Law and Gender Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

The Unconstitutional Tampon Tax, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

University of Richmond Law Review

Thirty-five states impose a sales tax on menstrual hygiene products, while products like spermicidal condoms and erectile dysfunction medications are tax-free. This sales tax—commonly called the “tampon tax”—represents an expense that girls and women must bear on top of the cost of biologically necessary items that they need in order to attend school, work, and otherwise participate in public life. This article explores the constitutionality of the tampon tax and argues that it is an impermissible form of gender discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. First, menstrual hygiene products are a unique proxy for female sex, and therefore any disadvantageous …

Unbowed, Unbroken, And Unsung: The Unrecognized Contributions Of African American Women In Social Movement, Politics, And The Maintenance Of Democracy, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

Black women have made huge contributions to American society in movements, politics, and maintenance of the democracy. Black women have been relegated to footnotes, turned in memes, and largely ignored in politics and other areas of power. Notwithstanding the disrespect, disregard, and failures of the larger society to acknowledge that black own have made significant contributions, not only in the in entertainment industry, but in numerous other ways that have shaped out cultural and political landscape, black women's contributions to the larger society have been huge and impactful; yet there are so many blank spaces where their stories should reside. …

Discrimination By Design?, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

Platform world is speeding the redesign of employment. Bricks-and-mortar firms once hired through narrow portals and then invested in the workers they hired, providing job security and predictable career ladders. Platform world flings the doors wide open to income-generating efforts, providing new opportunities but also offering security and predictable advancement to almost no one.

Other legal scholars have mined these same data for gender disparities; they have found disparities in the platform economy arising from customer biases and individual preferences, and manifested in men’s and women’s different experiences in everything from pricing plumbing services to fraud prevention. Neutral-appearing algorithms may …

Trump’S Angry White Women: Motherhood, Nationalism, And Abortion, Yvonne F. Lindgren

Faculty Works

A majority of white women — fifty-two percent — voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. White working-class women supported Trump in even greater numbers: sixty-one percent of white women without college degrees voted for Trump. This result seems remarkable considering Trump’s derogatory statements about women and his staunch opposition to legal access to abortion. Why did white women, especially those most likely to need access to reproductive healthcare—poor and working-class women — vote heavily against their own interests to embrace a candidate who called for punishing women who access abortion? Much recent commentary has considered this question …

Critiquing Matter Of A-B-: An Uncertain Future In Asylum Proceedings For Women Fleeing Intimate Partner Violence, Theresa A. Vogel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The #MeToo movement has brought renewed attention to the impact of gender inequality on our society’s ability to provide protection to women from physical and sexual violence, including intimate partner violence. Despite advances in legal protections and increased resources to prevent, prosecute, and bring an end to intimate partner violence, in the absence of true efforts to combat gender inequality as a whole, intimate partner violence will continue to pervade our society. The discussion of gender inequality’s impact on the treatment of intimate partner violence must expand beyond the violence that occurs in the United States to gender inequality’s impact …

The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Introduction to Symposium on Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions.

Post Secularism And The Woman Question, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I will discuss the “woman question in post secularism” by offering my critique of Saba Mahmood’s book “Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject”. But before I do so, let me just state that I am a legal academic and I am not a reader of the field of anthropology. I am unfamiliar with the theoretic jargon of the discipline- even less so of the jargon of the subfield, anthropology of religion from which Politics of Piety hails. Each discipline is autonomous more so fields of study within each discipline. Those fields usually coalesce around a celebrity …

Bias In The Boardroom: Implicit Bias In The Selection And Treatment Of Women Directors

Marquette Law Review

In light of the stagnation in growth of women directors on corporate boards, board diversity advocates and corporate leaders should look to the role implicit gender bias plays in the board nomination process and in challenges women directors face while serving on boards. Relevant stakeholders often overlook how implicit bias barriers prevent women from reaching the boardroom and persist as obstacles once women directors have earned their seats on the board. Incorporating social psychological research on implicit bias and recognized strategies to work around bias, such as objective assessments and guidelines, data analytics, and accountability mechanisms, this Article encourages companies …

The Parent Trap: Equality, Sex, And Partnership In The Modern Law Firm, Miranda Mcgowan

Marquette Law Review

The fight for women’s equality in law has achieved a lot. Women have

made up nearly half of law students and law firm associates for the last two

decades. Despite this progress, the partnership ranks of law firms are

profoundly and intolerably sex segregated and will remain so for the

foreseeable future. Our profession, which has fought for and helped to achieve

legal equality on behalf of so many, is itself dogged by intractable inequality.

A standard set of solutions, which address structural barriers within law firms

and the effects of cognitive biases, have been urged for decades and yet …

Sex Wars As Proxy Wars, Aya Gruber

Publications

The clash between feminists and queer theorists over the meaning of sex—danger versus pleasure—is well- trodden academic territory. Less discussed is what the theories have in common. There is an important presumption uniting many feminist and queer accounts of sexuality: sex, relative to all other human activities, is something of great, or grave, importance. The theories reflect Gayle Rubin’s postulation that "everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture.” In the #MeToo era, we can see all too clearly how sex has an outsized influence in public debate. Raging against sexual harm has become the preferred …

Innovating Inclusion: The Impact Of Women On Private Company Boards, Jennifer S. Fan

Articles

Eight percent—that is the percentage of women who serve on the boards of directors of private high technology companies. Private companies, particularly high technology companies, have transformed citizens’ daily lives, while the unprecedented availability of private capital has allowed those companies to remain private longer. This rise, however, has also obscured some of the weaknesses of private companies, which are not subject to public disclosure and regulatory oversight: rampant sexual harassment, the lack of women leaders in technology companies, the relative absence of female venture capitalists, and the dearth of female board members, to name a few. Yet thus far, …