Law Commons^™

Sex Ratio In Mumbai, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Gender equity has been a prominent aspect of equity concerns in public policy. The gender dimension has led to widespread advocacy and focused attention on equity in other than economic areas, such as education, health, decision-making, violence against women and political participation. The human development approach offers a capability-based approach to gender equity in development that is a departure from traditions focused on income and growth. Gender concerns have given the approach the power and flexibility to encompass aspects of inequality that would otherwise go unremarked. Its sensitivity to gender in turn has made it sensitive to a range of …

Why Eu Work-Family Reconciliation Policies Fail In Italy: A Feminist Legal Analysis, Chrystal Orozco

Master's Theses

Following the establishment of the European Parental Leave Directive (96/34/EC), the female employment rate in Italy is still ranked the third lowest in the European Union (EU) and Italian women continue to do twice as much household work as Italian men. Parents, especially women, struggle to find a balance between professional work and their family lives in a society that encourages the traditional gendered roles of the housewife and the breadwinner. The following study is a theoretical analysis of the Parental Leave Directive and the potential domestic influences that may prevent Italy from progressing socially towards gender equality. This study …

Global Feminism: Feminist Theory’S Cul-De-Sac, Elora Halim Chowdhury

Elora Halim Chowdhury

Global feminism has been critical of the earlier notion of "global sisterhood" and its uncritical attachment to commonalities of women's oppression around the world. However, in this article I argue that global feminism curiously remains inadequately accountable for its differential attitude toward issues of difference and inequality among communities within the U.S. versus those alleged differences and inequalities across the U.S. borders. Consequently, global feminism, using a universal human rights paradigm, constructs for itself the role of the heroic savior, reminiscent of colonialist civilizing mission (Abu-Lughod 2002) and in line with current U.S. imperialist interventions. Strategies for countering this newly …

The Reactionary Road To Free Love: How Doma, State Marriage Amendments And Social Conservatives Undermine Traditional Marriage, Scott Titshaw

Scott Titshaw

Much has been written about the possible effects on different-sex marriage of legally recognizing same-sex marriage. This article looks at the defense of marriage from a different angle: It shows how rejecting same-sex marriage results in political compromise and the proliferation of “marriage light” alternatives (e.g., civil unions, domestic partnerships, or reciprocal beneficiaries) that undermine the unique status of marriage for everyone. In the process, it examines several aspects of the marriage debate in detail. After describing the flexibility of marriage as it has evolved over time, the article focuses on recent state constitutional amendments attempting to stop further development. …

Women Power Connect Obituary Mrinal Gore: Vibhuti Patel, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

On 17th July 2012, Mrinal Gore passed away. With her demise, an era of women freedom fighters with feminist sensitivities in praxis is over. Inspired by Quit India Movement under leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, 14 year old young girl Mrinal became active in the freedom movement. Drawn to political and social causes, she gave up a promising career in medicine in order to organise the poorest and most powerless. She married her comrade, Shri Keshav Gore and when he died at a young age in 1958, she founded Keshav Gore Smarak Bhavan which provided democratic platform to progressive forces for …

Rights Of Adolescent Girls In India: A Critical Look At Laws And Policies, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Gender-Based Perceptions Of The 2001 Anthrax Attacks: Implications For Outreach And Preparedness, Christopher Salvatore, Brian J. Gorman

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Extensive research dealing with gender-based perceptions of fear of crime has generally found that women express greater levels of fear compared to men. Further, studies have found that women engage in more self-protective behaviors in response to fear of crime, as well as have different levels of confidence in government efficacy relative to men. The majority of these studies have focused on violent and property crime; little research has focused on gender-based perceptions of the threat of bioterrorism. Using data from a national survey conducted by ABC News / Washington Post, this study contrasted perceptions of safety and fear in …

Challenges For Development In 21st Century (B.R. Publications, Delhi, 2011), A Book Authored By Dr. Ruby Ojha & Book Review By Prof. Vibhuti Patel, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

This book makes a path-breaking contribution to encourage discourse on some of the most neglected areas in the mainstream economics. This scholarly contribution towards understanding of the macro-economic parameters affecting development economics goes beyond economic history and examines wide range of contemporary development problems. The provides up-to-date reference material for development economics, gender economics, International Trade and Economics of infrastructure. The scholar has examined wide range of contemporary concerns in development studies using prism of economics. She has touched specialized areas such as gender economics, environmental economics and inter-disciplinary work on social sector of the economy. International Trade and Economics …

Lessons About Reform From “A Very Dangerous Woman”, Sherry Penney, James Livingston

Sherry Penney

We discuss reform in antebellum America through the life of Martha Coffin Wright, an activist in the abolition and early women’s rights movements. Consideration of her motivations for reform; the obstacles faced by these movements; their methods, successes, and failures, may offer guidelines for reformers of today.

Indian Asociation Of Women's Studies Newsletter, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Mrinaltai was born on 24th June, 1928 in an educated patriotic family and influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India movement as a young medical student. She gave up her a promising career in medicine to plunge full time into organizing the poor and the marginalised. For more than half a century and till her death, she had been involved with a series of organizations and leading protests both on the streets and in the corridors of power, focusing on women’s rights, dalit rights, civil rights such as water, housing, sanitation, education and health services, environmental concerns communal harmony and trade …

Naming The Judicial Terrorist: An Exposé Of An Abuser's Successful Use Of A Judicial Proceeding For Continued Domestic Violence, Donna King

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Equal Opportunity To Harass, Unequal Burdens Of Proof: Affirming The Equal Opportunity Defense, Todd J. Clark

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Towards A Feminist Aesthetic Of Justice: Sarah Kane’S Blasted As Theorisation Of The Representation Of Sexual Violence In International Law, Honni Van Rijswijk

Honni van Rijswijk

An ongoing question in feminist studies is whether there is such a thing as a legal feminist aesthetic. Many feminists argue that an aesthetic based on prescriptive or normative theories of form, derived from feminist politics, is an ‘impossibility’. We need to analyse the context and particularity of each form, and examine its political and cultural effects. While there is no particular form that can, a priori, be designated feminist, we can talk meaningfully about practices of representation, and methodologies, as being feminist or otherwise. This essay seeks to re-animate questions concerning the relationship between feminisms and representation, asking what …

Formal, Bounded, And "Hyper" Rationality In Police Processing Of Sexual Assualt Claims: Case Dispositions And Ucr Reporting, Brooke M. Wagner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the past three decades, many scholars have examined the prevalence, consequences, and official sanctions of sexual violence. The following study builds on past research by quantitatively examining police and crime analyst discretion in sexual assault claims. Using recently accessed data from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department from 2008 through 2010 and utilizing labeling theory, rape myth literature, and the theoretical perspectives of justice processing outcomes, I assess the extent to which police officers and crime analysts are influenced by extralegal variables like victim and offender's race, victim's age, the location of assault, incident characteristics, and victim's background. I …

Architectures Of The Veil: The Representation Of The Veil And Zenanas In Pakistani Feminists' Texts, Amber Fatima Riaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation, which works at the intersections of feminist theory, architectural theory and postcolonial literary theory, examines the spatiality of the zenana and the burqa as represented in Pakistani literary and cultural texts. I propose that the burqa creates a portable closet, an interstitial, liminal, “third space” that allows Pakistani (secluded and veiled) women to not only traverse the borders between the private (female, domestic) and public (male) spaces, but to also signal chastity and religiosity while in the public, and semi-public spaces of the cities and villages of Pakistan. I argue that the dupatta, the chador and the hijab …

Die Frauen, Der Strafvollzug, Und Der Staat: Incarceration And Ideology In Post-Wwii Germany, Andrea Moody Kozak

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the material reality of Germany's women's prisons has been largely determined by their ideological foundations, and by the historical developments that have produced these ideologies. The German women's prison system is complex and imperfect, yet in many ways very progressive. It is the result of the last sixty years of tumultuous German history, and has been uniquely shaped by the capitalist and communist histories of the once-divided state. In its current state, it seems to have incorporated elements of a supposedly “rational” or individualistic conception of humanity as well as one that is relational and interdependent, …

The Injustice Of Sex Trafficking And The Efficacy Of Legislation, Grace Robertson

Global Tides

Sex trafficking has obtained a recent presence in the public eye due to its booming economy, and this potential profit for traffickers continues to allure more and more to this underground market that thrives off of the abduction, abuse and rape of its victims. In order to combat this growing epidemic, sex trafficking will first be analyzed from an economic standpoint, as the increasing revenue of this market is the reason for its preponderance. Then, the connections between the economy of sex trafficking and the legislation of sex trafficking will be analyzed in order to determine the best way for …

Between Catastrophe And Carnival: Creolized Identities, Cityspace, And Life Narratives, Cynthia Dobbs, Daphne Lamothe, Theresa Tensuan

Cynthia Dobbs

First Amendment Privacy And The Battle For Progressively Liberal Social Change, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Reform And The Body, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression has emerged as a major focus of civil rights reform. Opponents of these reforms have structured their opposition around one dominant image: the bathroom. With striking consistency, opponents have invoked anxiety over the bathroom -- who uses bathrooms, what happens in bathrooms, and what traumas one might experience while occupying a bathroom -- as the reason to permit discrimination in the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. This rhetoric of the bathroom in the debate over gender-identity protections seeks to exploit an underlying anxiety that has played a role in …

Grassroots, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Self-help groups, milk cooperatives, the increasing participating of women in political activity, agitation against deforestation and alcoholism by selfhelp groups, the educational status of women and their children, accessibility to infrastructural activity, improved decision-making capacity, and the knowledge and use of contraceptives show positive changes in the socioeconomic status of tribal women in Valod. The improvement has not taken place overnight. Gandhian ideology defi nitely played a very important role. So, too, did self-help goups who are emerging on a large scale in Valod Taluka. Development from the grassroots, a dream of Gandhiji, is now becoming a reality. It noteworthy …

The Mother-Love Myth: The Effect Of The Provider-Nurturer Dichotomy In Custody Cases, Kalie Caetano

The Macalester Review

This paper is a discursive analysis that evaluates the effect of gender stereotypes relating to parenting roles and how they have influenced custody cases. Specifically it looks at the historically gendered distinction between the provider (typically the father) and the nurturer (typically the mother) and speculates as to how those identities may have initially formed in US society, what changes they have undergone and how these stereotypes still affect family court outcomes in cases of divorce. Particular focus is given to an article appearing in Working Mother magazine entitled “Custody Lost,” detailing a new trend in custody cases, which allegedly …

Study Guide For United In Anger: A History Of Act Up, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film’s role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

“Don't Call Me A Student-Athlete”: The Effect Of Identity Priming On Stereotype Threat For Academically Engaged African American College Athletes, Keith Harrison

Dr. C. Keith Harrison

Academically engaged African American college athletes are most susceptible to stereotype threat in the classroom when the context links their unique status as both scholar and athlete. After completing a measure of academic engagement, African American and White college athletes completed a test of verbal reasoning. To vary stereotype threat, they first indicated their status as a scholar-athlete, an athlete, or as a research participant on the cover page. Compared to the other groups, academically engaged African American college athletes performed poorly on the difficult test items when primed for their athletic identity, but they performed worse on both the …

The Politics Of Writing, Writing Politics: Virginia Woolf’S A [Virtual] Room Of One’S Own, Tegan Zimmerman

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article revisits A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s foundational 1929 text on women’s writing. I examine from a feminist materialist perspective the relevance of Woolf’s notion of a “room” in our globalized and technological twenty-first century. I first review Woolf’s position on the material conditions necessary for women writers in her own time and then the applicability of her thinking for contemporary women writers on a global scale. I emphasize that the politics of writing, and in particular writing by women, that Woolf puts forth gives feminists the necessary tools to reevaluate and rethink women’s writing both online …

Intuition And Feminist Constitutionalism, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

In any constitutional system, we must ask, as a foundational inquiry, when and why a government may distinguish between groups of constituents for purposes of allocating benefits or imposing penalties. For feminists and others with a stake in challenging inequalities, the rationales that a society deems acceptable for justifying these classifications are centrally important. Heightened scrutiny jurisprudence for sex-based and other distinctions may help capture some of the rationales that rest on stereotypes and outmoded biases. However, at the end of the day, whatever level of scrutiny is applied, the critical question at any level of review is whether, according …

Staying Home While Studying Abroad: Anti-Imperial Praxis For Globalizing Feminist Visions, Shireen Roshanravan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper hinges on the recognition that when study-abroad opportunities are presented and perceived as a means of access to global perspectives on women and gender, they reduce the problem of US-centrism in Women's Studies to a geographic rather than an epistemic limitation. According to this logic, physical travel away from the United States can serve as an effective method for overcoming US-centrism and attending to the "global," a curricular strategy that Chandra Mohanty and M. Jacqui Alexander call "the cartographic rule of the transnational as always 'elsewhere'" (Mohanty and Alexander 2010, 33). This cartographic rule reinforces hegemonic representations of …

Novas Cartas Portuguesas: The Making Of A Reputation, Ana Margarida Dias Martins

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), co-authored by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, was banned in 1972 in Portugal for exploring sensitive issues such as women's oppression under the Catholic patriarchy. Given that police action against the authors soon became the focus of an international feminist protest in 1972-73, existing discussions of the book's reception often focus almost exclusively on what may be called its political life. I propose to approach the book from a new angle, with the purpose of uncovering its theoretical dimension as a literary-critical text that may have played an …

The Problem Of Protection: Rethinking Rhetoric Of Normalizing Surgeries, Amy Falvey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay focuses on the rhetoric of protection that emerges around infants who face the prospect of normalizing surgeries. Frequently, decisions to proceed with normalizing surgeries are made by doctors and parents with "protection" of the infant as a motivating force. "Protection," in such contexts, typically refers to protection of the infant from the inhospitable world that lies in wait for an individual whose body does not conform to social, morphological, and biological norms. While this concern may be valid and important, this essay argues that there are alternative narratives or notions of protection that must also be acknowledged and …

Reflections On Intellectual Hybridity, Kimala Price

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Drawing from the growing literature on interdisciplinarity and my own experiences as an intellectual hybrid, I discuss the personal and institutional challenges inherent in crossing disciplinary boundaries in the academy. I argue that boundary crossing is a natural occurrence and that the issue of (inter)disciplinarity is a matter of degree and of determining who gets to define the boundaries. Defining boundaries is not merely an intellectual enterprise, but also a political act that delineates what is, or is not, legitimate scholarship. This issue is especially salient to women's and gender studies during times of economic distress and educational budget cuts.