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A Critical Analysis Of The Women's Constitutional And Legal Rights In Zimbabwe In Relation To The Convention Of The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Amy S. Tsanga Dec 2017

A Critical Analysis Of The Women's Constitutional And Legal Rights In Zimbabwe In Relation To The Convention Of The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Amy S. Tsanga

Maine Law Review

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) comprehensively outlines the international standards on the rights of women that are to be pursued by State Parties to the Convention. Adopted by the General Assembly in 1979, it entered into force in 1981 and set the scene for a comprehensive approach to the human rights of women by State Parties that have ratified the Convention. The underlying spirit of the Convention is that discrimination against women violates principles of equality and respect for human dignity and presents obstacles to the advancement of women in the political, …


Rectifying The Tilt: Equality Lessons From Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, And Transgender, Chai R. Feldblum Dec 2017

Rectifying The Tilt: Equality Lessons From Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, And Transgender, Chai R. Feldblum

Maine Law Review

The joy and the challenge of being located in an academic setting is that I am also able to engage in forays (albeit intermittent forays) into scholarly analysis. Delivering this lecture, and publishing this piece, provides an excellent opportunity for me to engage in such a foray. This piece, then, is a scholarly reflection on my advocacy experiences. My goal is to use my experiences in advocacy as fertile soil from which to create, I hope, a lovely flower of theory and conceptual thought. Before setting out on this endeavor, however, I would like to offer two postulates. There are …


Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey Dec 2017

Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey

Maine Law Review

This essay examines the question of conflict between market work and family care from the angle of family caretaking labor for workers rather than for dependents. Feminist legal scholars and activists have been concerned for generations about the effect of women's unpaid caretaking work on women's participation and success in the wage labor market. Better public support for this gendered family care work is crucial to many leading visions of feminist legal and economic change. Recent welfare reforms, however, have increased the extent to which public policy treats caretaking instead as a personal responsibility (or a sign of personal irresponsibility) …


Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn Dec 2017

Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn

Maine Law Review

Contemporary social policy relating to women's employment remains strikingly ambivalent. Those in favor of traditional family structures, a position that is generally associated with conservative political agendas, have often expressed a preference for a family model that emphasizes the woman's role as a homemaker, or to use the more recent term, a caretaker. At the same time, as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act demonstrates, if the choice is between providing financial support that would enable lower-income women to stay in the home and forcing those women into the labor market, the conservative agenda will opt for the latter. More recently, …


Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis Dec 2017

Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis

Maine Law Review

According to Working Mother magazine, telecommuting is a “wonderful arrangement for working moms.” Advertisements for telecommuting jobs and related technologies show us pictures of these happy telecommuting moms, who are conducting important business on the telephone or typing busily at their computers, as their smiling toddlers play quietly by their sides or sit contentedly in their laps. Some employers have offered this wonderful experience in direct response to concerns raised by “women's issues” committees. That was probably just what Jack Nilles had in mind when he first coined the term “telecommuting” in the 1970s and described it as a way …


Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins Dec 2017

Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins

Maine Law Review

Almost forty years after the enactment of Title VII, women's struggle for equality in the workplace continues. Although Title VII was intended to “break[] down old patterns of segregation and hierarchy,” the American workplace remains largely gender-segregated. Indeed, more than one-third of all women workers are employed in occupations in which the percentage of women exceeds 80%. Even in disciplines in which women have made gains, top status (and top paying) jobs remain male-dominated while the lower status jobs are filled by women. This pattern of gender segregation, in turn, accounts for a substantial part of the persistent wage gap …


An Essay On The Production Of Youth Prostitution, Libby Alder Dec 2017

An Essay On The Production Of Youth Prostitution, Libby Alder

Maine Law Review

Youth prostitution is more multidimensional than I think most of us are prone to admit. This essay is designed to raise the profile of some of its less prominent aspects—aspects which are not unknown exactly, but which are underrecognized and generally ignored in the context of legal analysis. The phenomenon of youth prostitution involves some thorny, sometimes confusing, issues, but those issues are eclipsed by an ideology that fails to grapple with the complexity of youth agency and the consequent position of youth in law. The result is that some kids are left inadequately served and others are utterly unknowable. …


Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros Dec 2017

Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros

Maine Law Review

In both the fields of labor law and gender studies, we learn the most from experience. The experience of workers coming together to demand equality and respect and the experience of women coming together to share their experiences has led to most of what we study in these fields. Unfortunately, too many times traditional legal doctrine does not fit these experiences. In those cases, we must struggle to change the law to be responsive to the lived experiences of women and workers. This Article explores the lived experiences of one particular group of workers—immigrant farmworking women in California. From their …


Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow Dec 2017

Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow

Maine Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination against men because they are men and against women because they are women. This familiar characterization of the Act has been quoted in dozens of sex discrimination cases to support a narrow view of who is protected against sex discrimination in this country. When transsexuals file suit, “[e]mployment discrimination jurisprudence at both the federal and state levels ... captures transsexuals in a discourse of exclusion from social participation. This wide net, using a remarkably refined system of semantic manipulations, snags all claims launched by transsexuals and reveals …


Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing Dec 2017

Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing

Maine Law Review

The extent to which foreign corporations as well as their domestic subsidiaries can discriminate against American employees on the basis of sex, age, religion, and national origin in a manner that would be acceptable under their own laws and customs but inimical to American law is currently determined by a muddled jumble of circuit court opinions interpreting a “[w]e express no view” Supreme Court footnote. As a result, American victims of sexual discrimination have much less protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the discriminating actor is a foreign corporation or its domestic subsidiary than …


Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey Dec 2017

Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey

Maine Law Review

Congressional power to prevent and remedy sex discrimination in employment has been founded almost entirely upon the commerce power and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the equal protection guarantee. The commerce power has enabled Congress to prohibit private sex discrimination in employment, and the combination of the commerce and enforcement powers has enabled Congress to prohibit such sex discrimination by public employers. From the late 1930s until the early 1990s the doctrinal architecture of these powers was relatively stable, even if statutory action to realize the promise of a nondiscriminatory …


The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq. Dec 2017

The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq.

Maine Law Review

Equal pay for women is a concept that has been around for a long time. It was during World War I that women were first guaranteed pay equity in the form of regulations enforced by the War Labor Board of 1918. The Board's equal pay policy required manufacturers, who put women on the payroll while male employees were serving in the military, to pay those women the same wages that were paid to the men. The National War Labor Board continued that trend through World War II. Shortly after the war, states began enacting statutes that required employers to pay …


Keynote Address: The Difference "Difference" Makes, Deborah L. Rhode Dec 2017

Keynote Address: The Difference "Difference" Makes, Deborah L. Rhode

Maine Law Review

Over the last two decades, we have witnessed a transformation for women in law, but not a transformation in leadership positions. Almost 30% of lawyers are women, but they represent only about 15% of federal judges and law firm partners, and about 10% of law school deans and general counsel positions at Fortune 500 companies. The same patterns are apparent in other leadership sectors, such as management and politics. Women are half the electorate but only 15% of Congress and 6% of state governors. They account for about half of managers but only 1% of the Chief Executive Officers of …


Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins Dec 2017

Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

The theme of the conference, Law, Labor, & Gender, came out of a working group comprised of law students, lawyers, a judge, and myself. We thought that a number of issues deserved attention, ranging from current jurisprudence on employment discrimination to more theoretical issues having to do with work/family dilemmas. Professor Deborah Rhode kindly accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker, and various other academic speakers also agreed to present papers. The working group, and the editors of the Maine Law Review, drafted and sent out a call for papers to approximately 1600 law professors and others. The Law …


Jespersen V. Harrah's Operating Co.: Employer Appearance Standards And The Promotion Of Gender Stereotypes, Hillary J. Bouchard Nov 2017

Jespersen V. Harrah's Operating Co.: Employer Appearance Standards And The Promotion Of Gender Stereotypes, Hillary J. Bouchard

Maine Law Review

In Jespersen v. Harrah’s Operating Co., Harrah’s Casino (Harrah’s) gave Darlene Jespersen (Jespersen), a female employee, thirty days to comply with the new mandatory makeup requirement the business imposed on its female beverage service employees. Jespersen refused, thirty days passed, and Harrah’s immediately terminated her. After unsuccessfully seeking administrative relief with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Jespersen filed a lawsuit against Harrah’s in federal district court. The claim alleged “disparate treatment sex discrimination” by Harrah’s in violation of Title VII. Subsequently, Harrah’s moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted the motion. The court found that Harrah’s employee …


Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink Oct 2017

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Maine Law Review

In considering the legal architecture of nation-building, we might most readily think of public law as our subject insofar as it governs the relationship between the individual and the state, and establishes the institutions of governance and the sources and limits of their power. The essays in this volume, in large part, track this instinct in that they concern themselves with fields such as constitutional law, criminal law, and public international law. Closer to the margin of public and private law are essays dealing with various dimensions of the modern regulatory state, including banking and commercial transactions. In each of …


Women In The Legal Profession From The 1920s To The 1970s: What Can We Learn From Their Experience About Law And Social Change?, Cynthia Grant Bowman Oct 2017

Women In The Legal Profession From The 1920s To The 1970s: What Can We Learn From Their Experience About Law And Social Change?, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Maine Law Review

I work in a law school building that is named for Jane M.G. Foster, who donated the money for its construction. It’s a lovely building, and my office overlooks a gorge so that I can hear the water fall as I write. So I’m grateful to Jane Foster. And curious. Who was she? Jane Foster graduated from Cornell Law School in 1918, having served as an editor of the law review and being elected to the Order of the Coif. But no law firm wanted her services. She obtained employment not as a lawyer but as a legal assistant in …


Constitution Day Lecture: Constitutional Law And Tort Law: Injury, Race, Gender, And Equal Protection, Jennifer B. Wriggins Oct 2017

Constitution Day Lecture: Constitutional Law And Tort Law: Injury, Race, Gender, And Equal Protection, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

The focus of today’s annual Constitution Day lecture at the University of Maine School of Law is on the Fourteenth Amendment and specifically how the Equal Protection Clause relates to tort law. First, I will talk about the Equal Protection Clause in general—what it says, and some of what it has been held to mean—particularly where government makes distinctions based on race and gender. Second, I will discuss two historical tort cases that violate equal protection on the basis of race. In doing so, I uncover the racial history of tort law that has been hidden in plain sight. I …


Putting The Restroom Debate To Rest: Addressing Title Ix And Equal Protection In G.G. Ex Rel. Grimm V. Gloucester County School Board, Alexandra A. Harriman Sep 2017

Putting The Restroom Debate To Rest: Addressing Title Ix And Equal Protection In G.G. Ex Rel. Grimm V. Gloucester County School Board, Alexandra A. Harriman

Maine Law Review

Courts, legislatures, and citizens have been debating whether transgender students should use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex, or whether they can choose to use the facilities which align with their gender identity. The Fourth Circuit decided that Title IX required the latter in G.G. ex. rel. Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board, but that didn't settle the issue. To complicate things, the Trump Administration revoked the guidance that the Fourth Circuit had relied on. This Note argues that a court should resolve this once and for all by finding that a school policy that requires students to …