Law Commons^™

Working Through Menopause, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman, Naomi R. Cahn

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

There are over thirty million people ages 44 to 55 in the civilian labor force in the United States, but the law and legal scholarship are largely silent about a health condition that approximately half of those workers inevitably will experience. Both in the United States and elsewhere, menopause remains mostly a taboo topic, because of cultural stigmas and attitudes about aging and gender. Yet menopause raises critical issues at the intersections of gender equity, disability, aging, transgender rights, and reproductive justice. This Article imagines how the law would change if it accounted for menopause and the associated unequal burdens …

Contextualizing Menopause In The Law, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman, Naomi R. Cahn

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

“It is horrendous, but then it’s magnificent,” says one character about menopause in an episode of the 2019 Netflix comedy Fleabag. Her younger interlocutor is incredulous at this proclamation. That younger character, and even the audience, may be somewhat taken aback by this frank discussion. After all, menopause is not a subject that is commonly discussed, let alone praised. Whether among friends, acquaintances, or colleagues (fictional or not), silence about menopause is more likely the norm. This is true in the law, too. The law mostly ignores menopause.

The law’s silence about menopause is linked to a broader cultural silence …

Abortion, Pregnancy Loss, & Subjective Fetal Personhood, Greer Donley, Jill Wieber Lens

Articles

Longstanding dogma dictates that recognizing pregnancy loss threatens abortion rights—acknowledging that miscarriage and stillbirth involve a loss, the theory goes, creates a slippery slope to fetal personhood. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have capitalized on this tension and weaponized the grief that can accompany pregnancy loss in their efforts to legislate personhood and end abortion rights. In response, abortion rights advocates have at times fought legislative efforts to support those experiencing pregnancy loss, and more recently, remained silent, alienating those who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth.

This Article is the first to argue that this perceived tension can be reconciled through …

Managing And Monitoring The Menopausal Body, Naomi R. Cahn, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Essay explores how menopausal bodies are managed and monitored through both menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and the burgeoning market for technology-driven menopause products and services. While each of these allegedly improves the menopause experience, a closer investigation reveals a more complex interaction of profit motives and traditional notions of gender identity. The Essay identifies problems with—and suggests some solutions for reforming—current practices of monitoring and managing the menopausal body.

Careful consideration of menopause brings this Essay into ongoing conversations about theorizing beyond the gender binary and stereotypical notions of femininity. Purveyors of both MHT and menopause-related digital products and …

'And Ain't I A Woman?': Feminism, Immigrant Caregivers, And New Frontiers For Equality, Shirley Lin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that feminist and other critical legal theories can address the profound inequalities that immigrant workers face. Part I draws from a body of feminist, political, and social science theories regarding social reproduction to assess the situation of immigrant domestic workers and their recent efforts to claim inclusion in workplace laws and protections. It locates the increasingly carceral dynamics that are expressed in the law and in state infrastructure and continuously undermine immigrant women's economic and social stability, as explained in further detail in Parts L.A and I.B.2, infra. Unbeknownst to many, the present period is the most …

Law's Nobility, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article first aims to set out the feminist theory of Catharine MacKinnon as explicitly as possible and in a way that accounts for its incredible power. To strengthen MacKinnon's theoretical project, the article proposes some modifications to the original that are drawn from, in part, the critiques of queer theorists. The crucial departure proposed here concerns MacKinnon's "critique of desire," which in my view is deeply mistaken. Rather than distrusting the sexual desires of women as hopelessly polluted by subordination, we should be neutral -- neither critical nor confident -- regarding the degree to which our desires, if fulfilled, …