Law Commons^™

Feminist Legal Theory And Stone’S Panes Of The Glass Ceiling, Rona Kaufman

FIU Law Review

This comprehensive analysis, divided into three parts, navigates the intricate tapestry of discrimination against women in the American workplace. Part I elucidates the historical and theoretical foundations, spanning feminist theory evolution, the modern women's movement, and the trajectory of women's labor force participation. In Part II, the discussion delves into the critical insights of Professor Kerri Stone's groundbreaking work, "Panes of the Glass Ceiling," connecting each identified glass pane to feminist theory. Part III introduces a novel perspective by appending a 10th pane to the glass ceiling: Patriarchal Violence. This addition underscores the pervasive impact of gender-based violence on women's …

An Institute Of One's Own: Polly Bunting's "Messy Experiment" Of Helping Women Navigate Work-Family Conflict, Linda C. Mcclain

Shorter Faculty Works

Maggie Doherty, The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (2021).

In 1960, Mary (“Polly”) Ingraham Bunting, newly-appointed President of Radcliffe College, wrote an essay for The New York Times Magazine to encourage applications to the new Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. In the essay, Bunting connected the Institute’s goal of ending the “waste of highly talented, educated womanpower” to helping women as well as to better realizing America’s “heritage” and “aspirations.” The Institute would help “intellectually displaced women”—mothers whose homemaking and childcare responsibilities had interrupted their careers—get back on track through a financial stipend …

Achieving Equality Without A Constitution: Lessons From Israel For Queer Family Law, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

How might the United States reconcile conflicts between equality and religious freedom in the realm of family law? To answer this question, this chapter considers recent developments in family (personal status) law in Israel. While Israel may at first blush appear to be the last place that feminists and queer theorists should look for solutions to modern conflicts between democratic and religious values, this chapter argues that the Israeli experience has much to offer critical family scholars working to develop pluralistic legal approaches to family regulation. Israel is a country with a diverse population and unique political and legal context …

Introduction To Oxford Handbook Of Feminism And Law In The U.S., Deborah L. Brake, Martha Chamallas, Verna L. Williams

Book Chapters

Combining analyses of feminist legal theory, legal doctrine and feminist social movements, this Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of U.S. legal feminism. Contributions by leading feminist thinkers trace the impacts of legal feminism on legal claims and defenses and demonstrate how feminism has altered and transformed understandings of basic legal concepts, from sexual harassment and gender equity in sports to new conceptions of consent and motherhood. It connects legal feminism to adjacent intellectual discourses, such as masculinities theory and queer theory, and scrutinizes criticisms and backlash to feminism from all sides of the political spectrum. Its examination of the prominent …

The Changing Landscape Of Women's Rights Activism In China, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Katherine Schroeder

All Faculty Scholarship

The Beijing Conference was a watershed moment in the history of the global women’s movement and had an unprecedented impact in the Global North and South on lawmaking, institution building, and movement building. This Article details the development of women’s activism in China since the Beijing Conference and how a changing legal landscape impacts this activism. While its progress is emblematic of the inconsistencies in the progression of women’s rights activism since the Beijing Conference, China’s efforts have been significant and varied and represent a model for other countries seeking to reform women’s rights legislation. This Article identifies important lines …

Periods For Profit And The Rise Of Menstrual Surveillance, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

Menstruation is being monetized and surveilled, with the voluntary participation of millions of women. Thousands of downloadable apps promise to help women monitor their periods and manage their fertility. These apps are part of the broader, multi-billion dollar, Femtech industry, which sells technology to help women understand and improve their health. Femtech is marketed with the language of female autonomy and feminist empowerment. Despite this rhetoric, Femtech is part of a broader business strategy of data extraction, in which companies are extracting people’s personal data for profit, typically without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Femtech can oppress menstruators in several …

The Evolution Of Gender Equity From A Marxist And Existentialist Perspective, Alexandria Lopez

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the …

Privileged Violence, Principled Fantasy, And Feminist Method: The Colby Fraternity Case, Martha T. Mccluskey

Maine Law Review

Colby College banned fraternities and sororities in 1984 after many years of unsuccessfully attempting to improve fraternity behavior. Sexual harassment and sex discrimination were major reasons for the college's decision. At first the college withheld official recognition of and financial benefits to the fraternities. Membership in fraternities was not punished, although Colby established a policy prohibiting any participation in fraternities. The college had hoped that without houses, financing, and other support from the administration, the fraternities would disband—particularly once all students who had belonged to the officially sanctioned groups had graduated. Although the sororities soon dissolved, most of the male …

Empowered Women Empower Women, Anne S. Douds

Public Policy Faculty Publications

Good afternoon and thank you for your determination to hold this important event today regardless of the weather. When Jenny said that we would go forward rain, sleet, or snow, I did not anticipate that we would have all three in the same day!

Maybe your determination derives from the residual spirit of a group of women who gathered here 100 years ago, also determined, but that time they were determined to ensure that their community acknowledged their right to vote. They were empowered, excited, and ready to act because, five years prior, in 1915, Katherine Wentworth of the Pennsylvania …

#Metoo And Mass Incarceration, Aya Gruber

Publications

This Symposium Guest Editor’s Note is an adapted version of the Introduction to The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (UC Press 2020). The book examines how American feminists, in the quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, often acted as soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities Today, despite deep concerns over racist policing and mass incarceration, many feminists continue to assert that gender crime …

Sex Wars As Proxy Wars, Aya Gruber

Publications

The clash between feminists and queer theorists over the meaning of sex—danger versus pleasure—is well- trodden academic territory. Less discussed is what the theories have in common. There is an important presumption uniting many feminist and queer accounts of sexuality: sex, relative to all other human activities, is something of great, or grave, importance. The theories reflect Gayle Rubin’s postulation that "everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture.” In the #MeToo era, we can see all too clearly how sex has an outsized influence in public debate. Raging against sexual harm has become the preferred …

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

Global Intersections: Critical Race Feminist Human Rights And Inter/National Black Women, Hope Lewis

Maine Law Review

In this brief essay, I illustrate how Critical Race Feminist analysis could reconceptualize the human rights problems facing “Inter/national Black women” --in this case, Black women who migrate between the United States and Jamaica. This focus on Jamaican American migrants is very personal as well as political; I was raised by Jamaican American women. However, I have begun to focus on such women in my research not only in a search for “home” but also because there are important lessons to be learned from those who are the least visible in the legal literature. I draw the framework for a …

Shattered Jade, Broken Shoe: Foreign Economic Development And The Sexual Exploitation Of Women In China, Elizabeth Spahn

Maine Law Review

Predicting the ways in which feminisms might develop in the next century is unfortunately well beyond my own capabilities. In the next decade or two, however, one thing I believe we might want to think about are the relationships between feminisms and global free market capitalisms. The question I am asking, simply stated, is the extent to which economic development (free-market global capitalism) advances, is neutral toward, or harms women. One traditional American way of viewing the global free market is to tout economic development as a panacea for the problems facing the world's poorest and most violated group, women. …

“Who Is A Latcrit?”: Jerome Culp And Angela Harris Provide Answers And Ways Of Being, Margaret Montoya

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Holy Gender! Promoting Free Exercise Of Gender By Discernment Without Establishing Binary Sex Or Compulsory Fluidity, José Gabilondo

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

How Is Sex Harassment Discriminatory?, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

What is sexual harassment, and what is its actual harm? Since the 1980s, these two questions have perplexed lawmakers, policymakers, feminists, and the public. Today, with the rise of #MeToo, and with increased national attention to Title IX claims regarding sexual violence on college campuses, these questions are once again in the spotlight. As some commentators have observed, in the last several years lawmakers and policymakers have been increasingly influenced by a feminist antisubordination approach to sexual harassment and assault. This growing influence is currently reflected in more strict standards of consent (“affirmative consent”) to sex, in higher procedural and …

Gender Justice: The Role Of Stories And Images, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Scholarly Works

In this book chapter, Professor Berger argues for thoughtful metaphor-making and storytelling in legal writing. Exploring legal rhetoric with an eye for gender justice, she argues metaphor and narrative shape perspective and ask the reader to join the writer in the imaginative work of seeing one thing as another. The same shift in perspective that leads to re-conception—a shift that takes advantage of metaphor and narrative’s ability to say what only they can say—is what writers aim to achieve when they use metaphor and narrative for feminist and social justice advocacy.

Sex Quotas And Burkini Bans, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Essay recounts how feminist theorists and activists managed to write their ideals into the fabric of French law and culture, and how nonfeminists began to appropriate those ideals. Parité, the 2000 law that requires half of all candidates for public office be women, saw French feminists first engineer a change in French universalism to respect sex difference; although not wholly successful, Parité advanced women's political inclusion. Then, like a drop of water in a pond, these feminist ideas disappeared in plain sight: they became intrinsic to French state norms and public values. As they became woven into such norms, …

Telling Stories In The Supreme Court: Voices Briefs And The Role Of Democracy In Constitutional Deliberation, Linda H. Edwards

Scholarly Works

On January 4, 2016, over 112 women lawyers, law professors, and former judges told the world that they had had an abortion. In a daring amicus brief that captured national media attention, the women “came out” to their clients; to the lawyers with or against whom they practice; to the judges before whom they appear; and to the Justices of the Supreme Court.

The past three years have seen an explosion of such “voices briefs,” 16 in Obergefell and 17 in Whole Woman’s Health. The briefs can be powerful, but their use is controversial. They tell the stories of non-parties—strangers …

Feminism And Economic Inequality, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Conflicts Within Carceral Feminism: A Call To Revocalize The Women Who Continue To Suffer, Krishna De La Cruz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Judge Netti Vogel's Post: Women, The Legal Profession, And How Far We've Come 7-19-16, Netti Vogel

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

"Burn This Bitch Down!": Mike Brown, Emmett Till, And The Gendered Politics Of Black Parenthood, Teri A. Mcmurtry-Chubb

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"The Good Mother": Mothering, Feminism, And Incarceration, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

As the rates of incarceration continue to rise, women are increasingly subject to draconian criminal justice and child welfare policies that frequently result in the loss of their parental rights. The intersection of an increasingly carceral state and federally imposed timelines for achieving permanency for children in state care has had a negative effect on women, their children, and their communities. Women, and their ability to parent, are more adversely affected by the intersection of these gender-neutral provisions because they are more likely than men to be the primary caretaker of their children. In addition, incarcerated women have higher rates …

The Limits Of Feminism, Emily Sherwin

Emily L Sherwin

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality And Title Vii: A Brief (Pre-)History, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Title VII was twenty-five years old when Kimberlé Crenshaw published her path-breaking article introducing “intersectionality” to critical legal scholarship. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached its thirtieth birthday, the intersectionality critique had come of age, generating a sophisticated subfield and producing many articles that remain classics in the field of anti-discrimination law and beyond. Employment discrimination law was not the only target of intersectionality critics, but Title VII’s failure to capture and ameliorate the particular experiences of women of color loomed large in this early legal literature. Courts proved especially reluctant to recognize multi-dimensional discrimination against …

Intertwining Of Poverty, Gender, And Race: A Critical Analysis Of Welfare News Coverage From 1993-2000, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

Over the years, welfare has become highly intertwined with ideological beliefs involving gender, race, and poverty. As the nature of welfare transformed to include non-white recipients, the perception of welfare recipients as single "worthy white widows" was replaced by the "lazy African-American breeders." This study examined how television news may have appropriated this negative image in its coverage of the changes in the U.S. welfare system that took place during the 1990s. News stories presented by the major U.S. television networks from 1993 to 2000 were examined. The analysis showed that news stories tended to depict the typical welfare recipient …

Masculinity And Title Ix: Bullying And Sexual Harassment Of Boys In The American Liberal State, Nancy C. Cantalupo

Nancy C Cantalupo

This article examines two recent “hot topics” related to Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”): sex-segregated schooling and gender-based violence including sexual harassment and bullying. First, in 2006, the Department of Education suspended Title IX’s prohibition of sex-segregated education in K-12 public schools amidst some sex segregation advocates’ claims that a “feminized” educational system causes sex discrimination against boys. Second, over the last decade an increasing number of boys have sued or complained against their schools for sex discrimination in the form of gender-based violence (including same-sex bullying, sexual harassment, hazing, and sexual violence).

This article …