Law and Gender Commons^™

Flying Into Mecca: When Gender Should Be A Bona Fide Occupational Qualification For Expatriation Assignments In Female-Hostile Host Countries, Richard F. Brueckner

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the tension between preserving cultural identity and navigating the demands of globalization, particularly in the context of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It focuses on the "bona fide occupational qualification" (BFOQ) exception, which allows employers to discriminate based on certain qualifications essential to the job. The analysis critiques the narrow interpretation of BFOQ by courts and explores its application in religious and gender discrimination cases, proposing a balanced approach to reconcile business needs with anti-discrimination principles.

Fear And Failing In Family Court: Special Immigrant Juvenile Status And The State Court Problem, Jessica R. Pulitzer

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the challenges faced by immigrant children seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), highlighting how state family courts' inconsistent application of the law undermines the federal statute's intent to protect vulnerable children. It argues that while SIJS was designed to provide relief to children who have suffered abuse, abandonment, or neglect, procedural and substantive inconsistencies in family court adjudications, particularly in interpreting the "best interests of the child" principle, create barriers for eligible youth. The note advocates for reforms to ensure consistent and fair access to SIJS, emphasizing the need for standardized best interest principles and greater awareness …

Jock Straps Vs. Bra Straps: Is A Battle Of The Sexes Still Necessary? A Surprising Perspective On The Effects Of Title Ix On Male Athletes In The Ncaa, Alana Berrocal

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Shopping For Gender: The Unlawfulness Of An Unregulated Market For Prenatal Gender Selection And Selective Gender Abortion, Eujean Park

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Women, Water & Privatization: A Human Rights-Based Approach To Global Water Governance, Tara Pistilli

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that recognizing and clearly defining the human right to water is essential for ensuring equitable access, particularly for women and children, who are disproportionately affected by water scarcity and privatization. It emphasizes that a human rights-based approach to water governance is necessary to prevent conflicts and protect vulnerable populations, as demonstrated by the Cochabamba Water War. This approach, supported by international law, provides a legally binding framework to hold states and corporations accountable for fulfilling the right to water.

One-Off & Off-Hand: Developing An Appropriate Course Of Liability In Threatening Online Mass Communication Events, Michael Barrett Zimmerman

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Implicit Bias Deserves Our Explicit Attention, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

What are implicit biases? In brief, we all walk around with two sets of attitudes and beliefs: our conscious (explicit) attitudes and our unconscious (implicit) attitudes. Scientists believe that human consciousness takes up approximately 10 percent of our brain activity. That means that for most things, our unconscious mind is doing the work. Implicit biases exist within our unconscious mind. Our brains are bombarded with millions of bits of information every second. To avoid overload, our brains automatically categorize information into schemas that we use to guide us in our everyday living.

Better Late Than Never?, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Marriage Equality Is Both Feminist And Progressive, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

Marriage equality has the ability to lessen vulnerability for society’s most needy. This article discusses two aspects of marriage equality in particular. Part II discusses why marriage equality can be feminist in practice and why obtaining marriage equality for same-sex couples will advance feminist values within marriage. Part III discusses how marriage equality can be progressive and help those who are vulnerable in our society by providing numerous rights that are otherwise unavailable or expensive to replicate. While marriage equality cannot bring an end to the many problems caused by marriage’s privileged status in our society, it has the ability …

The Consequences Of Abortion Restrictions For Women's Healthcare, Maya Manian

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Essay challenges the false assumption that abortion care can be segregated from women’s medical care and targeted for special restrictions without any effects on women’s health more broadly. As a matter of medical reality, abortion cannot be isolated from the continuum of women’s healthcare. Yet policymakers and the public have failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with other aspects of women’s medical care. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women’s health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these impacts remain obscured. For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, …

Anatomy Of An Uprising: Women, Democracy, And The Moroccan Feminist Spring, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

During the Arab Spring, Moroccan men and women first took to the streets on February 20, 2011 to demand governmental reforms. Their movement became known as the Mouvement du 20-Février. In a series of protests, Moroccans called for democratic change, lower food prices, freedom for Islamist prisoners, and rights for the Berber people. Initially, King Mohammad VI attempted to suppress the movement. When this approach did not succeed, in a televised speech, the King agreed to reform the government. In June 2011, the constitutional committee proposed changes that would reduce the King’s absolute powers, implement democratic reforms, and create a …

Victim Gender And The Death Penalty, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Valerie P. Hans, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Previous research suggests that cases involving female victims are more likely to result in death sentences. The current study examines possible reasons for this relationship using capital punishment data from the state of Delaware. Death was sought much more for murders of either male or female white victims compared to murders of black male victims. Analyzing capital sentencing hearings in Delaware from 1977-2007 decided by judges or juries, we found that both characteristics of the victims and characteristics of the murders differentiated male and female victim cases. The presence of sexual victimization, the method of killing, the relationship between the …

Marriage Equality Setback In Puerto Rico, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Health Rights In The Balance: The Case Against Perinatal Shackling Of Women Behind Bars, Brett Dignam, Eli Y. Adashi

Faculty Scholarship

Rationalized for decades on security grounds, perinatal shackling entails the application of handcuffs, leg irons, and/or waist shackles to the incarcerated woman prior to, during, and after labor and delivery. During labor and delivery proper, perinatal shackling may entail chaining women to the hospital bed by the ankle, wrist, or both. Medically untenable, legally challenged, and ever controversial, perinatal shackling remains the standard of practice in most US states despite sustained two-decades-long efforts by health rights legal advocates, human rights organizations, and medical professionals. Herein we review the current statutory, regulatory, legal, and medical framework undergirding the use of restraints …

Comment On The Definition Of "Eligible Organization" For Purposes Of Coverage Of Certain Preventive Services Under The Affordable Care Act, Robert P. Bartlett, Richard M. Buxbaum, Stavros Gadinis, Justin Mccrary, Stephen Davidoff Solomon, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

This comment letter was submitted by U.C. Berkeley corporate law professors in response to a request for comment by the Health and Human Services Department on the definition of "eligible organization" under the Affordable Care Act in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. "Eligible organizations" will be permitted under the Hobby Lobby decision to assert the religious principles of their shareholders to exempt themselves from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate for employees.

In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held that the nexus of identity between several closely-held, for-profit corporations and their shareholders holding “a …

Gender Politics And Child Custody: The Puzzling Persistence Of The Best-Interest Standard Child Custody Decisionmaking, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Emery

Faculty Scholarship

The best-interests-of-the-child standard has been the prevailing legal rule for resolving child-custody disputes between parents for nearly forty years. Almost from the beginning, it has been the target of academic criticism. As Robert Mnookin famously argued in a 1976 article, "best interests" are vastly indeterminate – more a statement of an aspiration than a legal rule to guide custody decisionmaking. The vagueness and indeterminacy of the standard make outcomes uncertain and gives judges broad discretion to consider almost any factor thought to be relevant to the custody decision. This encourages litigation in which parents are motivated to produce hurtful evidence …

Credibility Gap For Women In Teaching Business Law, Faith Stevelman

Other Publications

Reposted from https://www.feministlawprofessors.com/2014/05/faith-stevelman-credibility-gap-women-teaching-business-law/

The Freedom To Marry: Politics And Law In 2014 And Beyond, Ari Ezra Waldman

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

With 30 States Set For Marriage Equality, Road Ahead Still Uncertain, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Anti-Equality Forces Get ‘The Posner Treatment’ At Seventh Circuit Hearing, Ari Ezra Waldman

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Amidst Developments Unfolding In Courtrooms Across Colorado, Same-Sex Couples Marry In Boulder, Denver, Pueblo, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

$1.6 Million Employment Bias Award Upheld By Manhattan Appeals Court, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Backlash And Marriage Equality, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Presumed Incompetent: Continuing The Conversation, Carmen Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris

Faculty Articles

On March 8, 2013, the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice hosted an all-day symposium featuring more than forty speakers at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law to celebrate and invite responses to the book entitled, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González & Angela P. Harris eds., 2012). Presumed Incompetent presents gripping first-hand accounts of the obstacles encountered by female faculty of color in the academic workplace, and provides specific recommendations to women of color, allies, and academic leaders on ways …

Bearing Children, Bearing Risks: Feminist Leadership For Progressive Regulation Of Compensated Surrogacy In The United States, Sara Ainsworth

Faculty Articles

Compensated surrogacy-an arrangement in which a woman carries and gives birth to a child for someone else in exchange for money-intimately affects women. Yet, feminist law reformers have not led efforts to regulate this practice in the United States. Their absence is notable given the significant influence of feminist lawmaking in a host of other areas where women's interests are at stake. This lack of feminist law reform leadership can be understood, however, in light of the complex issues that surrogacy raises-complexity that has long divided feminists. In response to efforts to pass surrogacy legislation in Washington State in 2010, …

“If They Hand You A Paper, You Sign It”: A Call To End The Sterilization Of Women In Prison, Sara Ainsworth, Rachel Roth

Faculty Articles

The context in which the sterilization of incarcerated women takes place is a deeply coercive one. The practice of sterilizing incarcerated women, whether intentionally coerced or not, takes place against a backdrop of mass incarceration and the long and ignominious history of forced and coerced sterilizations directed at poor people and women of color in the United States. Professor Sara Ainsworth and Dr. Rachel Roth explore this backdrop, and the federal sterilization regulations that arose from this history and from women's activism to change it, in Part I. In Part II, they explain how the appallingly bad and often unconstitutional …

Introduction: Gender In Refugee Law: From The Margins To The Centre, Efrat Arbel, Catherine Dauvergne, Jenni Millbank

All Faculty Publications

Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress towards appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law. Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including …

Gendered Border Crossings, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

Nine years after the implementation of the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), this chapter examines the STCA while asking the question: what about gender? How have initial concerns about the STCA’s adverse gender impact mapped onto the current, much-altered landscape of Canadian refugee law? The chapter revisits findings made in Bordering on Failure, a recent report I co-authored about the STCA, in an effort to read gender into its absence. I begin by charting an overview of the STCA’s operation and effect to provide context for discussion. I then revisit the central findings made in Bordering on Failure, paying …

Person(S) Of Interest And Missing Women: Legal Abandonment In The Downtown Eastside, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Women are disappearing. Sixty-nine of them disappeared from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver between 1997 and 2002. Northern communities in British Columbia believe that more than 40 women have gone missing from the Highway of Tears in the past thirty years. The endangered do not come from every walk of life. Most of these women are Aboriginal. Many of them are poor. To be more precise then, poor women and Aboriginal women are disappearing. Aboriginal women in particular are the targets of an irrefutable epidemic of violence in Canada today.

Robert Pickton is thought to have murdered almost 50 of …

The Ethical Obligations Of Defence Counsel In Sexual Assault Cases, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The treatment of sexual assault complainants by defence counsel has been the site of significant debate for legal ethicists. Even those with the strongest commitment to the ethics of zealous advocacy struggle with how to approach the cross-examination of sexual assault complainants. One of the most contentious issues in this debate pertains to the use of bias, stereotype and discriminatory tactics to advance one’s client’s position. This paper focuses on the professional responsibilities defence lawyers bear in sexual assault cases. Its central claim is as follows: Defence counsel are ethically obligated to restrict their carriage of a sexual assault case …