Digital Commons Network^™

How Privacy Got Its Gender, Anita L. Allen, Erin Mack

Northern Illinois University Law Review

This article suggests that the right to privacy, as it was originally described by Warren and Brandeis, reflects their era's gender bias. The authors describe the social, economic and legal background for the original, gender-biased pronouncement of the right, as well as its subsequent development, and how this bias affects legal scholarship in the area today. The authors suggest that legal scholars need to be more sensitive to the gender bias that exists in privacy law, and that alternative analyses which recognize this bias already exist.