Law and Gender Commons^™

Unsex Cedaw, Or What's Wrong With Women's Rights, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I discusses why CEDAW continues to be relevant as the primary source of international law on sex discrimination. Until the advent of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), CEDAW was the most widely-subscribed international treaty. Some of the draft language of CEDAW reflects the tension between category and identity and how "women" won the debate. Part II contrasts CEDAW with the Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It points to the identitarian focus of CEDAW as a core reason for its failures. Had CEDAW reflected a category focus, as CERD did, it would more …

Let's Disable Her Further, Shall We? The Cast Of Gender On Disability Rights In The Iranian Context, Hengameh Saberi

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Procuring Meaningful Land Rights For The Women Of Rwanda, Aparna Polavarapu

Faculty Publications

Land reform and gender equality are important development issues in post-Genocide Rwanda. Beginning in 1999, the government of Rwanda passed and implemented reforms which granted women rights to own and use land on an equal status with men. However, as is expected with widespread social reform, obstacles continue to inhibit widespread gender equality in practice. In Rwanda, major social obstacles manifest in the form of (1) resistance to allowing daughters to inherit land from their parents, (2) adherence to assumptions of female inferiority, and (3) the persistence of informal marriages, in which wives remain unprotected by the new laws. Interested …

When Sixteen Ain't So Sweet: Rethinking The Regulation Of Adolescent Sexuality, Nicole Phillis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legally speaking, sexual maturity poses a significant enough liberty interest for a minor to make medical decisions regarding contraceptive medicine or to choose motherhood without parental involvement, but not quite enough for her to obtain an abortion independently. The law incentivizes teenage motherhood by only granting decisional autonomy to those minors who choose to have a child; the minor female's right to procreate vests regardless of her individual maturity. The law discourages teenage abortions by using the choice to terminate a pregnancy to trigger a presumption of immaturity; the minor female's abortion right is pitted against personal autonomy via parental …

The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that while rape law reform has accomplished significant changes in the past decades, the reform has since stalled. The contemporary focus on the element of consent might account for this stagnation. This move has both failed to effect instrumental change in the courts as well as in social norms, and is conceptually flawed and normatively misguided. The practical result of these deficiencies is that rape, as defined by our criminal justice system, bears little resemblance to the various forms of sexual abuses that are inflicted on victims. While rape law typically criminalizes only the physically violent sexual …

Removing Categorical Constraints On Equal Employment Opportunities And Anti-Discrimination Protections, Anastasia Niedrich

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

It has been the "historical tendency of anti-discrimination law to use categories to define protected classes of people." This Article challenges the categorical approach and seeks to change that limited framework. This Article focuses on the flaws with Title VII's categorical approach and discusses why there is a desperate need for change to combat the different types and targets of workplace discrimination today, focusing on the transgender community as one example. After discussing the current framework and operation of Title VII, this Article analyzes the insurmountable flaws inherent in the categorical approach to anti-discrimination law, and specifically considers Title VII's …

Successes And Failures In International Human Trafficking Law, Luis Cdebaca

Michigan Journal of International Law

Professor Carr yesterday remarked that human trafficking is too often discussed only in theoretical or academic ways. I've spent most of my career in the field, where interactions with victims, traffickers, and defense attorneys are anything but theoretical. But as keynote speaker for an academic symposium this morning, I'm going to try to lay out a bit of the conceptual state of play from my current vantage point. The title of this symposium, "Successes and Failures in International Human Trafficking Law," is a bit binary. Perhaps, in the best diplomatic tradition, we can temper that to "Limitations and Opportunities in …

Rebecca J. Cook & Simone Cusack, Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives Book Review, Zanita E. Fenton

Articles

No abstract provided.

Children, Parents & The State: The Construction Of A New Family Ideology, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

More than twenty-five states allow courts to consider parental incarceration or conviction of a crime in determining whether to terminate parental rights. This problem is of increasing significance as a result of dramatic growth in incarceration rates, particularly among women who were often the primary and sole caretaker of their children before their imprisonment. Social scientists have recognized that the reality for parents in many communities is one of widespread and repeated incarceration, which has a devastating effect on families and communities. The problem is magnified by a failed drug policy and the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which, in …

Employment Discrimination Against Lgbt Utahns, Clifford Rosky, Christy Mallory, Jenni Smith, M.V Lee Badgett

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Utah does not have a statewide law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment. This report gathers together all existing data on the prevalence of discrimination in Utah to examine how frequently lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Utahns experience employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and assess the likely impact of passing a statewide nondiscrimination law.

The report begins by analyzing the data collected through a 2010 survey conducted by Equality Utah, which is the state’s first survey on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment. The data show …

Women In Afghanistan: A Human Rights Tragedy Ten Years After 9/11, Hayat Alvi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Ten years after the September 11th attacks in the United States and the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is some good news, but unfortunately still much bad news pertaining to women in Afghanistan. The patterns of politics, security/military operations, religious fanaticism, heavily patriarchal structures and practices, and ongoing insurgent violence continue to threaten girls and women in the most insidious ways. Although women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan have finally entered the radar screen of the international community’s consciousness, they still linger in the margins in many respects.

Socio-cultural and extremist religious elements continue to pose serious obstacles to reconstruction …

Women's Eggs: Exceptional Endings, Justine Durrell

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Fertility businesses and stem cell researchers promise infertile women the miracle of having a child. There are, however, potential physical and psychological risks to the egg donors that have not yet been properly studied. The limited studies undertaken to date have not been able to determine whether the use of fertility drugs increases egg donors' risks of cancer. In fact, federal regulations and guidelines do not require a national registry to track an egg donor's health after donation. Despite that assisted reproduction has been changing how we conceive children for several decades, there are no longitudinal studies on donors' well-being. …

Women, Decision Making And Sustainability: Exploring The Experience Of The Badi Foundation In Rural China, Lori Noguchi, Shahla Ali

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This Report follows the experience of the Badi Foundation, a nonprofit organization operating in rural China, in its efforts to release women's potential to effect change in their communities. Numerous international conferences and treaties have recognized that female decision making is essential to achieve global environmental change and sustainable development. Recent scholarship recognizes that women are oftoverlooked sources for knowledge, skills, and leadership. Project-based efforts to empower and encourage women to participate in problem solving and other decision making in their communities have produced positive results. Through the Badi Foundation's Environmental Action Program (EAP), rural women gain the skills they …

Choosing Your Child's Race, Dov Fox

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

Assisted reproduction has answered many couples' hopes of conceiving a child. In assisted reproduction, the appearance of racial salience matters, and adjusting the prominence of race in decision making frameworks can shape social meaning. There is a spectrum of salience-varying approaches that sperm banks could adopt to manage information about donor race, each of which sends a different message about the social meaning of donor catalog and website design. This Article considers four such approaches: race-indifferent, race-sensitive, race-attentive, and raceexclusive. Although civil rights scholarship reveals that race-based classification is not a necessary condition of wrongful discrimination, we should remain diligent …

Overeducated Achievatrons Unite!, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling? The Impact Of Law Firm Compensation Systems On Women, Joan C. Williams, Veta Richardson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mancession Or "Momcession"?: Good Providers, A Bad Economy, And Gender Discrimination, Joan C. Williams, Allison Tait

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Opening Remarks, Peter T. Coleman

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Annotated Legal Bibliography On Gender

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Scientific Productivity And Gender Performance Under Open And Proprietary Science Systems: The Case Of Chile In Recent Years, Bernadita Escobar Andrae

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.