Law and Gender Commons^™

Friends With Benefits, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family law has long been intensely interested in certain adult intimate relationships, namely marriage and marriage-like relationships, and silent about other adult intimate relationships, namely friendship. This Article examines the effects of that focus, illustrating how it frustrates one of the goals embraced by most family law scholars over the past forty years: the achievement of gender equality, within the family and without.

Part I examines the current scope of family law doctrine and scholarship, highlighting the ways that the home is still the organizing structure for family. Despite calls for increased legal recognition of diverse families, few scholars have …

Friends With Benefits?, Laura A. Rosenbury

Michigan Law Review

Family law has long been intensely interested in certain adult intimate relationships, namely marriage and marriage-like relationships, and silent about other adult intimate relationships, namely friendship. This Article examines the effects of that focus, illustrating how it frustrates one of the goals embraced by most family law scholars over the past forty years: the achievement of gender equality, within the family and without. Part I examines the current scope of family law doctrine and scholarship, highlighting the ways in which the home is still the organizing structure for family. Despite calls for increased legal recognition of diverse families, few scholars …

It's Really About Sex: Same-Sex Marriage, Lesbigay Parenting, And The Psychology Of Disgust, Richard E. Redding

Working Paper Series

The effects of gay and lesbian parenting on children has been the touchstone issue in much of the recent state litigation on same sex marriage, with opponents of same sex marriage arguing that there is a rational basis for denying marriage rights to gays and lesbians because the central purpose of marriage is procreation and childrearing, but that children are harmed or disadvantaged when raised by gay or lesbian parents. To interrogate this claim, I critique the social science research that informs the concerns frequently expressed about the possible negative effects of lesbigay parenting on children's emotional, psychosocial, and sexual …

The Legacy Of Colonialism: Law And Women's Rights In India, Varsha Chitnis, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

The relationship between nineteenth century England and colonial India was complex in terms of negotiating the different constituencies that claimed an interest in the economic and moral development of the colonies. After India became subject to the sovereignty of the English Monarchy in 1858, its future became indelibly linked with that of England's, yet India's own unique history and culture meant that many of the reforms the colonialists set out to undertake worked out differently than they anticipated. In particular, the colonial ambition of civilizing the barbaric native Indian male underlay many of the legal reforms attempted in the nearly …

Law And Feminism: Editor's Note, Jamie Cameron

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Law And Feminism: Foreword, Mary Jane Mossman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

From Mothers' Allowance To Mothers Need Not Apply: Canadian Welfare Law As Liberal And Neo-Liberal Reforms, Shelley A. M. Gavigan, Dorothy E. Chunn

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In this paper we examine changes in the form and content of Canadian welfare law through a historical, feminist lens using the exemplar of mother-headed families. Our analysis of how the state dealt with sole support mothers in several provinces throughout the twentieth century reveals important continuities, as well as discontinuities, between the past and the present that have shaped and reshaped the lives and experiences of poor women and their children. In doing so, it helps to illuminate how they have been rendered "undeserving" or "never deserving" with the neo-liberal (re)formation of the Keynesian state in Canada.

The Gender Trap: Flexible Work In Corporate Legal Practice, Margaret Thornton, Joanne Bagust

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Despite the fact that women comprise well over 50 per cent of law graduates in many parts of the world, women lawyers continue to be clustered disproportionately in the lower echelons of the profession. This paper considers the role of flexible work as a gender equity strategy and is illuminated by interviews with lawyers in elite corporate firms in Australia. It is argued that far from being a panacea, flexible work is being invoked to confine women to subordinate roles and to restrict access to partnerships. Not only is there a residual suspicion of the feminine in positions of authority …

Domesticity And The Texas Community Property System, Lauren F. Redman

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Individual Accounts In Social Security Reform: Lessons From Abroad And Special Considerations For Women, Karen E. Menter

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Commodification Of Women's Work: Theorizing The Advancement Of African Women, Tiffany M. Mckinney Gardner

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rape And The Exception In Turkish And International Law, Ruth A. Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Comment suggests, first, that Turkey's new (2004) rape law is indebted to recent trends in international sexual legislation, and second, that both Turkish and international rape law are in turn the product of a century of European exceptionalism. The 2004 Turkish criminal code is a text that has redefined the Turkish state's approach to issues ranging from torture to corruption to immigrant smuggling to rape and adultery. Fundamentally a domestic document, it is aimed at rearticulating and liberalizing the state-citizen relationship in Turkey. At the same time, it is emphatically an international text-a spectacle geared toward moving Turkey one …

Twenty-Five Years Of Hudood Ordinances- A Review, Martin Lau

Washington and Lee Law Review

Shortly after coming into power in 1979, General Zia ul-Haq began to Islamize the Pakistan legal system. One measure used to convert Pakistan into an Islamic state was the introduction of hadd offenses-those offenses for which the Qur'an prescribed fixed punishments-into the criminal law. This Article specifically examines the impact of one of these provisions, the Offense of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, on sexual offenses under the Pakistan Penal Code. This statute criminalized all forms of adultery and fornication outside of a legally valid marriage, including instances of rape where the burden of proof had not been met. In …

The Legacy Of Colonialism: Law And Women's Rights In India, Varsha Chitnis, Danaya Wright

Washington and Lee Law Review

The relationship between nineteenth century England and colonial India was complex in terms of negotiating the different constituencies that claimed an interest in the economic and moral development of the colonies. After India became subject to the sovereignty of the English Monarchy in 1858, its future became indelibly linked with that of England's, yet India's own unique history and culture meant that many of the reforms the colonialists set out to undertake worked out differently than they anticipated. In particular, the colonial ambition of civilizing the barbaric native Indian male underlay many of the legal reforms attempted in the nearly …

Tunisia At The Forefront Of The Arab World: Two Waves Of Gender Legislation, Mounira M. Charrad

Washington and Lee Law Review

Starting in the 1950s and ever since, Tunisia has implemented gender legislation expanding women's rights in family law. The ground breaking phase occurred with the promulgation of the Code of Personal Status in the mid-1950s during the formation of a national state in the aftermath of independence from French colonial rule. Another major phase occurred in the 1990s with citizenship law reforms as embodied in the Tunisian Code of Nationality. As a result of these two major phases, Tunisia has been at the fore front of "woman friendly" legislative changes in the Arab- Muslim world and is widely recognized as …

The Future Of Palestinian Women's Rights: Lessons From A Half-Century Of Tunisian Progress, Adrien Katherine Wing, Hisham Kassim

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Subordination: Muslim Sexuality In Secular And Religious Legal Discourse In India, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Muslim women and Muslim members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community face a specific form of dual subordination in relation to their gender and sexuality. A Muslim woman might seek solace from India's patriarchal religious judicial structures only to find that the secular system's patriarchal structures likewise aid in their subordination and create a space for new forms of such subordination. Similarly, a marginalized LGBT Muslim might attempt to reject an oppressive religious formulation only to come to find that the secular Indian state might criminalize a particular form of sexuality. This analysis explores how Indian laws …

Why Don't "Reasonable Women" Complain About Sexual Harassment?, L. Camille Hébert

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Dangers Of Summary Judgment: Gender And Federal Civil Litigation, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Health Implications Of Violence Against Women: Untangling The Complexities Of Actual And Chronic Effects: Part Two, Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

The Problem With Unpaid Work, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the problems with a social norm that assumes women should shoulder a disproportionate amount of unpaid family work. It evaluates the most recent empirical data which suggests that women continue to do substantially more unpaid work than men, and men continue to do substantially more paid work than women. It then briefly reviews two standard explanations for where this gendered division of work may come from, biological inclination and/or systems of male dominance. It suggests that neither of these traditional explanations have given adequate consideration to the normative question begged by the extant division of labor. Is …

A Case For Legal Quotas For Women In The Egyptian Parliament, Hebatallah Saleh El Naggar

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Girl, Fight!, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

Today's twenty and thirty-something women have grown up in a world that is strikingly different from their mothers. Unlike their mothers, many of these women played sports in high school because of Title IX. Indeed, this generation of women has the opportunity to play professional basketball in the United State as opposed to just in Europe. A number of these women attend and study at colleges and universities with female presidents. Such women include undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University, where Drew Gilpin Faust recently became the institution's first female President. Additionally, during the prime years of their careers, …

The Intersection Of Gender And Early American Historic Preservation: A Case Study Of Ann Pamela Cunningham And Her Mount Vernon Preservation Effort, Jill Teehan

Georgetown Law Historic Preservation Papers Series

American historic preservationists universally credit Ann Pamela Cunningham, the woman who saved George Washington's Mount Vernon home, as the chief architect of the historic preservation movement in the United States. However, little scholarship has considered how Cunningham's social position as a woman significantly contributed to her ability to save Mount Vernon, and thus jumpstart a national movement to save historically significant places. Using Cunningham and the organization she formed, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union (MVLA), widely regarded as the nation's first historic preservation society, this paper considers the intersection of gender and early historic preservation in the …

An Uninvited Guest: The Federal Death Penalty And The Massachusetts Prosecution Of Nurse Kristen Gilbert, John P. Cunningham

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Genuine Article: A Subversive Economic Perspective On The Law's Procreationist Vision Of Marriage, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Health Implications Of Violence Against Women: Untangling The Complexities Of Acute And Chronic Effects: Part One, Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

Judging Magic: Can You See The Sleight Of Hand?, Rebecca Johnson

Michigan Law Review

Cultural critic bell hooks says, "Movies make magic. They change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before our very eyes." Movies do not, of course, have an exclusive hold on this ability to change one thing into something else. Law, too, possesses this power. Certainly, one must acknowledge some significant differences in the "magic" of filmic and legal texts. For the most part, as willing consumers of cultural products, we "choose" to subject ourselves to the magic of film. We sit in a darkened theater and let ourselves be taken away to a different …

Refining The Meaning And Application Of "Dating Relationship" Language In Domestic Violence Statutes, Devon M. Largio

Vanderbilt Law Review

Many young people date in high school, and Lisa Santoro was no exception.' Her father Tom tells her story:

In January, 1994, Lisa started to date a guy [named "Dan"].... In the five months Lisa dated this guy, I never really understood why she was attracted to him.... Around June, when Lisa started to work at the swimming pool, she met another guy who was in charge of the pool .... Shortly after, Lisa [broke] up with Dan. Dan tried to get Lisa to go back to him, but Lisa had her mind made up.... On July 27th, Dan called …

From Arachne To Charlotte: An Imaginative Revisiting Of Gilligan's "In A Different Voice", Erika Rackley

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.