Law and Gender Commons^™

Corrective Rape: An Extreme Manifestation Of Discrimination And The State’S Complicity In Sexual Violence, Sarah Doan-Minh

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Corrective rape originally referred to rape perpetrated by straight men against lesbians in order to “correct” or “cure” their homosexuality—a punishment for being gay and for violating traditional gender presentation. The term is now used more broadly to refer to the rape of any member of a group that does not conform to gender norms or heterosexuality when the motive of the perpetrator is to “correct” the individual. In the United States, the actual causes of corrective rape are usually ignored or de-emphasized, thereby perpetuating the rates of sexual violence. Sexual violence is often framed in terms of personal dynamics …

Inclusion Riders And Diversity Mandates, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this piece, I situate these sorts of diversity requests within the broader context of other customer/client preferences that implicate Title VII. To be sure, the “inclusion riders” are not literal customer/client requests, but rather requests from celebrities who are themselves being hired by the employer for a specific project. Broadly speaking, however, they raise the same legal issue regarding third-party preferences that implicate protected characteristics under Title VII.

As a starting point, the general rule within employment discrimination law is that customer preferences cannot justify discriminatory treatment by employers. That baseline has led courts to rule that employers cannot, …

The Common Law As Silver Slippers, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Professor Anita Bernstein's book, The Common Law Inside the Female Body, is an erudite investigation into the history and operation of the common law. Bernstein's careful and wide-ranging study leads to her arresting thesis: The common law--an old, unpredictable, and slow system that has been there all along--has tremendous power to support and even advance women's legal claims to personal liberty. In other words, women have always had the common law right to be treated equally to men. We simply have not realized it.

Bernstein makes a convincing argument that the common law tradition has a unifying theoretical commitment: “[T]he …

Rethinking Religious Objections (Old-Testament Based) To Same-Sex Marriage, Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court closed the door on one issue only to open the floodgates to another. While recognizing a constitutional right for same-sex marriage, the Court also legitimized religious objections to such unions, practically inviting complex legal challenges to its doors. In doing so, the Court also called for an "open and searching debate" on the issue. This Article seeks to trigger such debate.

For millennia, objections to same-sex marriage were cast in religious and moral terms. The Jewish Bible ("Old Testament"), conventional wisdom argues, provided three demonstrable proofs of the Bible's abhorrence of same-sex …

Don't Call Me Sweetheart! Why The Aba's New Rule Addressing Harassment And Discrimination Is So Important For Women Working In The Legal Profession Today, Kristy D'Angelo-Corker

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Popular culture has recently shone a spotlight on the inequality and discrimination faced by women in many professions. With the “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” campaigns in full swing, it is clear that women are ready to fight to be respected and receive equal treatment. Although there are a plethora of news stories highlighting the issues that women are facing today, this Article will focus specifically on the effect of bias, prejudice, harassment, and discrimination against women in the legal profession. This discrimination and marginalization of women finds its way into law firms, courtrooms, and the corporate arena generally, and …

#Metoo, Statutory Rape Laws, And The Persistence Of Gender Stereotypes, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article proceeds in five parts. Part I reviews the history of the legal and social movement from gender-specific to gender-neutral statutory rape laws. This Part includes an exploration of critical scholarship responding to the Supreme Court's Michael M. decision. Part II explains the limitations of gender-specific legislation. This Part illustrates that there are two categories of gender-neutral statutory rape jurisdictions: age-differential statutes and arbitrary prosecution statutes. This Part also explores challenges to these statutes, particularly arbitrary prosecution statutes, on equal protection grounds. Part III provides empirical data that men are prosecuted at a rate four times greater than females …

California Dreaming?, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Over the past few years, California became the setting for shocking tales of sex inequality and abuse in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Decades after women achieved educational parity. men still run the corporate world. In response to these stories exposed by the #MeToo movement, California joined the transnational corporate board quota movement by converting its voluntary quota into a hard one. Will California's first mover status overcome constitutional objections and inspire other jurisdictions to act. Or is just Utopian dreaming, California-style? This Essay argues that despite its many flaws, the quota may succeed in curbing male over-representation on corporate boards. …

Beyond The Numbers: Substantive Gender Diversity In Boardrooms, Yaron G. Nili

Indiana Law Journal

The push for gender diversity on public companies’ boards has been gaining traction. Advocacy groups, institutional investors, regulators, and companies themselves have all recognized the need for more diverse boards. However, gender parity is still absent from most public companies’ boards, and a significant number of companies still have no women on their boards.

Current public and academic discourse has focused on the number of women serving on the board and their percentage compared to men as the litmus test for gender diversity. However, academic studies and the public push for more diversity have mostly failed to account for another …

The Compliance Process, Veronica Root

Indiana Law Journal

Even as regulators and prosecutors proclaim the importance of effective compliance programs, failures persist. Organizations fail to ensure that they and their agents comply with legal and regulatory requirements, industry practices, and their own internal policies and norms. From the companies that provide our news, to the financial institutions that serve as our bankers, to the corporations that make our cars, compliance programs fail to prevent misconduct each and every day. The causes of these compliance failures are multifaceted and include general enforcement deficiencies, difficulties associated with overseeing compliance programs within complex organizations, and failures to establish a culture of …

The Statutory Public Interest In Closing The Pay Gap, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the role that the statutory public interest should play in the enforcement of rights under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). Current data shows that, even fifty-five years after the enactment of federal law outlawing sex based pay discrimination, the gender pay gap inflicts huge costs on women, their families, and the U.S. economy, echoing the public concerns that led to the statute’s original passage. That Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) and EPA rights cannot be waived by an employee calls into question two common employer pay-setting practices often excused under federal law: setting …

The Rule Of Law Collaborative: A Center Of Practical, Interdisciplinary Research, And Engagement On Pressing Rule Of Law Issues Around The World, Joel H. Samuels

Articles

No abstract provided.

Gender Parity: The Increasing Success And Subsequent Effect Of Anti-Male Bias Claims In Campus Sexual Assault Proceedings, Weiru Fang

Cornell Law Review

Part I of this Note briefly discusses sexual assault and the legislative and legal history of Title IX. Part II of this Note provides an overview of "male bias" gender-discrimination suits and focuses in particular on the recent decisions by the Second Circuit and Sixth Circuit. In Part III, this Note explains the discrepancy behind the circuit split and illustrates the ramifications of applying one standard over another by pointing to similar arguments made within the Title VII employment context. This Note contends, further, that for the sake of maintaining consistency across jurisprudence and vindicating the goals of discrimination laws …

The Seeds Of Early Childhood, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The trajectory of childhood is often shaped before childhood even begins. Pre-birth inequalities are not natural or inevitable. Rather, we create and cement policy choices that reduce access to adult healthcare, restrict accessible contraception, impede access to abortion, and deny prenatal care. Together, these choices mean that, in the United States, we maintain very high rates of unwanted pregnancy and increasingly high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, burdens that fall disproportionately on women of color and women of lower socioeconomic status. Equality demands that we address these disproportionate burdens.

Lobbying Against The Odds, Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Deborah W. Post

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Bemba Appeals Chamber Judgment: Impunity For Sexual And Gender-Based Crimes?, Susana Sacouto, Patricia Viseur Sellers

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

On June 8, 2018, a majority of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) reversed the conviction of former military commander Jean-Pierre Bemba for the crimes against humanity of rape and murder and the war crimes of rape, murder, and pillaging committed by his troops in the Central African Republic (CAR) between October 2002, and March 2003. The decision was clearly a disappointment for the victims of the crimes committed by Bemba’s troops, who have been waiting for more than fifteen years for a measure of justice. Significantly, the acquittal also means that sixteen years after the Rome …

Achieving Diversity On Corporate Boards: Engagement And Education; Not Legislation, Leanne Fuith

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Venture Bearding, Benjamin P. Edwards, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

“Venture bearding,” a term that we coin in this Article, describes processes of obscuring and covering socially stigmatized identities in business environments. This Article introduces distinctive identity performance strategies from the technology, startup, and venture capital context into the legal literature and discusses what their existence explains about business environments and capital formation. Venture bearding, as we use the term, describes behaviors that persons with contextually stigmatized identities adopt to access social status and capital. In some instances, women, who are stigmatized in this context, may employ men as front persons to conceal that the venture is an exclusively women-owned …

Learning From Feminist Judgments: Lessons In Language And Advocacy, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford

Scholarly Works

Judicial decision-making is not a neutral and logical enterprise that involves applying clear rules to agreed-upon facts. Legal educators can and should help students learn more about how judges actually go about making their decisions. The study of re-imagined judicial decisions, such as the alternative judgments from various Feminist Judgments Projects, can enrich the study of law in multiple ways. First, seeing a written decision that differs from the original can help students think “outside the box” constructed by the original opinion by showing them a concrete example of another perspective written in judicial language. Second, the rewritten judgments show …

The Masculinity Mandate: #Metoo, Brett Kavanaugh, And Christine Blasey Ford, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In fall 2019, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings involving Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony about then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh's alleged behavior at a high school party gone awry.

This essay uses identity performance and multidimensional masculinities theories to analyze the hearings, specifically to consider the gender, race, and class performances of the participants, and how partisans and non-partisans interpreted those performances. This examination demonstrates that the judgment concerning masculinity and femininity performances and their appropriateness is, to a certain extent, in the eye of the beholder. By the same token, public interpretations are not arbitrary. Rather, at least in this …

Schools As Training Grounds For Harassment, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This article deals with the schools’ role in permitting and encouraging peer sex- and gender-based harassment of children and the law’s role in failing to hold schools accountable for their negligent and intentional behavior in sanctioning it. Part I discusses the evidence of rampant sex- and gender-based harassment in schools. Part II analyzes the problem through the lens of masculinities theory and explains how cultural notions of masculinity create incentives for boys (and some girls) to engage in peer sex- and gender-based harassment.

Part III analyzes court cases and OCR decisions and explains the serious disconnect between the two; it …

Why Women? Judging Transnational Courts And Tribunals, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Calls for greater representation of women on the bench are not new. Many people share the intuition that having more female judges would make a difference to the decisions that courts might reach or how courts arrive at those decisions. This hunch has only equivocal empirical support, however. Nevertheless legal scholars, consistent with traditional feminist legal methods, persist in asking how many women judges there are and what changes might bring more women to the bench. This essay argues that achieving diversity in international courts and tribunals – indeed on any bench – will not happen simply by having more …

Global Carceral Feminism And Domestic Violence: What The West Can Learn From Reconciliation In Uganda, Aparna Polavarapu

Scholarly Works

Around the world, policies and laws emphasizing criminal justice have dominated domestic violence interventions for decades. In the United States, certain feminist advocates worked with state actors to develop a primarily criminal justice response to domestic violence. Western influence in the international human rights movement has spread this approach around the world, leading it to become the key means of addressing violence against women. However, critics argue that the overreliance on the criminal justice system is a key failure of the anti-domestic-violence movement, with some referring to the strain of feminism promoting prosecution as "carceral feminism. " The carceral approach …

Using Art To Make A Baby: How Rhode Island's Insurance Coverage Mandate Is Preventing Same-Sex Couples From Having Biological Children, Carla Centanni

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Damaging Cure: Queer Youth And Conversion Therapy

Florida A & M University Law Review

This article proceeds in six parts. Part I dissects the development of the conservative narrative that queerness is a contagious trait, how the gender norm perpetuates a broad rejection of homosexuality, and the concept of “cured passing” in terms of conversion therapy success stories. Part II examines the progression of the general LGBT rights movement by highlighting its historic adult-centered victories and elaborating how these victories allowed for the necessary space and momentum for the contemporary movement of state conversion therapy bans to gain traction. Part III provides the background and history of conversion therapy by exploring its medical origin …

The Female Body In The Workplace: Judges And The Common Law, Maritza I. Reyes

Journal Publications

If the common law serves to liberate women, everybody, including judges, should understand the role they do play and should play in the development of the common law. As a career law clerk in the federal courts, I witnessed the decision-making process inside the chambers of federal judges and in the courtrooms. I came to the conclusion that judges, more than statutory law, influence what happens to female bodies in the workplace. Litigants initially drive the common law by filing complaints. However, judicial decisions affect not only the litigants in their individual cases, they also serve as precedent for future …

The Pink Ghetto Pipeline: Challenges & Opportunities For Women In Legal Education, Renee N. Allen, Alicia Jackson

Journal Publications

The demographics of law schools are changing and women make up the majority of law students. Yet, the demographics of many law faculties do not reflect these changing demographics with more men occupying faculty seats. In legal education, women predominately occupy skills positions, including legal writing, clinic, academic success, bar preparation, or library. According to a 2010 Association of American Law Schools survey, the percentage of female lecturers and instructors is so high that those positions are stereotypically female.

The term coined for positions typically held by women is "pink ghetto." According to the Department of Labor, pink-collar-worker describes jobs …

It Takes A Village: An Analysis Of Multilateralism And The Legal Mechanisms Designed To Prevent Violence Against Women, Madison Ivey

Scripps Senior Theses

Treaties and international organizations work together to create a global environment that protects the rights of a person and actively promotes the well-being of society. However, they do not necessarily guarantee the rights of everyone. Since women are not explicitly named in human rights documents, they are often not granted equal human rights. Therefore, it takes more than just international legal instruments to guarantee women's rights as human rights. A combination of civil society (NGOs), International organizations (IOs), and domestic government creates a perfect coalition to beat the barriers that must be overcome to fully protect women from violence.

It’S Still Me: Safeguarding Vulnerable Transgender Elders, Sarah Steadman

Faculty Scholarship

Transgender individuals have many reasons to be concerned about their welfare in the current political and legislative climate. Transgender elders are especially vulnerable. They are more likely to be disabled than the general elder population. Moreover, transgender elders profoundly fear a future when they must rely on others to maintain and protect their gender identity and dignity. This fear is alarmingly realistic because if a transgender elder becomes incapacitated or requires institutional care, they are likely to face discrimination and other harms by their caretakers. In addition, transgender elders who are incapacitated are particularly at-risk if a non-affirming guardian is …

Evaluating Judicial Standards Of Conduct In The Current Political And Social Climate: The Need To Strengthen Impropriety Standards And Removal Remedies To Include Procedural Justice And Community Harm, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Chief Justice Warren Burger warned that when “people who have long been exploited . . . come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud,” an “incalculable damage [is done] to society.”

Part I of this Article presents an examination of the current common frameworks shared by the states for addressing judicial conduct appealing to popular social and political influences. Included in this section is an analysis of the interrelationship between implicit bias and impropriety, as well as on community harm and procedural justice.

Part II provides both a historical and contemporary analysis of “populism,” including the …