily in 1889. It is one of the India ...
''
Articles by Flavia Agnes
at ''
Economic and Political Weekly The ''Economic and Political Weekly'' (EPW) is a weekly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all social sciences, and is published by the Sameeksha Trust. In January 2018, academic Gopal Guru was named the new Editor of the journal. Guru will be ...
''


External links


Majlis

The Global Feminisms Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agnes, Flavia 1947 births Living people Indian women's rights activists Scholars from Mumbai SNDT Women's University alumni University of Mumbai alumni Women educators from Maharashtra Educators from Maharashtra 20th-century Indian lawyers 20th-century Indian women lawyers 21st-century Indian lawyers 21st-century Indian women lawyers