Five laws that every woman in India needs to know

India’s legal landscape around women’s safety has evolved dramatically over the past few decades—shaped by landmark rulings, public movements, and relentless advocacy. 

From workplace harassment and domestic violence to cyber safety and maternity rights, these laws cover a wide range of everyday harms and recognise women’s dignity, autonomy, and right to work and live without violence. 

Knowing that these laws exist is important for Indian women today. HerStory breaks down five key protections—what they guarantee, why they exist, and how they’re meant to be used.

Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act)

The POSH Act, passed in 2013 and notified on December 9 that year (Act 14 of 2013), was brought into effect because, for far too long, when harassment happened at work, women had nowhere official to turn. 

Back in 1997, the Supreme Court stepped in through the ‘Vishakha & Others v. State of Rajasthan’ case, after the brutal gang-rape of Bhanwari Devi, stating clearly that sexual harassment isn’t just inappropriate conduct, but a violation of our fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, and 21. 

Those guidelines were supposed to protect women everywhere, but in reality, most workplaces—small or big—had no formal way to handle complaints. The parliament finally stepped in and turned the Vishakha guidelines into law, giving India its first proper system that requires employers to prevent harassment, listen to women, and actually do something.

Key features:

The Act mandates that any workplace with 10 or more people must set up an Internal Complaints Committee (Section 4), and every district must have a Local Complaints Committee (Section 6), so women in unorganised work aren’t left out. 

Section 11(3) gives them civil court powers to call evidence and examine witnesses. Employers must also run training, keep clear policies, and file annual reports under Section 21. The Act covers employees, interns, domestic workers, clients, and even visitors. If an employer shrugs off these duties, Section 26 makes that a punishable offence too, turning what used to be optional “sensitivity” into real, enforceable accountability.

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 - Provisions on Cyber-stalking, Voyeurism & Harassment

The law, though enacted in 1860, became directly relevant to women’s digital safety after the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, introduced Sections 354C and 354D in response to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape and the Justice Verma Committee recommendations, which recognised that stalking, voyeurism, and online following or monitoring were forms of gender-based violence as much that needed explicit criminalisation.  Post July 2024, the Indian Penal Code was replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS). Most offences continue, but their section numbers have changed.

Courts have since applied these provisions to cases involving repeated online messaging, tracking, or non-consensual image circulation.

Key features:

Under BNS, Section 77 (Voyeurism) criminalises capturing, publishing or transmitting images of a woman in a private act without her consent. Section 78 (Stalking) covers both physical and cyber-stalking, including repeated electronic contact or monitoring. Section 79 (Acts intended to insult a woman’s dignity) penalises words, gestures or actions—offline or online—meant to violate a woman’s sense of dignity or privacy.

Section 354 (Defamation) now covers harm to reputation under BNS, including digital publications.

Together, these provisions function as the core legal tools used in police complaints involving online harassment, non-consensual images, impersonation, and other forms of gendered digital abuse.

Information Technology Act, 2000 

The IT Act, passed in 2000, was amended in 2008 with the introduction of a section (66E) specifically to address the violation of privacy. This law became crucial for women’s cyber safety following the expansion of social media, smartphones, and digital image sharing, resulting in increased incidents of privacy violations, non-consensual circulation of intimate images, and revenge porn. This led to stronger reliance on Sections 66E, 67, and 67A for criminal prosecution.

Key features:

Section 66E penalises the intentional capture or sharing of images of a person’s intimate body parts without consent; Section 67 criminalises publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form; and Section 67A provides enhanced punishment for sexually explicit content.

Together, they serve as the IT Act’s primary provisions invoked in cases of digital voyeurism, morphed images, hacked accounts, and non-consensual sexual content distribution.

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005

The PWDVA, enacted in 2005 and notified in 2006, was created because the tools women had until then simply weren’t enough. Criminal provisions like Section 498A IPC dealt with cruelty, but they couldn’t give women the right they needed to stay in their own home without fear, a protection order that could be enforced quickly, or financial support when abuse at home cut off their access to money. 

India’s commitments under the UN treaty Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women pushed the country to recognise domestic violence in all its forms—physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and economic—and to build a system that didn’t wait for harm to become fatal before offering help.

Until this Act, India had no law that offered civil remedies such as residence rights, interim protection, monetary relief, or child custody orders. The PWDVA changed that entirely. 

It became India’s first rights-based law to combine civil protections with criminal enforcement—a hybrid framework designed specifically for the realities of domestic violence and the gaps women fell through. It remains the first Indian law to give women a layered, enforceable framework for safety in their own homes.

Key features:

Section 3 defines domestic violence to include physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and economic abuse; Sections 17–19 secure a woman’s right to reside in the shared household and allow courts to issue residence and protection orders; and Section 20 offers monetary relief. 

Section 21 provides for the temporary custody of children, and Section 31 makes breaching a protection order a criminal offence. These provisions aimed to create a pathway where protection officers and magistrates’ courts could work together to offer fast, practical, and legally binding support.

Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 (amended in 2017)

The Maternity Benefit Act has been around since 1961. It was created to guarantee paid leave and basic job protection for women during pregnancy. But it took on a new life in 2017, when the parliament expanded it through the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act. 

With more women entering the formal workforce and global standards on maternal health shifting, the law finally caught up, extending paid leave, recognising adoptive and commissioning mothers, and introducing the now-mandatory crèche provision. 

The update was meant to make it easier for women to stay in their jobs through their pregnancy, childbirth, and early childcare, instead of being pushed out of the workforce altogether.

Key features:

Under the amended law, Section 5 increases paid maternity leave to 26 weeks for a woman’s first two children, while Section 5(4) gives 12 weeks of leave to adoptive and commissioning mothers. 

Section 11A brings in a major shift by requiring workplaces with 50 or more employees to set up a crèche and allow mothers four visits a day, and Section 4 makes it illegal to employ a woman during the first six weeks after childbirth. 

In all, these provisions give women real, enforceable protections at a time when their jobs and income are often most vulnerable.