Women, Law and Public Opinion

"In a democratic set up, relationship between law and public opinion is of great significance. This book seeks to examine the complex interaction between the two in the context of women’s rights in the world’s largest liberal democracies—USA and India. The author undertook this comparative empirical study of the abortion debate in the USA and the dowry problem in India. While in the USA, public opinion stood ahead of law and influenced subsequent judicial decision and policy-making; but in India, law tried to lead the change in public opinion but encountered very strong public resistance and had to be modified in the line of the prevailing social opinion. To what extent was law an effective instrument in transforming the status of women in India and the USA has been examined in a comparative framework. The study reveals that the development of public opinion in a democratic polity is slow and gradual. The existing patriarchal social arrangements and values in the two settings prevented effective implementation of legally mandated social change in favour of women. Despite legal guarantee of equal rights, women’s actual capacity to exercise them effectively remains restricted in both the countries. Hence, the law could empower women only when preceded and followed by public opinion."