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Law and Gender

2012

Law and Society

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish In The Heartland: A Case Study Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence In Topeka, Kansas, Shelley Santry Feb 2012

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish In The Heartland: A Case Study Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence In Topeka, Kansas, Shelley Santry

Shelley M. Santry

ABSTRACT Domestic violence has been present in every society that has ever existed. Oftentimes, violence against women has been not only part of a culture but also codified into its laws. As societies and nations have progressed, so too has the outcry for a structured governmental response to the problem of domestic violence. Laws have been passed by cities, states, and nations; treaties have been entered into among nations, but still the problem of domestic violence persists. In October of 2011, the city council of Topeka, KS, voted to decriminalize misdemeanor domestic violence cases. It did so in a dispute …

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Exchange As A Cornerstone Of Families, Martha Ertman Feb 2012

Exchange As A Cornerstone Of Families, Martha Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

This essay up-ends critical theorist Ivan Illich’s critique of economic thinking as replacing households defined by vernacular gender with married pairs in “inhumane” sex-neutral economic partnerships. It challenges Illich’s view of exchange as a destroyer that has meddled in families for only a few hundred years, citing sociobiological literature to counter his case against exchange with one valorizing two exchanges that I call “primal deals” that played crucial roles in the evolution of humans, families, and day-to-day life. These primal deals—especially the primal pair-bonding deal between men and women—continue to play a central role in families and family law today. …

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Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers, And Making The Law Work For Families, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid Dec 2011

Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers, And Making The Law Work For Families, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Who is the “man”? Implicit in this question is whether the man at issue demonstrates traits traditionally associated with masculinity: traits such as power, rejecting all things associated with being female, aggression, and being the family breadwinner. If a man, then, abandons paid work and stays at home full time with his children, is he still a “man” as typically defined? The answer to this question bears both on whether families are truly evolving away from the traditional, gendered construct that places men as family breadwinners and women as caregivers and whether work-family balance law meets the needs of these—and …

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Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan Dec 2011

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

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