GENDER RIGHTS VS PERSONAL LAWS: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to recommend that research be undertaken to evaluate the unremunerated domestic activities of women to quantify and include this in the GNP (Sunder Rajan, 2015). While compensation and maintenance have to be an integral part of gender justice, feminists emphatically claim that women deserve social security for their life long contribution into maintaining families and nurturing it with their labour. Just a social security for the rural poor is assured via a public works programme, such as the employment guarantee schemes like MGNREGA, similar provisions should exist for providing social security for women and other marginal individuals within the marital home and family. In a society where all women’s lives are defined using marriage as a standard, those who find themselves deserted and abandoned will be assured of a maintenance, that seeking access to justice will prove less burdensome. In a situation where marriage is the only means and sustenance for women, alternatives need to be provided by the state such as housing facilities through working women’s hostels, preferential housing for single women at reasonable rates, and short stay homes for migrant women (FAOW, 2017). The civil law for protection of women against domestic violence does provide material entitlements as a means of relief, including access to residence, monetary compensation, and maintenance, thereby recognising the woman’s right and equal entitlement to the familial space and relationship (NCW, 2022). However, it was a 30 year long drawn battle by feminist activists, lawyers and scholars to achieve this deserved claim for justice from the courts and society. In the final analysis, given the impetus by the courts and a groundswell of articulations that are rising from the margins, it can be hoped that the state will recognise the merit of according women their rights and access to justice. On the other hand, if the forces of conservatism prevail, as they are at present in an ascendence, with impunity accorded by the state, then regressive forces are likely to shift the discourse in their favour. This would mean the resurgence of patriarchal dominance, control of the heteronormative familial structure over the dependent members of the family, lack of sustenance in the event of destitution and desertion, lack of property or social security for women and children in such situations. This would indeed reflect a sorry state of affairs for gender justice. Additionally, while Ambedkar’s vision of secularisation and modernisation would stand compromised, the developments on the contrary are worrisome at another level. In Maharashtra, the BJP-led 97