Law and Gender Commons^™

From Criminals To Survivors: Recognizing Domestic Sex Trafficking As Violence Against Women In The District Of Columbia, Alice Mutter

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Negotiated Rulemaking: A Method For Addressing Ambiguity Of Title Ix's Applicability To Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming Students, Greta Allardyce

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

A (Not So) Simple Question: Does Title Ix Encompass “Gender”?, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 225 (2018), J. Brad Reich

UIC Law Review

This article has five sections. Section I looks at critical, operational, definitions of “sex” and “gender.” As we shall see, the terms are not synonyms. That distinction is important as section II takes us back to Title IX’s original text. That language prohibited discrimination based on sex, but it remains silent on the issue of gender. Section III then examines how Title IX evolved in terms of depth, breadth, and scope. The most recent expansion brought campus sexual violence procedures under Title IX. That development may be particularly thought provoking as sexual violence, like gender, is not part of Title …

Justice For Victims Of Sex Trafficking: Why Current Illinois Efforts Aren’T Enough, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 715 (2018), Rachael Derham

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Draft Of A Letter Of Recommendation To The Honorable Alex Kozinski, Which I Guess I'M Not Going To Send Now, Yxta Maya Murray

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This legal-literary essay engages the current social and jurisprudential moment, encapsulated by the hashtag #metoo. It focuses on the allegations, made in the first week of December 2017, that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski verbally sexually harassed former law clerks Emily Murphy and Heidi Bond. I wrote the lioness’s share of the piece during December 10–11—that is, in the days before news outlets reported that other women complained of Kozinski touching them on the thigh or breast while propositioning them for sex or discussing recent sexual encounters—and concluded that Kozinski was unlikely to face impeachment or meaningful …

Women’S Rights In The Dprk: Discrepancies Between International And Domestic Legal Instruments In Promoting Women’S Rights And The Reality Reflected By North Korean Defectors, Jina Yang

Cornell International Law Journal

It is commendable that the DPRK has ratified the CEDAW and has established legislative measures to protect women from violence and guarantee equal protection. However short of internationally accepted human rights standard the DPRK may fall, such actions show that the DPRK is nonetheless trying to be a responsible member of the international community. However, many findings show that women’s rights are far from reaching the international standards, because of patriarchal traditions that are entrenched to the North Korean society and the national institutions related to women’s rights, which are used to mobilize women to work for the state, rather …

Sex Harassment Training Must Change: The Case For Legal Incentives For Transformative Education And Prevention, Susan Bisom-Rapp

Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the #MeToo moment, employers, legislators, and human resources professionals have defaulted to a familiar solution to what seems like an epidemic of workplace harassment: mandatory sex harassment training. The chosen antidote, however, begs an important question that this author posed over 15 years ago: Does sex harassment training actually prevent harassment? My review of the social science research in 2001 revealed no convincing evidence that sex harassment training curbs harassment. In fact, the scant research available indicated that training, as typically conducted in American workplaces, may backfire, triggering stereotypes about women and people of color, and …

Gender Sidelining And The Problem Of Unactionable Discrimination, Jessica K. Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Gender dynamics suffuse virtually every workplace. Indeed, the way that employees interact with one another turns not only on their individual backgrounds, skills and personalities, but also frequently on their gender. While many employees embrace gender diversity at work and appreciate the benefits of incorporating both male and female perspectives into workplace programs and projects, this ideal does not translate into every work environment. In many workplaces, female workers continue to experience unfair (and often unlawful) treatment based upon their gender. The law has done much to outlaw overt gender discrimination at work, providing a legal framework within which female …

Radical Feminist Harms On Sex Workers, I. India Thusi

Faculty Scholarship

Sex work has long been a site for contesting womanhood, sexuality, race, and patriarchy. Its very existence forces us to examine how we think about two very dirty subjects-money and sex. The radical feminist literature highlights the problems with sex work and often describes it as a form of "human trafficking" and violence against women. This influential philosophy underlies much of the work in human trafficking courts, was evident in a letter signed by several Hollywood starlets in opposition to Amnesty International's support for decriminalization, and is the premise of several movies and documentaries about "sex slavery." Radical feminists aim …

Deporting Undesirable Women, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

Immigration law has long labeled certain categories of immigrants "undesirable." One of the longest-standing of these categories is women who sell sex. Current immigration laws subject sellers of sex to an inconsistent array of harsh immigration penalties, including bars to entry to the United States as well as mandatory detention and removal. A historical review of prostitution-related immigration laws reveals troubling origins. Grounded in turn-of-the-twentieth-century morality, these laws singled out female sellers of sex as immoral and as threats to American marriages and families. Indeed, the first such law specifically targeted Asian women as threats to the moral fabric of …

The Rise Of Self Sidelining, Leslie Culver

Faculty Scholarship

This Article coins the term "self sidelining" as an experience emanating from two theories: impostor phenomenon and gender sidelining. The impostor phenomenon is a well-established psychological construct that describes the inability of some high-achieving women and men to internalize success. Gender sidelining, recently popularized in legal scholarship, describes the undermining of women's achievements, as compared to men, that are unactionable as legal discrimination. In view of these theories, this Article contends that when internal fraudulent feelings (imposter phenomenon) are perceived to be externally validated by male gender preference (gender sidelining), women consciously or subconsciously discipline themselves to forgo their professional …

Centering Women In Prisoners' Rights Litigation, Amber Baylor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article consciously employs both a dignity rights-based framing and methodology. Dignity rights are those rights that are based on the Kantian assertion of “inalienable human worth.”29 This framework for defining rights spans across a number of disciplines, including medicine and human rights law.30 Disciplinary sanctions like solitary confinement or forced medication might be described as anathema to human dignity because of their degrading effect on an individual’s emotional and social well-being.

This Article relies on first-person oral histories where possible. Bioethics scholar Claire Hooker argues that including narratives in work on dignity rights “is both a moral and an …

Names Are Important, Margaret Butler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

A Title Ix Conundrum: Are Campus Visitors Protected From Sexual Assault?, Hannah Brenner

Faculty Scholarship

Sexual violence is a significant and longstanding problem on college campuses that has been made even more visible by recent media attention to the #MeToo movement. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 addresses discrimination (including sexual violence) that impedes access to education; the law demands compliance from federally funded schools related to their prevention of and response to this problem. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the law to contain an implied private right of action that can be brought against a school for its deliberate indifference to severe and pervasive sex discrimination about which it has knowledge. …

Analyzing The Disappearance Of Women’S Surnames And The Retrenchment Of Their Political-Legal Status In Early Modern England, Deborah Anthony

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Multiple economic and political developments appear to have jointly contributed to the constriction of women’s surnames throughout history, including feudalism, the English common law, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and the development of the nation-state and its attendant concept of citizenship. While history generally moves in a positive direction, principles of coverture and female legal impotence appear to have in some ways become increasingly restrictive, with women’s surnames as one indication of that. Viewing the use of women’s surnames in terms of their effects on women, reveals the ways in which surname usage wrought a new formal exclusiveness and subordination of …

No Justice For Guatemalan Women: An Update 20 Years After Guatemala’S First Violence Against Women Law, Héctor Ruiz

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This article is a report update examining the development and implementation of violence against women laws in Guatemala. In 2015, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, accompanied by U.C. Hastings, College of the Law professors and students, including the author, went to Guatemala and met with various agencies who work to combat violence against women. This report summarizes the study’s findings, in addition to offering recommendations to the Guatemalan and United States governments on how to protect women and children in Guatemala from gender-based violence.

Street Harassment: The Need For Criminal Remedies, Sonja Arndt

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This article shines light on the lack of street harassment laws in the United States, while outlining why there is an immediate need for these types of laws. The author seeks to develop a working legal definition of street harassment, while subcategorizing street harassment into three separate categories: catcalling, verbal sexual harassment, and verbal sexual assault. Lastly, the author puts forth a legal proposal which would criminalize verbal sexual harassment and verbal sexual assault.

“The World Is Changing Fast, And Women Will Be On Top”, Hastings Women’S Law Journal

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Rep. Sam Farr represented the Central Coast of California in the U.S. House of Representatives for 23 years. During his time in Congress, he was given the unique opportunity to visit foreign countries and captured photos along the way. Rep. Farr shares three photos of women abroad, while also providing a short interview with Hastings Women’s Law Journal.

The Legal Implications Under Federal Law When States Enact Biology-Based Transgender Bathroom Laws For Students And Employees, Marka B. Fleming, Gwendolyn Mcfadden-Wade

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Recently, numerous states have considered enacting transgender bathroom laws based on the individual’s biological sex. In some cases, when these biology-based laws have been enacted, the results have been lawsuits filed by students and employees claiming violations of Title IX and Title VII. Actually, the legal rights of transgender students and employees when using public restrooms or facilities has become a hot topic of debate in recent times. In addressing this hotly debated topic, this article focuses on the transgender bathroom issue at the state level and provides insight into the attempts by states to turn policy into law. First, …

Shackling Women During Labor: A Closer Look At The Inhume Practice Still Occurring In Our Prisons, Amanda Glenn

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Despite legislation and policy to prevent such things from happening, incarcerated pregnant women are still being shackled and restrained when they give birth in prison. Shackling women during childbirth creates risks for both mother and child, and is completely unnecessary to ensure the safety of prison or heath personnel. This note reviews the rules and policies in place on both the federal and state level and highlights several personal stories of women who have been restrained, even when rules prohibiting the use of shackles are on the books. This note also emphasizes the gaps in the law and suggests the …