Primary Job Title Co-Founder Primary Organization 
Majlis Legal Center
Location Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Regions Asia-Pacific (APAC) Gender Female
LinkedIn View on LinkedIn
Flavia Agnes is a women’s rights lawyer. A pioneer of the women’s movement, she has worked consistently on issues of gender and law reforms. As Co-Founder of MAJLIS, a legal and cultural resource centre, her primary engagement has been to provide quality legal services to women and children.
Flavia has played an important role in bringing
women's rights to the forefront within the legal system and in contextualizing issues of gender and identity. A prolific writer, she has provided incisive analysis of many social trends and legal reforms including domestic violence, minority law reforms, secularism and human rights. Significant among her many publications is her autobiographical book "My Story Our Story ... Of Rebuilding Broken Lives" which has been translated into several languages. Other publications included Law & Gender Inequality – The Politics of Personal Laws in India’ and an Omnibus, ‘Women and Law’ (co-edit) both published by Oxford University Press.
Flavia is one of the proponents of legal pluralism. Within the premise of ‘reforms from within’ she has played an important role in reforming the Christian Personal Laws as well as advancing the rights of Muslim women. Flavia's more recent engagement has been with issues of democracy, secularism and identity politics. Flavia's organisation, Majlis has worked consistently in countering the rising wave of Hindu fundamentalism in the country. After the communal carnage in Gujarat, India in 2002, Flavia initiated a legal advocacy program for sexually violated women in relief camps and subsequently has brought out a publication titled, “Of Lofty Claims and Muffled Voices’ (2002).
