Law and Gender Commons^™

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

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

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. …

Sex Matters: Considering Gender In Consumer Contracts, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

We hear about the so-called “War on Women” and persisting salary gaps between men and women in the popular media, but contracts scholars and policymakers rarely discuss gender. Instead, dominant voices in the contracts field often reflect classical and economics-driven theories built on assumptions of gender neutral and economically rational actors. Furthermore, many mistakenly assume that market competition and antidiscrimination legislation address any improper biases in contracting. This Article therefore aims to shed light on gender’s importance by distilling data from my own e-survey of Colorado consumers along with others’ research regarding gender differences in contract outcomes, interests and behaviors. …

The Blame Game: How The Rhetoric Of Choice Blames The Achievement Gap On Women, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

In 2013, fifty years after the Equal Pay Act guaranteed women equal pay for equal work, almost fifty years since Title VII made discrimination based on sex unlawful, thirty-five years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made it unlawful to discriminate against women because of pregnancy, and nineteen years after the Family and Medical Leave Act provided twelve weeks of unpaid leave for some caregiving reasons, there is still a significant achievement gap between men and women in the workplace. Women still make less money, and rise more slowly and not as high in workplace hierarchies. Why? The common narrative states …

Floor To Ceiling: How Setbacks And Challenges To The Anti-Bullying Movement Pose Challenges To Employers Who Wish To Ban Bullying, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Decoding Civility, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

If women outnumber men in graduate schools and are entering professional and other workplaces in unprecedented numbers, and if Title VII has aimed to eradicate workplace discrimination for almost fifty years, why are women still so woefully underrepresented at the highest levels of power, leadership, wealth, and prestige in the contemporary workplace? This Article is about abusive speech in the workplace. It explores how the expression of bias in the workplace has evolved and been shaped by anti-discrimination legislation and jurisprudence. It identifies a category of biased speech that eludes prosecution under Title VII. Moreover, this Article seeks to provide …

A Bibliography Of Title Ix Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, Christine Iaconeta Dulac

Faculty Publications

It has been thirty-five years since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972. Title IX provides that no person shall be excluded from participation in any educational program or activity that receives federal funding. This legislation is credited with bolstering the participation rates of girls and women in athletics. Although athletics are not explicitly addressed in the statutory language, Title IX requires schools to offer male and female students equal opportunities to play sports, to give male and female athletes their fair share of athletic scholarship money, and to treat male and female athletes equally in …

Reproducing Value: How Tax Law Differentially Values Fertility, Sexuality & Marriage, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code permits a deduction for an individual’s fertility expenses, but it does not do so evenhandedly. This paper focuses on the current discriminatory effects of §213 doctrine as it is applied to the deductibility of fertility treatments for single persons and/or homosexual couples, as compared to heterosexual, married couples. Traditional economic analysis of the Code fails to explain such discrimination, thus a new approach is required. Utilizing tools from anthropological theory, this paper recognizes and analyzes our tax code (and specifically §213) as a cultural artifact and therein challenges the presumed objectivity of our …

Decoupling Marriage & Procreation: A Feminist Argument For Same-Sex Marriage, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

The quickly arriving reality of same-sex marriage is a move forward for all couples who marry, including opposite-sex and transgender couples. This piece examines the way that same-sex marriage will improve these other marriages. In particular, I argue that the "essential aspects" of marriage remain sex and reproduction - domains associated with the wife in a traditional marriage in a way that serves to denigrate women. Although the long-existing link between procreation and marriage has begun to fade, it will not be until same-sex marriage is fully legalized that opposite-sex marriage can fundamentally change. Therefore, both feminists and advocates of …

Book Review, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice Of Appearance In Life And Law, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rural Inheritance: Gender Disparities In Farm Transmission, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

Farmers are farmers' sons. Notable in our modern day, heralded by many as a gender-neutral society, it is farmers' sons, not farmers' daughters, who become farmers and take over ownership and management of the family farm. It has long been true that agricultural knowledge and land have passed through generations of men. In contrast, daughters, even today, are neither considered to be farmers nor likely to inherit family farmland. This Article begins by chronicling how farmland is inherited (by sons) then discusses why the pattern of excluding women continues. There have been substantial legal changes in the United States impacting …

The Lawmaking Family, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

Increasingly there are conflicts over families trying to “opt out” of various legal structures, especially public school education. Examples of opting-out conflicts include a father seeking to exempt his son from health education classes; a mother seeking to exempt her daughter from mandatory education about the perils of female sexuality; and a vegetarian student wishing to opt out of in-class frog dissection. The Article shows that, perhaps paradoxically, the right to direct the upbringing of children was more robust before it was constitutionalized by the Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). In …

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

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I was, until recently, a pregnant man. I explored some of the issues that arose along my path to parenthood in a recent essay titled Pregnant Man?: A Conversation. My husband and I began the process of having a child several years ago when we hired a surrogacy agency that works primarily with gay male couples. After a complex process, we are now raising our daughter.

As a parent, I confront a far more sexed area of life than I have ever encountered before. Everyone congratulates my partner and me on being “fathers,” even though within our home we …

Debunking The Market Myth In Pay Discrimination Cases, Nicole Buonocore Porter, Jessica R. Vartanian

Faculty Publications

Several things have been said about the Equal Pay Act (EPA) in recent years--not many of them have been very nice. The Equal Pay Act has been described as "broken" and suffering from an "identity crisis." Another scholar has claimed that the EPA fails to prevent wage discrimination for women in professional and leadership positions, stating that: "[i]n short, the EPA is increasingly becoming an empty promise, unworkable and ineffective to remedy wage discrimination for many women." Some authors assert that winning a case under the EPA is "nearly impossible."

It is clear that the EPA is failing (and maybe …

Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

This article examines the global export of domestic U.S. legal projects and strategies in the realm of family law and gender justice to South Asia. While such projects have undoubtedly achieved substantial gains for women in the U.S., there have also been costs. At a remove of two decades, scholars have now begun to theorize those costs and argue that feminism needs to reconsider its commitments to particular projects that have been held central to women’s emancipation. Yet much of these critiques have not reached the transnational women’s movements that are led by U.S. feminist activists and scholars. Relying on …

Procuring Meaningful Land Rights For The Women Of Rwanda, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

Land reform and gender equality are important development issues in post-Genocide Rwanda. Beginning in 1999, the government of Rwanda passed and implemented reforms which granted women rights to own and use land on an equal status with men. However, as is expected with widespread social reform, obstacles continue to inhibit widespread gender equality in practice. In Rwanda, major social obstacles manifest in the form of (1) resistance to allowing daughters to inherit land from their parents, (2) adherence to assumptions of female inferiority, and (3) the persistence of informal marriages, in which wives remain unprotected by the new laws. Interested …

Introduction To Symposium Issue, Uncovered: The Policing Of Sex Work, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Unsex Cedaw, Or What’S Wrong With Women’S Rights, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

CEDAW, signed on July 17, 1980 by sixty-four countries, has as its principal goals the protection and promotion of women's rights and the elimination of discrimination against women. As of March 7, 2011, 186 countries—more than ninety­ percent of the United Nations' member states—are parties to the Convention. The most notable non-party to the Convention is the United States. In addition, as of May 15, 2010, there are seventy-nine Signatories and ninety-nine Parties to the Optional Protocol, a supplement io CEDAW designed to remedy some of the treaty's shortcomings. Although challenges have hobbled implementation of CEDAW, it remains the …

After Gender?: Examining International Justice Enterprises: An Introduction, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Pace Law School founded its Women's Justice Center nearly two decades ago, and since then the school has built a reputation for work on sex, gender, and women's rights. Continuing its commitment to these critical issues, the school hosted Pace Law Review's Symposium, After Gender?: Examining International Justice Enterprises, on November 12, 2010.

When I first proposed this Symposium, I had been writing on international legal regimes related to sex, gender, and sexuality. My work engaged the preeminent international convention concerning these issues, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a critique …

Teaching Gender As A Core Value In Business Organizations Class, Cheryl L. Wade

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I teach a business organizations course that is typically a large class with up to ninety students. At some point in the first week of each semester, I talk about public companies and the men who lead them. I point out to my students that while it is appropriate in most contexts to use gender-neutral language, it would be inaccurate to do so when talking about big business. Only fifteen percent of the board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by women, and only sixteen percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers are women. I let my students know …

Embracing Caregiving And Respecting Choice: An Essay On The Debate Over Changing Gender Norms, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

This Essay is the third piece of my project to resolve what I call the "caregiver conundrum" for working caregivers. I define the "caregiver conundrum" broadly, to include all of the workplace norms, rules and practices that make it difficult for working caregivers to successfully balance work and family.

In conceptualizing my ideas, I realized that one of the critiques of my proposal would be that it does nothing to change the gender norms, or stated another way, it accepts the gendered division of work and family with which most people live. I do nothing to get women to do …

Pregnant Man?: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family …

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

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Thanks to Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk for organizing this amazing workshop. 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 …

Why Care About Caregivers? Using Communitarian Theory To Justify Protection Of "Real" Workers, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

What is the caregiver conundrum? Simply put, it is the difficulty caregivers face when trying to balance their caregiving responsibilities with their work responsibilities. Caregivers face conflicts both at home and at work when work responsibilities clash with responsibilities at home. In many cases, these conflicts create serious hardships on the caregivers and their loved ones.

Finding a solution to this pressing problem is puzzling because courts and scholars disagree on the scope of the problem. Thus far, courts only protect employees who experience caregiver discrimination because the employer incorrectly assumes the employee will not meet the workplace requirements. In …

From Queen Bees And Wannabes To Worker Bees: Why Gender Considerations Should Inform The Emerging Law Of Workplace Bullying, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

This Article submits that the documented phenomenon of workplace bullying operates to stymie the retention and advancement of women in the workplace Research documented in books like Queen Bees and Wannabes shows that as early as the schoolyard, males and females tend to socialize differently, engage in and resolve conflict with peers differently, and absorb bullying behavior differently. Girls often believe or are taught to believe that direct conflict or confrontation is unpalatable and tend to employ more passive aggressive means of engagement with foes. They often internalize and repress feelings that boys are more likely to express. Viewing the …

Empowerment Or Estrangement: Liberal Feminism's Visions Of The “Progress” Of Muslim Women, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

This paper presents some thoughts on the progress of Muslim women towards gender justice. It argues that Liberal Legal feminism shares a common understanding of history and progress with those Liberal political theories that justified the British Empire. Because of this genealogy, Liberal feminism seeks to reform cultures and societies that do not comport with a particular Liberal teleology that forecloses the expression of alternative ideas of history, progress, and human flourishing. It further argues that Muslim women's organizations that partner with Northern organizations sometimes seek to fulfill Liberal expectations of victimhood at the hands of their culture. The consequence …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Recent economic events have turned the relationship between the public sector and the corporate world upside-down. The as-yet-unnamed financial crisis led governments to intervene in the private sector at levels not seen since the Great Depression. This crisis has exposed the need for new leadership in the corporate world and a new influx of public ideas in the private sector. Gendered understandings of economic relations have surfaced, with some arguing that testosterone encourages excessive greed in boom cycles and fear in bust cycles and that "the meltdown's a guy thing." Beyond allegations of causing the crisis, men have received …

Queer Legal Victories: Intersectionality Revisited, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In my 1995 article "Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Lesbian and Gay ‘Victories,’” I merged queer and intersectionality theories to critique four lesbian and gay legal “victories.” I argued that queer identity intersected with other identity characteristics, yielding queer communities whose diverse needs reflect their various class, race, gender, and sex identifications. This intersectional perspective led me to view these decisions as victories for only a privileged subset of queer communities that, "but for" their gay or lesbian identity, conform to the "American dream" (De Lauretis 1991; Robson 1992). The United States' juridical heterosexism stifled the progressive potential …

Pregnancy Discrimination And Social Change: Evolving Consciousness About A Worker's Right To Job-Protected, Paid Leave, Patricia Shiu, Stephanie Wildman

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the change over the past few decades in U.S. law and societal attitudes concerning a worker's right to job-protected, paid leave. Though common around the world, job-protected, paid leave eludes the U.S. workforce. The authors begin by considering the concept of work, its relation to identity, and the construction of safety nets for workers when they need income replacement. The Article considers the movement to establish job-protected, paid leave that encompasses and values a worker's work, family, and personal life.

The modern movement originated with pregnant workers' need for time away from work during pregnancy. Women who …

Obstacles On The Road To Gender Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As Object Lesson, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

Although the substantive law concerned with gender violence is now well established, and the principle of legality can no longer serve as a barrier to prosecutions for gender violence, significant obstacles remain to ensuring a robust system of gender justice in international criminal law in the face of continued violations. These obstacles are less visible than defects in positive law because they emerge in the practice of international criminal law at crucial yet shrouded stages of the penal process: investigation, charging, pre-trial plea negotiations, trial preparation, theprovision of protective measures, and appeals. Most importantly, strong positive law is irrelevant where …

Cedaw, Compliance, And Custom: Human Rights Enforcement In Sub-Saharan Africa, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.