Law and Gender Commons^™

Fallen Woman Further (Re)Framed: Jewels And Travels, Tragedies And Secrets, Judge Hortense Norris, Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Youth Suffrage: In Support Of The Second Wave, Mae Quinn, Caridad Dominguez, Chelsey Omega, Abrafi Osei-Kofi, Carlye Owens

Journal Articles

The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution is an appropriate moment to reflect on the history—and consider the future—of the right to vote in the United States. High school and college classes teach the nation’s suffrage story as integral to our identity, focusing on the enfranchisement of women under the 19th Amendment and African Americans pursuant to the 15th Amendment.1 Constitutional law courses also present the 15th Amendment as foundational knowledge for the legal profession.2 Critical legal theory and women’s legal history texts frequently cover the 19th Amendment as central to understanding the first wave …

Too Much Talk, Too Little Action: The Corporate Side Of Gender Diversity In Governance, Douglas M. Branson

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The tech industry accounts for twenty-one percent of our gross national product. Yet, tech is the most backward of major U.S. industries when it comes to promoting women to leadership positions or positioning them for future ascension into executive positions. Even lower down in the ranks, the number of women tech companies employ has declined from thirtyseven percent of employees in 1995 to twenty-four percent today (2016), with prognostications that the number will decline further, to twenty-two percent or lower in the next decade. As revealed in compensation tables that companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, women account …

Hazing In “White” Sororities: Explanations At The Organizational-Level, Gregory S. Parks, Sarah J. Spangenburg

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Hazing has been a persistent issue in a variety of contexts, institutions, and organizations. In forty-four states, legislatures have passed anti-hazing statutes. However, the law, as a whole, has been insufficient to curtail hazing. This Article analyzes this phenomenon by looking through the lens of historically white-predominant sororities. Among the broad range of organizational dynamic, at play are the pervasive cognitive biases among members. Further, sororities face many challenges to integrating new and better information across the membership. Lastly, the Article analyzes a range of organizational dynamics that play a role in sorority members’ collective decision-making processes.

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

This We’Ll Defend: Expanding Ucmj Article 2 Subject Matter Jurisdiction As A Response To Nonconsensual Distribution Of Illicit Photographs, Nicholas Karp

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In March 2017, it was revealed that current and former armed service members shared thousands of nude photos of their female counterparts over social media. Although some of these photos were taken with the women’s consent, almost none of them were distributed with the women’s consent.

Victims have little legal recourse. Military law is silent on the matter of non-consensual distribution. Federal civilian law speaks only to interstate stalking, domestic violence, and harassment, while only thirty-four states have revenge porn laws that sufficiently criminalize nonconsensual distribution of illicit photographs. Further complicating matters, the perpetrator’s military status as active duty, reservist, …

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 …

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 …

From Governess To Governance: Advancing Gender Equity In Corporate Leadership, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

Even as corporate influence on every aspect of life continues to grow, women (overall, and especially women of color) remain woefully underrepresented in corporate governance roles, particularly on boards of directors. This lack of gender diversity in the corporate boardroom is prevalent not only in more established companies but also persists—often at even higher levels— in new ventures as well. This Essay details the persistent lack of progress over more than a half century in diversifying leadership in corporate governance. This progress is especially concerning given that the benefits of diversity for sound decisionmaking and overall corporate welfare have been …

Disrupting Adhesion Contracts With #Metoo Innovators, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Adhesion contracts are everywhere. Take it or leave it, the dominant party holds the leverage while the weaker party adheres. Ninety percent of employment contracts contain mandatory arbitration clauses, and attempts to challenge arbitration requirements meet with judicial indifference or hostility. Ultimately, arbitration clauses eviscerate the employee's right to a jury trial and access to the court system in general. In recent years, employers in the tech sector have faced unexpected resistance from innovators. Just as innovators are known for disrupting old business models through technological innovations, #MeToo reformers are disrupting the seemingly insurmountable adhesion contract regime. They organize, protest, …

Criminalizing The Victim: Ending Prosecution Of Human Trafficking Victims, Jessica Aycock

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

Views On Prostitution, Shulamit Almog, Ariel L. Bendor

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

The Essay argues that both law and art represent deeply-rooted cultural ambivalences and ethical incoherence towards prostitution. The choice of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as representative of this tension stems from the sui-generis status of the painting in the history of modern art—as an avant-garde which later became a canon. Of the various views evoked by the painting, four are especially prominent: a moralizing, a normalizing, a victimizing and a patheticizing view. The examination of various Western prostitution laws shows that each of the laws simultaneously expresses different perceptions and ideologies about prostitution, much like the views evoked by the …

Arizona Gamete Donor Law: A Call For Recognizing Women’S Asymmetrical Property Interest In Pre-Embryo Disposition Disputes, Melissa B. Herrera

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a complex series of procedures used to treat fertility or genetic problems and assist with the conception of a child. Through the IVF process, couples and individuals alike can have preembryos created and cryo-preserved for later use. To those who go through the IVF process or are considering doing so, the pre-embryos represent many things, such as hope, flexibility in family planning, and the possibility of a child. It is estimated that over 5 million babies have been born through IVF worldwide, with as many as 620,000 cryo-preserved embryos in the United States alone. Typically, …

A No-Win Situation: Pregnant Mothers In Medication Assisted Therapy Programs Face Discrimination For Following Doctors Orders, Axl Campos Kaminski

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

According to new research, one in five pregnant women in the United States take some form of opioid during pregnancy, and one in twenty are addicted to opioid medications. In response, the government has increased their attempts to regulate pregnant women’s conduct in order to protect the health of unborn children. Opioid dependent mothers often find themselves subject to being reported to Child Protective Services by doctors and hospital staff for ingesting drugs while pregnant. Individuals’ in substance abuse treatment, including pregnant mothers receiving opioid replacement therapy, are protected from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, mothers who …

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 …