For a long time, becoming a judge was one of the careers I could imagine for myself. Like many law students, I associated the judiciary with independence, public service and the opportunity to work with the law in a way that directly affects people's lives. The judicial services examination, therefore, seemed like a natural option.

But recently, I have found myself asking a question I did not expect to ask this early in my legal career: Do I actually want to join the judiciary?

Two things I read recently made that question harder to ignore.

The first was Bharat Chugh's recent piece, 1 year or 3 years, we are asking the wrong question, which questioned whether the debate around the period of practice required before entering judicial service is really addressing the larger problem.

The second was the recent public remarks of Senior Advocate Indira Jaising on sexual harassment within the judiciary. On September 1, 2026, she spoke of women judges who had approached her with complaints against male judges.

The two issues are very different. One concerns how people enter the judiciary. The other concerns what it can be like to work within it. But together, they made me ask a more personal question: What kind of professional life am I choosing if I choose the judiciary?

The debate over judicial recruitment has understandably focused on eligibility. The precise question of whether 1 year or 3 years of practice produces better judges is important. But the larger question is: why are we concentrating so much on how people enter the judiciary without asking enough about the career they are entering?

For a young law student, clearing an examination is not the end of the decision. It is the beginning. A candidate is also thinking about where she will be posted, what her professional life will look like, how she can progress, what opportunities exist within the system and whether she can imagine herself doing the job for the next 20 or 30 years.

For someone entering the subordinate judiciary, there is an obvious question about professional progression. There is a career structure within the subordinate judiciary, but there is also the possibility of eventually reaching the High Court. That possibility should not be misunderstood as a promise. Not every judicial officer can or should expect elevation to a High Court.

But there is a difference between knowing that advancement is necessarily limited and knowing how the path to advancement works. How many judicial officers eventually reach the High Courts? How many of them are women? What factors shape those decisions? How transparent is the process from the perspective of someone at the beginning of the judicial career?

Women are not absent from the Indian judiciary. In fact, their representation is considerably stronger at the lower levels.

Data from the Supreme Court's Centre for Research and Planning has put women's representation in the district judiciary at around 36.3%. The picture is very different in the High Courts. As of July 1, 2026, women constituted 111 of 781 sitting High Court judges, or approximately 14.2%. The Supreme Court presents an even sharper contrast. There are currently only 2 women among its current 34 judges.

These figures should be treated carefully. They do not represent a single cohort being followed from the district judiciary to the Supreme Court. The routes of appointment, eligibility requirements, age profiles and career timelines are different. Nor do the figures, by themselves, prove that women are being denied elevation because they are women.

If women are entering the lower judiciary in significant numbers, what happens to them as they move through?

Perhaps the answer is perfectly explainable. Perhaps it involves seniority, professional experience, the structure of appointments, personal choices, family responsibilities, attrition or several other factors. But if we do not collect and examine the data, we cannot know. We often ask how many women have entered the judiciary. Perhaps we should also ask how many stay, how many progress and how many reach the higher judiciary.

This is where my hesitation becomes more personal.

Indira Jaising's concerns are not entirely hypothetical. In Additional District and Sessions Judge ‘X’ v. Registrar General, High Court of Madhya Pradesh, the Supreme Court dealt with the circumstances surrounding a woman judicial officer's allegations, transfer and resignation. While the allegations of sexual harassment were not ultimately established, the Court ordered her reinstatement.

For someone considering entering the judiciary, however, the most important question is not whether one particular allegation is true. It is: If something happens to me, will I feel safe enough to speak about it? That should not be a question a young woman has to ask before choosing a career. But it is a question that many women ask in many professions. And the judiciary is not exempt from that reality.

The judiciary is necessarily hierarchical and it serves a legitimate purpose. Courts cannot function without structure and accountability. But hierarchy can also affect how a person experiences a workplace complaint.

A woman who is being harassed at work may not simply be deciding whether to complain about a colleague. Depending on the circumstances, she may be deciding whether to complain about someone senior to her, someone with influence over her professional environment or someone she may continue to encounter throughout her career.

That changes the nature of the decision. This is why the existence of a formal complaint mechanism is not, by itself, enough. People also need to believe that they can use that mechanism without losing their dignity, professional opportunities or sense of security. That is particularly important in an institution where hierarchy is an unavoidable part of professional life.

There is also a larger constitutional point. Indian courts have played a central role in developing protections against sexual harassment at the workplace. In Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, the Supreme Court recognised sexual harassment as implicating women's fundamental rights to equality, dignity and the freedom to work in a safe environment. The point is not that the judiciary should be treated as uniquely problematic.

An institution that has played such an important role in articulating principles of equality, dignity and workplace safety should also be willing to examine how those principles operate within its own institutional environment.

This is perhaps what I have been thinking about most. When we talk about women in the judiciary, the conversation often begins with recruitment. How many women appeared for the examination? How many were selected? How many women judges are there?

These numbers matter. But a career is a journey, not a single appointment. A system may be successful at one stage and still lose people at another. If the judiciary wants to understand women's representation properly, it should ask who stays and who leaves? Who gets promoted and who gets considered for elevation?

And perhaps the most difficult question: Who thinks about joining and decides not to apply?

A woman who never sits for the examination does not appear in a table of women judges. But her decision may still have been influenced by what she knows or believes about the career. Perhaps she is concerned about transfers. Perhaps she has family responsibilities. Perhaps she has questions about workplace safety. Perhaps she wants a professional environment in which she can see a clear path of growth. Or perhaps she simply prefers another career.

Not every woman who chooses litigation, corporate practice, academia or another profession has been pushed away from the judiciary. But neither should we assume that career choices happen in a vacuum.

If I am honest, the answers are not particularly complicated.

First, I would want greater transparency about career progression. Not a guarantee that I would eventually become a High Court judge. That would be unrealistic. But I would want to understand how the judicial career progresses, what the relevant institutional criteria are and what professional opportunities are realistically available.

Second, I would want confidence in workplace-safety mechanisms that already exist. My question is not simply whether a mechanism exists on paper. It is whether a woman judicial officer would feel sufficiently secure to use it when the complaint involves someone senior, someone who may have administrative authority over her, or someone whose position gives them influence within the institution. A formal mechanism can tell a person where to complain. It cannot, by itself, tell her whether she will feel protected after she does. Would I have confidence that speaking up would not affect my professional life?

Third, I would want better gender-disaggregated data. The judiciary should track not only how many women enter, but how many remain, progress, leave and reach higher positions. If there is a significant drop at any particular stage, that should be investigated rather than merely observed. Regular exit surveys could reveal concerns that recruitment statistics cannot.

Lastly, the practical conditions of judicial service deserve more attention. Transfers, accommodation, childcare, maternity and family responsibilities may not be exclusively women's concerns, but they can affect women's career choices in particular ways. The concern begins with something much more basic. In 2022, data compiled by the Supreme Court showed that 26% of court complexes did not even have separate toilets for women. More recent data placed before the Supreme Court found that 19.7% of district court complexes still lacked separate ladies' toilets, while 73.4% lacked female-friendly washrooms with basic sanitation facilities.

Before asking women to imagine spending 20 or 30 years in the judiciary, perhaps the institution should first be able to guarantee that they can spend a working day there with basic dignity. An institution that wants to retain women cannot treat these matters as peripheral to professional life.

I am not saying that the judiciary is inherently hostile, or that my uncertainty proves systemic failure. It is only one person's uncertainty. But perhaps that is precisely why it is worth talking about. Because institutions are ultimately made up of people making individual choices.

If a young law student looks at the judiciary and thinks, I want to do this, that is a success.

If another looks at the same institution and thinks, I am not sure I want this life, perhaps the institution should be interested in understanding why.

I still have not decided whether I will sit for the judicial services examination. But I now think that asking whether I can clear the examination is only the first question. I also have to ask whether I can see myself building a professional life there.

That is not a rejection of the judiciary. It is simply a question that any young lawyer should be allowed to ask before committing to a career. If the judiciary genuinely wants more women judges, the answer cannot simply be to tell more women to take the examination. It has to ask what those women see when they look 10, 15 or 20 years into the future. Getting women through the door is important. Giving them a reason to stay is just as important.

I suppose that is the question I am left with. Not whether I am capable of becoming a judge, but whether I can see myself building a life and a career within the institution. That is a question the judiciary cannot answer for me. But it is one it should be willing to hear.

Faiza Kazmi is a law student at Jamia Millia Islamia.