Law Commons^™

Unbending Gender: Why Family And Work Conflict And What To Do About It (Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?), Nancy E. Dowd, Adrienne Davis, Marion Crain, Bonnie Dill, Catherine Ross, Joan Williams

UF Law Faculty Publications

A central characteristic of our current gender arrangements is that they pit ideal worker women against marginalized caregiver women in a series of patterned conflicts I call gender wars. One version of these are the mommy wars that we see often covered in the press between employed mothers and mothers at home. Employed mothers at times participate in the belittlement commonly felt by homemakers. Also mothers at home, I think, at times participate in the guilt-tripping that's often felt by mothers who are employed. These gender wars are a central but little understood characteristic of the gender system that grew …

Some Questions For Civil Society-Revivalists, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The Article raises some questions for proponents of reviving civil society as a cure for many of our nation's political, civic, and moral ills (whom McClain and Fleming designate as "civil society-revivalists"). How does civil society serve as "seedbeds of virtue" and foster self-government? Have liberal conceptions of the person corroded civil society and undermined self-government? Does the revivalists' focus on the family focus on the right problems? Have gains in equality and liberty caused the decline of civil society? Should we revive civil society or "a civil society"? Would a revitalized civil society support democratic self-government or supplant it? …

Gender And Privacy In Cyberspace, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Difference In Women’S Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique Of Feminist Legal Theory, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Part One of this article provides a phenomenological and hedonic critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - that underlies liberal legal feminism. Part Two presents a phenomenological critique of the conception of the human - and thus the female - which underlies radical feminist legal criticism. Again, I will argue that in both cases the theory does not pay enough attention to feminism: liberal feminist legal theory owes more to liberalism than to feminism and radical feminist legal theory owes more to radicalism than it does to feminism. Both models accept a depiction of …

The "Normal" Successes And Failures Of Feminism And The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To write of feminist reform in the criminal law is to write of simultaneous success and failure. We have seen marked changes in the doctrines and the practice of rape law, domestic violence law, and the law of self-defense. There is not a criminal law casebook in America today, nor a state statute book, that does not tell this story. Yet for all of this success, we also live in a world in which reform seems to suffer routine failures. Many believe, for example, that feminist reforms have rid rape law of the resistance requirement; however, recent scholarship makes it …

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …

Linking The Visions, Christina B. Whitman

Other Publications

Professor Christina Whitman talks about her teaching and her work.

Crossing The River Of Blood Between Us: Lynching, Violence, Beauty, And The Paradox Of Feminist History, Emma Coleman Jordan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Understandably, early feminist legal theory and history focused almost exclusively on establishing white women's autonomy against white male dominance. The vehicles of nineteenth century women's liberation included elements of public equality such as ownership of property, the right to vote, access to male dominated occupations, equal education and employment opportunity. Twentieth century feminists extended the equality project by penetrating the "private" sphere and attacking the very notion of a separate zone of family relations which was immune from government intervention to protect women from male abuse. Cultural feminists like Carol Gilligan took another approach, arguing that women's experiences as sexual …

Panel Two: Who’S Minding The Baby?, Catherine J. Ross, Adrienne Davis, Marion Crain, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Nancy Dowd, Joan Williams

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This publication is a transcript of remarks made by multiple law professors discussing the relationship between race, gender, and class and focusing on feminism and the challenges faced by working mothers.

Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?, Adrienne D. Davis, Catherine J. Ross, Marion Crain, Bonnie Thornton Dill

Scholarship@WashULaw

This publication is a transcript of remarks made by multiple law professors discussing the relationship between race, gender, and class and focusing on feminism and the challenges faced by working mothers.

The Power Of Caretaking, Naomi R. Cahn

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this Article, I explore how the roles of women at home are related to their roles at work. By explaining the dynamics of household changes, this Article provides an additional understanding of the need for women's home and workplace equality. I argue that the power that women have gained from their role as a caretaker within the home is a double-edged sword: acting as the primary caretaker, while extremely rewarding, is simultaneously a “confining” position. Until both men and women see themselves as nurturers and workers, neither the workplace nor the family will undergo fundamental change.

This Article examines …