Law and Gender Commons^™

Gender Diversity On Corporate Boards: How Racial Politics Impedes Progress In The United States, Cheryl L. Wade

Pace International Law Review

The excellent conference organized by Darren Rosenblum comparing global approaches to board diversity inspired me to think about how progress in this context has unfolded in the United States. Even though the issue of diversity on corporate boards has become a global issue, few U.S. boards have moved beyond mere tokenism when it comes to female directors. One reason for the lack of diversity among corporate directors is that board selection has been based on membership in a particular network. This essay, however, focuses on the persisting problem of discrimination—a more invidious explanation for the fact that very few corporate …

A Difficult Conversation: Corporate Directors On Race And Gender, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Pace International Law Review

This symposium essay summarizes our ongoing ethnographic research on corporate board diversity. This research is based on fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons of interest (including institutional investors, executive search professionals, and proxy advisors) regarding their views on race and gender diversity in the boardroom.

Using a method rooted in anthropology and discourse analysis, we have worked from a general topic outline and conducted open-ended interviews in which respondents are encouraged to raise and develop issues of interest to them. The interviews range from forty-five minutes to two hours in length and each interview …

Diversity In The Boardroom: A Content Analysis Of Corporate Proxy Disclosures, Aaron A. Dhir

Pace International Law Review

My work in this field has focused on regulation by quota and regulation by disclosure. With regard to quotas, strikingly, the Norwegian law is not located in regulation that explicitly deals with human rights or equality issues; rather, it is found in the heart of the legal regime that gives life and personality to corporations – in Norwegian corporate law. I have conducted qualitative, interview-based research with Norwegian corporate directors, both men and women. It is only through understanding how the goals of the law have translated into the day-to-day existence of these individuals that we can begin to consider …

Comparative Sex Regimes And Corporate Governance: An Introduction, Darren Rosenblum

Pace International Law Review

In February 2013, on the day of the worst snowstorm in many years, Pace International Law Review conducted a symposium on “Comparative Sex Regimes and Corporate Governance.” Despite a total shutdown of all transport networks and the consequent absence of a few stranded scholars, we met to discuss the fraught questions posed by corporate board quotas and formulate answers.

Led by Norway in 2003, several nations have begun to mandate certain levels of women’s inclusion on corporate boards. In the face of widespread exclusion of women from corporate power that suggests structural biases, these quotas appear radical and compelling. The …

Upholding A 40-Year-Old Promise: Why The Texas Sonogram Act Is Unlawful According To Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Vicki Toscano, Elizabeth Reiter

Pace Law Review

This Article begins with a brief review in Part II of the three crucial Supreme Court cases on abortion rights: Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, and Gonzalez v. Carhart. Based on these cases, Part III formulates a constitutional test that courts should be using to determine whether an abortion regulation is constitutional that includes all of the factors identified by the Supreme Court as part of the “undue burden” analysis, factors that have been overlooked by many courts. Finally, Part IV applies this constitutional test to the Texas Sonogram Act, concluding that the act is …

Quotas And The Transatlantic Divergence Of Corporate Governance, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The French adoption of a corporate board quota for women reflects Europe's increasingly stakeholder-oriented approach to corporate governance, one that stands in marked contrast with that of the United States. This Article discusses how the corporate board quota will shift French and European corporate governance. The change accentuates an already established stakeholder corporate culture widespread in Europe, most notably evidenced by the presence of worker representation on boards. In contrast, the United States' corporate governance structure increasingly places the shareholder at its center. The proliferation of quotas for women on corporate boards in the national and transnational European contexts is …

A Critical Research Agenda For Wills, Trusts And Estates, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The law of wills, trusts, and estates could benefit from consideration of its development and impact on people of color; women of all colors; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; low-income and poor individuals; the disabled; and nontraditional families. One can measure the law's commitment to justice and equality by understanding the impact on these historically disempowered groups of the laws of intestacy, spousal rights, child protection, will formalities, will contests, and will construction; the creation, operation and construction of trusts; fiduciary administration; creditors' rights; asset protection; nonprobate transfers; planning for incapacity and death; and wealth transfer taxation. This Article …

Authentic Reproductive Regulation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this response to I. Glenn Cohen’s article, Regulating Reproduction, Professor Crawford notes the ways in which Professor Cohen’s questioning of “best interests” logic challenges legal scholars to reexamine received wisdom. She then evaluates Professor Cohen’s critique of “best interests” in the context of income taxation of surrogates. Professor Crawford concludes that Professor Cohen’s “unmasking” project—designed to reveal the authentic reasons for reproductive regulation—enhances the discourse about reproductive law and policy

Unsex Mothering: Toward A New Culture Of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I observe that “mothering” and “fathering” have been inappropriately tethered to biosex. “Mothering” should be unsexed as the primary parental relationship. “Fathering,” correspondingly, should be unsexed from its breadwinner status. In an ideal world, people now considered “mothers” and “fathers” would be “parents” first, a category that includes all forms of caretaking. One could even imagine an androgynous world in which parenting has no sexed subcategories, whether attached to biosex or not. I doubt our world is anywhere near that; I also wonder whether universal androgyny is a utopian ideal worth pursuing. I instead focus in this …

Band-Aid Solutions: New York’S Piecemeal Attempt To Address Legal Issues Created By Doma In Conjunction With Advances In Surrogacy, James Healy

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Equal Rights Amendment To Make Women Human, Ann Bartow

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Though the Fourteenth Amendment' provides women with partial legal armament (a dull sword, a small shield), equal protection requires something twice as powerful in the form of a Twenty-Eighth Amendment that would expressly vest women with equal rights under the law. The Fourteenth Amendment has completed only half of the job.

Rethinking Addiction: Drugs, Deterrence, And The Neuroscience Revolution, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article connects the debate about addiction with the fundamental criminal law principle of deterrence. It seeks to bridge the gap between the competing medical and criminal justice approaches by exploring addiction in light of recent research about the brain, gender differences, and what works best from both a treatment and justice perspective. To sharpen the issues, the article deliberately focuses on the emotionally freighted subject of pregnant drug users. This approach will illuminate prevailing assumptions about how biological, genetic, cultural, and other environmental factors shape human behavior and challenge conventional understandings of deterrence in light of new research on …

Unsex Cedaw, Or What's Wrong With Women's Rights, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I discusses why CEDAW continues to be relevant as the primary source of international law on sex discrimination. Until the advent of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), CEDAW was the most widely-subscribed international treaty. Some of the draft language of CEDAW reflects the tension between category and identity and how "women" won the debate. Part II contrasts CEDAW with the Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It points to the identitarian focus of CEDAW as a core reason for its failures. Had CEDAW reflected a category focus, as CERD did, it would more …

Paying Women For Their Eggs For Use In Stem Cell Research, Pamela Foohey

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taxation, Pregnancy, And Privacy, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article frames a discussion of surrogacy within the context of existing income tax laws. A surrogate receives money for carrying and bearing a child. This payment is income by any definition, even if the surrogacy contract recites that it is a "reimbursement." Cases and rulings on the income tax consequences of the sale of blood and human breast milk, as well as analogies to situations in which people are paid to wear advertising on their bodies, support the conclusion that a surrogate recognizes taxable income, although the Internal Revenue Service has never stated so. For tax purposes, the reproductive …

The Currency Of White Women's Hair In A Down Economy, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This short essay is a reflection on the relationship between the economy and women’s hair. I suggest that examining women’s spending on hair care products during uncertain financial conditions provides insight into the gendered aspects of the economy. As the economy has declined, sales of home hair-care products targeted toward white women have increased. Major news outlets report on salon customers trying to stretch out the time between their regular $250 hair salon treatments. Certain women turn to home hair dyes to maintain conforming appearances. In popular culture, to have white skin and gray hair is to be old (unemployable …

The Third Wave's Break From Feminism, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Janet Halley proves that third-wave feminism is wrong - wrongly described, that is. Young feminists in the United States tout a "third wave" of feminism that is hip, ironic and playful - the supposed opposite of the dour and strident "second wave" of 1970's feminism. Goodbye frumpy sandals; hello sexy fishnets, according to third-wave feminism. Initially young women themselves (and now writers and scholars) embraced a pervasive wave metaphor to convey the belief that differences within feminism are generational. Youth crashes against (and ultimately overtakes) its elders. But rifts within feminism cannot be so neatly explained. The story is more …

A Little More Mascara: Response To Making Up Is Hard To Do, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Response to the exploration of the dynamics of race, gender, and sexual orientation in the law school classroom by Professors Adrienne Davis and Robert Chang.

Rethinking International Women's Human Rights Through Eve Sedgwick, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Since the death of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I have wanted to honor her memory, and this panel is the perfect venue. Sedgwick's foundational understandings of sexuality, gender, and identity set the stage for much of my work and that of those I admire. My own work looks at how the state regulates gender in the “public” sphere. I attempt to challenge the tensions and intersections among international and comparative notions of equality and identity. Group identity constructions vary across cultural lines and conflict with liberal notions of universalist constitutionalism and equality. My current work, Unsex CEDAW: What's Wrong with Women's …

Women And The Law: How Far We’Ve Come And Where We Need To Go, Michelle S. Simon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Introduction to the program on “Women and the Law: How Far We've Come and Where We Need to Go” held at Pace Law School, October 24, 2008.

Marketing Mothers' Milk: The Commodification Of Breastfeeding And The New Markets For Breast Milk And Infant Formula, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper explores the commodification of women and biological processes, the confusion of scientific evidence with social agendas, and the conflict between marketing and public health. I assert that key actors in the healthcare marketplace - government, businesses, and doctors – have acted to enable weak medical and scientific evidence to be manipulated by ideological and profit-making partisans in a poorly regulated market. I focus on the unique role of the medical profession, which has acted with government and the private sector to shape the markets in human milk and infant formula. In a striking parallel to the pharmaceutical industry, …

In The Name Of Fetal Protection: Why American Prosecutors Pursue Pregnant Drug Users (And Other Countries Don't), Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

For more than three decades, American prosecutors have been bringing criminal prosecutions against pregnant women based on their use of drugs while pregnant, with charges ranging from child abuse or neglect to murder. Almost all of these women are poor, and the vast majority are also women of color--many with histories of childhood sexual or physical abuse and mental disability. In all but three states-Alabama, Kentucky, and South Carolina--such prosecutions have been declared unconstitutional or the resulting convictions have been overturned. Nonetheless, prosecutions continue to be brought, in what can only be described as a crusade against pregnant women in …

Social Factoring The Numbers With Assisted Reproduction, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In late winter 2009, the airwaves came alive with stories about Nadya Suleman, the California mother who gave birth to octuplets conceived via assisted reproductive technology. Nadya Suleman and her octuplets are the vehicles through which Americans express their anxiety about race, class and gender. Expressions of concern for the health of children, the mother’s well-being, the future of reproductive medicine or the financial drain on taxpayers barely conceal deep impulses towards racism, sexism and classism. It is true that the public has had a longstanding fascination with multiple births and with large families. This is evidenced by a long …

The Curing Law: On The Evolution Of Baby-Making Markets, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The article offers a new paradigm to examine the legal regulation of reproductive technologies. The main argument is that a cure paradigm has shaped historical and current legal baby-making markets. Namely, reproductive technologies that have historically been understood as a cure for infertility (such as sperm donations and egg donations) have developed into market commodities, while others (such as full surrogacy) which have not been understood as a cure, have not. The article examines and critiques the cure paradigm. Specifically, the article challenges one current manifestation of the cure paradigm: the legal distinction between 'full surrogacy" (where a surrogate is …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that Norway’s Corporate Board Quota Law (“CBQ”) fosters a productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres. Recent studies indicate that higher numbers of women in executive positions result in stronger rates of corporate return on equity (“ROE”). Countries with higher levels of women's political representation also tend to have higher levels of economic growth. Increasing women's workforce participation outside the home can drive overall economic growth. These factors prompted the CBQ's proponents to argue for the economic imperative of women's corporate leadership. The CBQ will not only ameliorate gender inequality, but will bring new life to …

Talvi, Women Behind Bars: The Crisis Of Women In The U.S. Prison System, Giovanna Shay

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ross, Women's Human Rights: The International And Comparative Law Casebook, Mary Pat Treuthart

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Women And The Law: How Far We've Come And Where We Need To Go, Michelle S. Simon

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Goodman & Epstein, Listening To Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach To Advocacy, Mental Health And Justice, Julie Goldscheid

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Branson, No Seat At The Table: How Corporate Governance And Law Keep Women Out Of The Boardroom, Joan Macleod Heminway, Sarah White

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.