Law Commons^™

Chinese Women And Economic Human Rights, Lisa Fry

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Women’s human rights in China have an intriguing history and a challenging present. In ancient China, Confucianism espoused the virtues of silent women who stayed at home. During the Maoist period, on the other hand, gender equality was prioritized by the state, and women were equally appointed to leadership positions and agricultural collectives with men. After Mao’s death, the country transitioned to a social market economic system that resulted in a loss of state support for gender equity. Today, the rights of women in China are not clearly defined, protected, or promoted. China’s patriarchal traditions have reasserted themselves, obstructing women’s …

White Anxieties And The Articulation Of Race: The Women’S Movement And The Making Of White Australia, 1910s–1930s, Jane L. Carey

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter examines the racial anxieties at work in the Australian women’s movement in the early 1900s, focussing on campaigns and organisations aimed at increasing and ‘improving’ the white population on the one hand and discussions of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ on the other. It particularly examines the activities of the National Council of Women, the largest women’s group of this period, and the Australian Federation of Women Voters, a smaller but highly influential organisation, as well as local groups which emerged to further these causes. Specifically, it explores efforts to promote immigration from Britain, which went alongside eugenic measures to …

Men And Women Of The Bar: The Impact Of Gender On Legal Careers, Kenneth Glenn Dau-Schmidt, Marc Galanter, Kaushik Mukhopadhaya, Kathleen E. Hull

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this study, we use the University of Michigan Law School Alumni Data Set to undertake an empirical analysis of the impact of gender on the legal profession and the differences that gender makes in the careers and lives of attorneys. With regular survey responses from Michigan alumni from 1967 until the present, the University of Michigan Law School Alumni Data Set provides a unique opportunity to examine these questions from the days when female attorneys were rare, to the arrival of the first generation of women to achieve significant presence in the legal profession.

Migration, Development, And The Promise Of Cedaw For Rural Women, Lisa R. Pruitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this Essay provides an overview of the rural-to-urban migration phenomenon, a trend the author calls the urban juggernaut. This Part includes a discussion of forces compelling the migration, and it also considers consequences for those who are left behind when their family members and neighbors migrate to cities. Part II explores women's roles in food production in the developing world, and it considers the extent to which international development efforts encourage or entail urbanization. Part III attends to the potential of human rights for this population, analyzing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination …

Foreword, Margaret E. Johnson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Women's Protocol To The African Charter And Sexual Violence In The Context Of Armed Conflict Or Other Mass Atrocity, Susana Sacouto, Katherine A. Cleary

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Imagine All The Women: Power, Gender And The Transformative Possibilities Of The South African Constitution, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This chapter will explore the South African Constitution, and more particularly, the Bill of Rights, as a vehicle for social and economic transformation. By analyzing the provisions relating to gender equality in South Africa's Constitution, as well as decisions of the Constitutional Court, this chapter will examine whether theconstitutional rights framework in South Africa contains within it the transformative possibilities that will lead to gender equality in all spheres of South African society, and particularly in the economic sphere.

Contraception: Securing Feminism’S Promise, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper traces the history of attempts to restrict contraception, the legal events securing widespread access to contraception and their importance to a generation of college-aged women, the short-lived nature of the consensus that produced them, and the potential of the issue to serve as a rallying point for a revitalized feminism. It explores the hypocrisy of a system that, whatever its values, makes reproductive autonomy readily available for the affluent and the sophisticated and increasingly beyond the reach of the most vulnerable. Finally, it considers the potential of contraception as a reframing device, capable of exposing the hypocrisy of …

Opuz V. Turkey: Europe's Landmark Judgment On Violence Against Women, Tarik Abdel-Monem

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Death Penalty For Women In North Carolina, Elizabeth Rapaport, Victor Streib

Faculty Scholarship

Is Justice Marshall right? Have women received "favored treatment" under our death penalty laws and procedures? The national data might lead to such a presumption, given that over 99% of the people executed in the United States are men, but the analyses and explanations are far from simple. The authors have written about this national phenomenon for the past two decades, sharing a strong interest in the issue but not always agreeing in their explanations. Now we examine the North Carolina experience within the national context. This article reports the results of that examination, beginning with North Carolina's history of …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that Norway’s Corporate Board Quota Law (“CBQ”) fosters a productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres. Recent studies indicate that higher numbers of women in executive positions result in stronger rates of corporate return on equity (“ROE”). Countries with higher levels of women's political representation also tend to have higher levels of economic growth. Increasing women's workforce participation outside the home can drive overall economic growth. These factors prompted the CBQ's proponents to argue for the economic imperative of women's corporate leadership. The CBQ will not only ameliorate gender inequality, but will bring new life to …

Which Came First, The Data Or The Politics? Disentangling Questions About Women's Aptitude For Science, Carlin Meyer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

A 'Ho New World: Raced And Gendered Insult As Ersatz Carnival And The Corruption Of Freedom Of Expression Norms, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Carnivalization, a concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and later employed in broad social and cultural contexts, is the tearing down of social norms, the elimination of boundaries, and the inversion of established hierarchies. It is the world turned upside down. Ersatz carnival is a pernicious, inverted form of carnival, one wherein counter-discourses propounded by outsiders are appropriated by elites and frequently redeployed to silence and exclude those same outsiders. The use of the slur "'ho" by gangsta' rappers in the performance of songs that articulate a vision of urban culture is an example of carnivalization. Thus, when words …

Women’S Unequal Citizenship At The Border: Lessons From Three Nonfiction Films About The Women Of Juárez, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

There is no better illustration of the impact of borders on women’s equal citizenship than the three documentaries reviewed in this essay. All three deal with the femicides that befell the young women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico between 1993 and 2005. Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Performing the Border (1999) stimulates the viewer’s imagination regarding the ephemeral nature of borders and their impact on the citizenship of women who live at the intersection of local, regional, national and international legal regimes. Señorita Extraviada (2001) is an intimate portrait of the victims which illustrates why the …

Immigration Restriction As Redistributive Taxation: Working Women And The Costs Of Protectionism In The Labor Market, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after-tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers from immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages female participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary to …

Wanted: Female Corporate Directors (A Review Of Professor Douglas M. Branson's No Seat At The Table), Joan Macleod Heminway, Sarah A. Walters

Scholarly Works

In his 2007 book No Seat at the Table, Professor Douglas Branson aptly describes how patterns of male dominance inherent in the legal structures of corporate governance reproduce themselves again and again to keep women out of executive suites and boardrooms, and then he offers a practical way to break this cycle of dominance-through paradigm shifting. A central value of Professor Branson's book derives from this thesis, as well as his use of nontraditional empirical data and interdisciplinary literature (in addition to more traditional decisional law and legal scholarship) to support the positions he takes. Moreover, No Seat at …

Why So Slow: A Comparative View Of Women's Political Leadership, Paula Monopoli

Paula A Monopoli

No abstract provided.

Tracking Civilian Casualties In Combat Zones Using Civilian Battle Damage Assessment Ratios., E Cameron, M Spagat, M Hicks

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks

No abstract provided.

The Irrational Woman: Informed Consent And Abortion Decision-Making, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safer for their patients. Carhart presented a watershed moment in abortion law, because it marks the Supreme Court’s first use of the anti-abortion movement’s “woman-protective” rationale to uphold a ban on abortion and the first time since Roe v. Wade that the Court denied women a health exception to an abortion restriction. The woman-protective rationale asserts that banning abortion promotes women’s mental health. According to Carhart, the State should make the final decisions about pregnant women’s healthcare, because …

Abuse And Discretion: Evaluating Judicial Discretion In Custody Cases Involving Violence Against Women, Dana Harrington Conner

Dana Harrington Conner

This Article is an exploration of the history and creation of the broad power of the custody trial judge, the unsatisfactory standards applied in custody cases involving violence against women, and our system’s inability to adequately review flawed decisions at the appellate level. The Article deconstructs both the process of judicial decision-making at the trial court level in custody cases involving batterers and the standards applied to these cases at the appellate court stage. In addition, the Article also proposes a multi-level approach to resolving the domestic violence dilemma in a custody case.

History confirms that the custody trial judge …

Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

‘A Recommitment To The Idea Of Substantive Equality’ (Or Not)? S. 15(1) Of The Charter Of Rights After Kapp: Harris V Canada (Human Resources And Skills Development), Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

This note looks at the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal in Harris – a case which raised important equality issues about the operation of the ‘drop out’ provisions in the Canadian Pension Plan. The case is interesting both for the issue itself but also because it is one of the first judgments to consider the impact of the Supreme Court’s restatement in Kapp of its approach to s. 15. However, the court of appeal was split with all three judges giving a different analysis of the issues (albeit that the claim was rejected on a split decision). Part …