Law and Gender Commons^™

Newsroom: Lgbt Equality: The Challenges Ahead, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Meritor Savings Bank V. Vinson: The Supreme Court's Recognition Of The Hostile Environment In Sexual Harassment Claims, Victoria T. Bartels

Akron Law Review

This casenote will examine Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson in light of the brief legal history of Title VII sexual harassment claims and will consider the implications of both the Court's holding and its dicta regarding the undecided issues.

United Auto Workers V. Johnson Controls, Inc.: One Small Step For Womankind, A. L. Cherry

Akron Law Review

In United Auto Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court was faced with the task of deciding whether women's childbearing capacity could be used to limit women's job choices and opportunities within certain industrial/ manufacturing fields. The Court decided that the ability to bear children could be used to so limit women, but only if the employer met a high standard. In Johnson Controls, employees who worked in a toxic work environment sought a determination that their employer's fetal protection policy discriminated on the basis of sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act …

Women In Litigation Literature: The Exoneration Of Mayella Ewell In To Kill A Mockingbird, Julia L. Ernst

Akron Law Review

This essay explores numerous factors constraining Mayella Ewell’s actions throughout the novel, particularly with respect to her false accusation of Tom Robinson. Some of the forces bearing down on Mayella include class, gender, race, history, morality, as well as familial, social, and legal dynamics. The jury’s verdict convicting Tom Robinson of rape indicates that Mayella received a much more favorable outcome in the trial than she merited.6 Depictions of Mayella within analyses of the novel have portrayed her in an unfavorable light. However, this essay encourages the reader to dig more deeply into the assumptions one must make about justice, …

Physical Attractiveness And Femininity: Helpful Or Hurtful For Female Attorneys, Peggy Li

Akron Law Review

This paper aims to use social science research to explore how a woman’s perceived physical attractiveness and femininity affects how others perceive her competence, skills, and abilities in male-dominated professions and in the law specifically. I will use the terms attractiveness and femininity interchangeably since women who are judged as being more attractive are typically seen as more feminine and women who are viewed as being more feminine are typically viewed as being more attractive. In Part II, I discuss the “Beauty is Good” and “Beauty is Beastly” stereotypes and their effects on women in male-dominated professions. In Part III, …

Professional Women Silenced By Men-Made Norms, Maritza I. Reyes

Akron Law Review

This Article proceeds in eight Parts. Part I narrates my path to “academic feminism” and the legal academy. In the tradition of feminist scholars before me, I set forth the personal to provide the background for the socio-legal-political views that inform this Article...Part II explains the need for broader perspectives and approaches to legal scholarship. It is important for the legal academy to recognize that, just like the legal market is calling for changes, we have to stop silencing the development of scholarship andperspectives that can bring forth the change we need. The academy has already benefited from the work …

Do Law Schools Mistreat Women Faculty? Or, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Dan Subotnik

Akron Law Review

How much fire, if any, is there to charges, first leveled more than fifteen years ago and continuing today, that a harsh law school culture oppresses women faculty? As Martha Chamallas, a well-known feminist law critic, writes,—and perhaps professes in class as well—“[f]or both new and senior women law professors, gender bias is still a major fact of life.”... After evaluating the complaints against law schools, which I spell out below—and renouncing any presumption in my favor—I conclude, unindignantly, that the charges are almost entirely unproven...The principal charges leveled against the male establishment in terms of hiring, retention and promotion …

Examining Pay Differentials In The Legal Field, Barbara Donn, Christine Cahill, Meghan H. Mihal

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

This study investigates pay discrimination towards women in the legal field. Recent research has shown that a pay gap does exist in the legal field, and we show that this gap widens throughout the lawyers’ early careers. For our analysis, we focus on the pay differentials between associate level men and women at large private law firms in the United States. The data used in this study is provided by the American Bar Association and is a nationally representative data set following lawyers who began their legal career in 2000. We show that women earn less than their male counterparts …

‘Please Be A Lady… You Are Not Going To Be Heard’: The Debate Over The Ratification Of The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, Kasie Durkit

International ResearchScape Journal

Why did the United States fail to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? This overarching question forms the basis of this paper and will be answered using an array of primary and secondary sources. This paper gleans most of its evidence from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings of 1994 and 2002, letters from both President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Congressional Research Service reports on CEDAW from 2013 and 2007, several Senators’ statements in the Congressional Record, Congressional testimony, and the text of the CEDAW treaty. This …

The Issue Class, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

In 2011, in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court refused to certify a proposed class of one and a half million female workers who had alleged that the nation’s largest private employer had discriminated against them on the basis of their sex. The academic response to the case has been highly critical of the Court’s decision. This Article does not weigh in on the debate of whether the Court missed the mark. Instead, this Article addresses a more fundamental question that has gone completely unexplored: what is the best tool currently available for workers to pursue systemic employment …

Outing Privacy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

The government regularly outs information concerning people's sexuality, gender identity, and HIV status. Notwithstanding the implications of such outings, the Supreme Court has yet to resolve whether the Constitution contains a right to informational privacy - a right to limit the government's ability to collect and disseminate personal information.

This Article probes informational privacy theory and jurisprudence to better understand the judiciary's reluctance to fully embrace a constitutional right to informational privacy. The Article argues that while existing scholarly theories of informational privacy encourage us to broadly imagine the right and its possibilities, often focusing on informational privacy's ability to …

License To Discriminate: How A Washington Florist Is Making The Case For Applying Intermediary Scrutiny To Sexual Orientation, Kendra Lacour

Seattle University Law Review

Over the past few decades, the debate over sexual orientation has risen to the forefront of civil rights issues. Though the focus has generally been on the right to marriage, peripheral issues associated with the right to marriage—and with sexual orientation generally—have become more common in recent years. As the number of states permitting same-sex marriage—along with states prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation—increases, so too does the conflict between providers of public accommodations and those seeking their services. Never is this situation more problematic than when religious beliefs are cited as the basis for denying services to …

Title Ix And Social Media: Going Beyond The Law, Emily Suran

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The U.S. Department of Education is currently investigating over eighty colleges and universities for civil rights violations under Title IX. From a punitive standpoint, these investigations likely will have minimal impact. Indeed, since the Alexander v. Yale plaintiffs first conceived of Title IX in a sexual harassment context, the nondiscriminatory principles of Title IX have proven disappointingly difficult to enforce. However, in today’s world of grassroots social activism, Title IX has taken on a new, extralegal import. Title IX has become a rallying cry for college activists and survivors. Despite (or perhaps because of) its limitations as a law, it …

Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …

A Comparative Analysis Of Unconscious And Institutional Discrimination In The United States And Britain, Leland Ware

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Fourth Trimester, Saru M. Matambanadzo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article introduces a new conceptual framework to the legal literature on pregnancy and pregnancy discrimination: the fourth trimester. The concept of a fourth trimester, drawn from maternal nursing and midwifery, refers to the crucial three to six month period after birth when many of the physical, psychological, emotional, and social effects of pregnancy continue. Giving this concept legal relevance extends the scope of pregnancy beyond the narrow period defined by conception, gestation, and birth and acknowledges that pregnancy is a relational process, not an individual event. In the United States, however, antidiscrimination law has failed to acknowledge the demands …

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 …

Bottlenecks And Antidiscrimination Theory, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Reviews

In American antidiscrimination theory, two positions have competed for primacy. One, anticlassification, sees the proper goal of antidiscrimination law as being essentially individualistic. The problem with discrimination, in this view, is that it classifies individuals on the basis of an irrelevant or arbitrary characteristic—and that it, as a result, denies them opportunities for which they are otherwise individually qualified. The other position, antisubordination, sees the proper goal of antidiscrimination law as being more group oriented. The problem with discrimination, in this view, is that it helps constitute a social system in which particular groups are systematically subject to disadvantage and …

Ledbetter V. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Derrick A. Bell Jr.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lessons From The Dolphins/Richie Incognito Saga, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Females On The Fringe: Considering Gender In Payday Lending Policy, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Payday lending may provide a much-needed safety net for some consumers in need of quick cash for emergencies. However, data suggest that most payday loan borrowers become repeat users caught in a cycle of high-cost debt. Furthermore, empirical evidence indicates consistent overrepresentation of women, including many single mothers, among payday loan borrowers. This takes a toll not only on these women and their families, but also on society as a whole. Indeed, context matters in payday lending debates. It is thus time to think creatively and consider contextualized programs that aim to increase women’s and all consumers’ safe borrowing options, …

How Masculinities Distribute Power: The Influence Of Ann Scales, Ann C. Mcginley, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

Ann Scales's scholarship on masculinities in relation to sexual assault and militarism prompted us to consider exactly how power is distributed by assumptions about what is masculine. For instance, men privileged by association with hegemonic masculinities — those most dominant and preferred — are sometimes excused for acts of violence against people who are denigrated as unmasculine or excessively masculine. In one set of examples, communities excuse football players for sexual assaults on grounds that "boys will be boys." The implication is that boys should be allowed to act out before taking on adult responsibilities, and that they need to …

Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Andrea B. Carroll

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

Hierarchies Of Discrimination In Baby Making: A Response To Professor Carroll, Radhika Rao

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

How Parents Are Made: A Response To Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Kimberly M. Mutcherson

Indiana Law Journal

Roundtable on Regulating Assisted Reproductive Technology 2012

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. …

Tyrone Garner's Lawrence V. Texas, Marc Spindelman

Michigan Law Review

Dale Carpenter's Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas has been roundly greeted with well-earned praise. After exploring the book's understanding of Lawrence v. Texas as a great civil rights victory for lesbian and gay rights, this Review offers an alternative perspective on the case. Built from facts about the background of the case that the book supplies, and organized in particular around the story that the book tells about Tyrone Garner and his life, this alternative perspective on Lawrence explores and assesses some of what the decision may mean not only for sexual orientation equality but also for …

Bathroom Bias: Making The Case For Trans Rights Under Disability Law, Daniella A. Schmidt

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Disability law is one of the more successful tools currently being used to protect trans people fom discrimination. While the use of disability law as a framework for affirming or creating trans rights has come with some success, many in the community remain reluctant to use disability law for fear of the policy implications and stigma associated with medicalization of trans identity. After exploring the current state of the law on both the federal and state level, this Note will argue how disability law both could and should be used more often to further trans protections. In particular, this Note …

Modernizing State Vital Statistics Statutes And Policies To Ensure Accurate Gender Markers On Birth Certificates: A Good Government Approach To Recognizing The Lives Of Transgender People, Lisa Mottet

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Across the country, laws governing corrections to gender markers on birth certificates are relatively uniform, in large part because many states adopted the relevant provisions of the 1977 revision of the Model State Vital Statistics Act (MSVSA). The MSVSA, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, guides states on the most efficient laws and procedures related to maintaining accurate birth, death, and other vital records at the state, local, and territorial level. At the time when the government promulgated the MSVSA provision related to gender corrections, it served as a forward-thinking model because it acknowledged that vital …

Flexible Scheduling And Gender Equiality: The Working Families Flexibility Act Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Lane C. Powell

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The Working Families Flexibility Act (“WFFA”) as proposed in 2012 would create a federal right for employees to request flexible work arrangements. However, the bill contains no private right of action for employees to enforce this new right. By reframing the WFFA as an anti-discrimination statute targeting unconstitutional sex discrimination on the part of the States, the WFFA could be upheld under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, allowing Congress to provide a private right of action for both private and state employees. This Note uses the Supreme Court’s decisions on the Family Medical Leave Act in Hibbs and Coleman …