Bar Jobs Open to Indian Women

Women in India have won the right to work as bar staff and serve alcohol after a landmark ruling by the country's supreme court dismissed a petition calling for a ban on females behind the bar.

Although laws vary across India, almost all states impose restrictions on women working behind a bar.

Perhaps the most draconian ruling was in Delhi, which banned women from serving on the grounds they needed to be protected from the bad behavior of drunken men.

The Delhi government had also said that liquor was the common factor behind most cases of domestic and sexual violence.

Delhi's authorities cited the case of Jessica Lall, a model who was shot dead while working as a barmaid in 1999 after refusing a customer a drink.

A ruling in New Delhi in January this year, which said women could do bar work in hotels and restaurants, ended a 92-year-old law barring their employment. But in August the Delhi government sought a ban on such jobs for women.

The supreme court has decided that such attitudes are outdated for modern India. Justices S B Sinha and H S Bedi said it was a matter of equality and that every person irrespective of gender had the right to pursue a profession.

The bench also cut the age limit of bar staff from 25 to 21.

Female bar staff commented that the legal change was long overdue.

Ami Shroff, 22, who has worked in a Mumbai bar for three years, said: "If they were doing this to protect women then why were we allowed in the bars to drink? They should have banned us from both sides of the bar. Any career a man can do, a woman can do. This is 2007 after all."

Training institutes say the move will be welcomed by industry, which had pushed for women staff because they were seen to lend an "air of elegance" to the work.

"Women are just going to make for a better atmosphere in bars. There's no doubt about that," said Sandeep Verma, of the Institute of Bar Operations and Management, a training facility in New Delhi. "Since the judgment I've been receiving lots of calls from hotels and bars looking for women bartenders. Right now women are a small part of our intake but I can see that going up to 30% pretty soon."

Although it seems unlikely that bar work will ever be seen as a career to rival the middle-class occupations of computer programmer or medical doctor, there are signs now that in the larger cities bar work is drawing a more upmarket employee.

"I think what really needs to change is the industry's mindset," said Shadbi Basu, who fronts a popular Indian television show on drinking. "It is not enough for the law to change but the drinking culture has to become more sophisticated. We are some way behind Europe and the US."