By means of a historical, legal and scientific approach, this book identifies the issues, progress and setbacks in the right for women to access abortion in various countries of the Global North. The book provides insights on the past, present and potential actions and struggles in the future about continuing to have the right to procure an abortion. Rites and rituals in order to better understand the practices of Asian countries, such as China, Japan and Taiwan, permeate discussions and debates. The volume presents the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to abortion healthcare services and abortion, and the innovative initiatives and schemes designed and implemented. The latter encourages health professionals and decision-makers to reflect on the 'good practices' and retain and develop over the long term. This edited collection is intended for academics and students across the social sciences and healthcare sector, members of the legal profession, healthcare professionals, activists, policy-makers, and any stakeholders working for and caring about women's reproductive rights and abortion rights.

This book considers the rapidly evolving, both legally and socially, nature of image-based abuse, for both minors and adults. Drawing mainly from UK data, legislation and case studies, it presents a thesis that the law is, at best, struggling to keep up with some fundamental issues around image based abuse, such as the sexual nature of the crimes and the long term impact on victims, and at worst, in the case of supporting minors, not fit for purpose. It shows, through empirical and legislative analysis, that the dearth of education around this topic, coupled with cultural norms, creates a victim blaming culture that extends into adulthood. It proposes both legislative developments and need for wider stakeholder engagement to understand and support victims, and the impact the non-consensual sharing of intimate images can have on their long-term mental health and life in general. The book is of interest to scholar of law, criminology, sociology, police and socio-technical studies, and is also to those who practice law, law enforcement or wider social care role in both child and adult safeguarding.

Explores the relationship between sexuality and politics in Britain's recent political past. Includes four case studies to illustrate the arguments made. Important contribution to the understandings of sexuality, identity and inequalities, as well as of crisis and neoliberalism.

'Stunning . . . Built like a thriller, moving, wise and illuminated on every page with love' -Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat When Carolyn Hays's child made clear to the family that they were all wrong, he was not a boy, but, in fact, a girl, the Hays shifted pronouns, adopted a nickname and encouraged her to dress as she felt comfortable. One ordinary day, a caseworker from the Department of Children and Families knocked on their door to investigate an anonymous complaint about the upbringing of their transgender child. It was this threat that instilled in them a deep-seated fear for their child's safety in the Republican state they called home. And so they uprooted their lives to the more trans-accepting Northeast United States, though they were never far from the hate and fear resting at the nation's core. Intimate, lyrical and thought-provoking, A Girlhood is an ode to Hays's brilliant, brave child, as well as a cathartic revisit of the pain of the past. It tells of the brutal truths of being trans, of the sacrificial nature of motherhood, and of the lengths a family will go to shield their youngest from the cruel realities of the world. Hays asks us all to love better, for children everywhere enduring injustice and prejudice just as they begin to understand themselves. A Girlhood is a celebration of difference, a plea for empathy, a hope for a better future, but moreover, it is a love letter to a child who has always known herself and is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Panoramic and provocative in its scope, this handbook is the definitive guide to contemporary issues associated with male sex work and a must read for those who study masculinities, male sexuality, sexual health, and sexual cultures. This groundbreaking volume will have a powerful impact on our understanding of this challenging, elusive subject. While the internet has brought the previously hidden worlds of male sex work more starkly into public view, academic research has often remained locked into descriptions of male sex workers and their clients as perverse. Drawing from a variety of regions, the chapters provide insights into the historical, popular cultural, social, and economic aspects of sex work, as well as demographic patterns, health outcomes, and policy issues. This approach shifts thought on male sex work from a hidden "social problem" to a publicly acknowledged "social phenomenon." The book challenges myths and reconceptualizes male sex work as a discrete field. Importantly, it provides a vehicle for the voices of male sex workers and new and established scholars. This richly detailed, humane, and innovative collection retrieves male sex work from silence and invisibility on the one hand and its association with scandal and stigma on the other. The findings within have profound implications for how governments approach public health and regulation of the sex industry and for how society can make sense of the complexities of human sexualities. A compelling scholarly read and a major contribution to a commercial sector that is often neglected in policy debates on sex work, this handbook will be of great interest to scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies and all those interested in male sex work.

This book examines the use and impact of Australian Indigenous sentencing courts in response to Indigenous partner violence. In operation in Australia since 1999, these courts were first established by a magistrate in South Australia who sought to improve court communication and understanding, and trust in the criminal justice system for Indigenous people. Indigenous Courts, Culture and Partner Violence is the first book to consider how the transformation of a sentencing process into one that better reflects Indigenous cultural values can improve outcomes for both victims and offenders of Indigenous partner violence. It asks which aspects of the sentencing process are most important in influencing a change in attitude and behaviour of Indigenous offenders who repeatedly engage in abusive behaviour towards their partner, and what types of justice process better meets the relationship, rehabilitative and safety needs of Indigenous partner violence offenders and their victims? Marchetti examines the adaptation of a formal sentencing process to make it more culturally meaningful when responding to Indigenous partner violence, and gauges victim and offender views about how the court process has affected their lives and relationships, and elicits their views of violence within their communities. This innovative work will be of great interest to academics, researchers, policy makers, police, lawyers, family violence service providers and students.

Drawing on original empirical research from Singapore and Hong Kong, Gendered Labour, Everyday Security and Migration interrogates women migrant domestic workers' experiences of work and workplace exploitation. It examines the ways in which these women negotiate everyday security and safe work against the backdrop of affective employment relations and institutional structures of labour and migration law. It challenges the current emphasis on the language of exploitation and legal approaches to identifying, understanding and rectifying poor employment conditions for women migrant domestic workers. This book addresses the limited research literature that examines the extent to which regulatory or criminal justice responses are relevant to, and utilised by, women migrant domestic workers in their everyday negotiation of safe work and offers a unique contribution to the field. An accessible and compelling read, it will be of interest to researchers from across the fields of criminology, sociology, labour migration studies and women's studies.

The volume offers an overview of the theories and practices of Italian legal feminism, presenting both the main themes addressed and the main protagonists of Italian feminist legal theory. The book is divided into two parts. The first is dedicated to deepening crucial issues that directly concern women's knowledge and lives from a feminist perspective, such as the interconnection between law, rights and justice; diversity, difference and equality; sex, sexuality and reproduction; citizenship and borders; deviance, criminal matters and security; and victims, victimology, and vulnerability. Each set of thematic issues is analysed by a current Italian feminist legal scholar, who engages with multiple feminist voices in order to emphasise the need for an interdisciplinary approach to law from a feminist perspective. The second part of the book is devoted to outlining the paths of study, research and practice of specific and renowned Italian legal scholars who have provided the foundation for legal feminism in Italy: Letizia Gianformaggio, Tamar Pitch, Silvia Niccolai, and Lia Cigarini. The book thereby offers, for the first time, a comprehensive account of the traditions and trajectories of Italian legal feminism, thus opening up a dialogue with other feminist approaches to law and justice. The book will appeal to scholars in legal theory, critical and sociolegal studies, sociology, gender studies, and critical criminology.

This book addresses a gap in both contemporary theorising and empirical analysis of the European Union's (EU) law and policy frameworks on migration, sex work and anti trafficking. Drawing on the authors' previous research on these policies and with their practical experience of engaging with various EU institutions in law and policy-making fora around gender, equality and justice, the work examines the processes involved in constructing and enacting policy frameworks and legal interventions on these issues, within a feminist analytical framework. The authors map how EU agenda-setting operates, and detail the roles that various EU institutions, external groups and actors, including non-governmental organisations, play in promoting or blocking policy on these three issues. The book draws on feminist theorising on gender, policy-making and social justice to develop a general theoretical framework to help us understand how and why a consensus has seemingly been achieved at EU level on what constitutes gender equality in these three policy areas. The book presents a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy makers in Law, Migration, EU policy making and Gender Studies.

1. This is still the leading book on the market offering an introductory overview of Queer Criminology. The new edition has been fully updated to include new development in theory and research and offers further coverage of international issues and a new chapter on intersectionality. 2. This book is useful supplementary reading for courses on gender and crime, law and sexuality, multiculturalism and criminal justice and diversity and criminal justice and can also be used as a core text on the growing number of courses covering Queer Criminology. 3. The original edition was winner of the 2016 Book Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division of Critical Criminology.

The book explores the rise of civil divorce in Victorian England, the subsequent operation of a fault system of divorce based solely on the ground of adultery, and the eventual piecemeal repeal of the Victorian-era divorce law during the Interwar years. The legal history of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 is at the heart of the book. The Act had a transformative impact on English law and society by introducing a secular judicial system of civil divorce. This swept aside the old system of divorce that was only obtainable from the House of Lords and inadvertently led to the creation of the modern family justice system. The book argues that only through understanding the legal doctrine in its wider cultural, political, religious, and social context is it possible to fully analyse and assess the changes brought about by the Act. The major developments included the end of any pretence of the indissolubility of marriage, the statutory enshrinement of a double standard based on gender in the grounds for divorce, and the growth of divorce across all spectrums of English society. The Act was a product of political and legal compromise between conservative forces resisting the legal introduction of civil divorce and the reformers, who demanded married women receive equal access to the grounds of divorce. Changing attitudes towards divorce that began in the Edwardian period led to a gradual rejection of Victorian moral values and the repeal of the Act after 80 years of existence in the Interwar years. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers with an interest in legal history, family law, and Victorian studies.

The notion of human dignity is frequently, yet enigmatically, invoked in legal and political debates on sex work, where many people use it without much elaboration on exactly what they mean by it. Sex Work and Human Dignity: Law, Politics and Discourse sheds light on this enigma, by exploring how dignity-based discourses are used by those who write and talk about prostitution and also what role these discourses may play in shaping wider cultural understandings of sex work and sex workers. The book draws on political discourse theory and is international in its scope, with analysis of legal cases, textual sources, and empirical data gathered through interviews with activists from several different countries in the Global North and South. The book traces how the concept of dignity is used in a range of legal and political discourses on sex work and ultimately asks to what extent dignity-based discourses help to advance, or hinder, sex workers' social inclusion. This book will appeal to students and researchers interested in sex work and feminism, as well as those who study human dignity. Its interdisciplinary nature means it will appeal to those working in a range of disciplines, including law, sociology, philosophy, and political theory.

This volume examines how gender relations were regulated in ancient Near Eastern and biblical law. The textual corpus examined includes the various pertinent law collections, royal decrees and instructions from Mesopotamia and Hatti, and the three biblical legal collections. Peled explores issues beginning with the wide societal perspective of gender equality and inequality, continues to the institutional perspective of economy, palace and temple, the family, and lastly, sex crimes. All the texts mentioned or referred to in the book are given in an appendix, both in the original languages and in English translation, allowing scholars to access the primary sources for themselves. Law and Gender in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible offers an invaluable resource for anyone working on Near Eastern society and culture, and gender in the ancient world more broadly.

In this new and burgeoning field in legal and human rights thought, this edited collection explores, by reference to applied philosophy and case law, how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has developed and presented a right to personal identity, largely through interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Divided into three parts, the collection interrogates: firstly, the construction of personal identity rights at the ECtHR; secondly, whose identity rights are protected; and thirdly, the limits of identity rights. The collection is the first in the Routledge Studies in Law and Humanity series. Contributions from nine leading and emerging legal scholars from the UK, Ireland and continental Europe explore how the right has developed, rights to identity and marriage, LGBTI+, persons with disabilities, religious and cultural issues and critical perspectives on the social construction and framing of the right. The collection is primarily aimed at scholars and advanced students, particularly of human rights law and its theory, Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, and those interested in ECtHR jurisprudence, and those interested in the connection between theories of inclusion, belonging and rights, including human rights lawyers.

This book critically examines the last few decades of discussion around sex and violence in the media, on social media, in the courtroom and through legislation. The discursive struggles over what constitutes "sexual violence", "victims" and "offenders" is normally determined through narratives: a selective ordering of events and participants. Centrally, the book investigates the social processes involved in the telling of stories of rape and its political implications. From a multidisciplinary feminist perspective, this volume explores what narratives about sexual violence are deemed legitimate at this historical juncture. This volume brings together feminist scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines including law, legal studies, history, gender studies, ethnology, media, criminology and social work from across the globe. Through situated empirical work, these scholars seek to understand currents movements between the criminal justice system and the cultural imagination.

This volume critically analyses Muslim Personal Law (MPL) in India and offers an alternative perspective to look at MPL and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) debate. Tracing the historical origins of this legal mechanism and its subsequent political manifestations, it highlights the complex nature of MPL as a sociological phenomenon, driven by context-specific social norms and cultural values. With expert contributions, it discusses wide-ranging themes and issues including MPL reforms and human rights; decoding of UCC in India; the contentious Triple Talaq bill and MPL; the Shah Bano case; Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) in postcolonial India; women's equality and family laws; and MPL in the media discourse in India. The volume highlights that although MPL is inextricably linked to Sharia, it does not necessarily determine the everyday customs and local practices of Muslim communities in India This topical book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of law and jurisprudence, political studies, Islamic studies, Muslim Personal Law, history, multiculturalism, South Asian studies, sociology of religion, sociology of law and family law. It will also be useful to practitioners, policymakers, law professionals and journalists.

This book investigates the causes and consequences of image-based sexual abuse in a digital era. Image-based sexual abuse refers to the taking or sharing of nude or sexual photographs or videos of another person without their consent. It includes a diversity of behaviours beyond that of "revenge porn", such as the secret trading of nude or sexual images online; "upskirting", "downblousing" and other "creepshots"; blackmail or "sextortion" scams; the use of artificial intelligence to construct "deepfake" pornographic videos; threats to distribute photographs and videos without consent; and the taking or sharing of sexual assault imagery. This book investigates the pervasiveness and experiences of these harms, as well as the raft of legal and non-legal measures that have been introduced to better respond to and prevent image-based sexual abuse. The book draws on groundbreaking empirical research, including surveys in three countries with over 6,000 respondents and over 100 victim-survivor and stakeholder interviews. Guided by theoretical frameworks from gender studies, sociology, criminology, law and psychology, the authors argue that image-based sexual abuse is more commonly perpetrated by men than women, and that perpetration is higher among some groups, including younger and sexuality minority men. Although the motivations of perpetrators vary, a dominant theme to emerge was that of power and control. The gendered nature of the abuse means that it is best understood as a "continuum of sexual violence" because victim-survivors often experience it as part of a broader pattern of gendered harassment, violence and abuse. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law and psychology. Image-based Sexual Abuse is also an essential resource for activists, legal and policy practitioners, technology companies and victim-survivors seeking to understand the deeply complex nature of intimate-image sharing in a digital era.

This volume critically analyses Muslim Personal Law (MPL) in India and offers an alternative perspective to look at MPL and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) debate. Tracing the historical origins of this legal mechanism and its subsequent political manifestations, it highlights the complex nature of MPL as a sociological phenomenon, driven by context-specific social norms and cultural values. With expert contributions, it discusses wide-ranging themes and issues including MPL reforms and human rights; decoding of UCC in India; the contentious Triple Talaq bill and MPL; the Shah Bano case; Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) in postcolonial India; women's equality and family laws; and MPL in the media discourse in India. The volume highlights that although MPL is inextricably linked to Sharia, it does not necessarily determine the everyday customs and local practices of Muslim communities in India This topical book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of law and jurisprudence, political studies, Islamic studies, Muslim Personal Law, history, multiculturalism, South Asian studies, sociology of religion, sociology of law and family law. It will also be useful to practitioners, policymakers, law professionals and journalists.

This is the first book to unpack the legal and ethical issues surrounding unauthorised intimate examinations during labour. The book uses feminist, socio-legal and philosophical tools to explore the issues of power, vulnerability and autonomy. The collection challenges the perception that the law adequately addresses different manifestations of unauthorised medical touch through the lens of women's experiences of unauthorised vaginal examinations during labour. The book unearths several broader themes that are of huge significance to lawyers and healthcare professionals such as the legal status of women and their bodies. The book raises questions about women's experiences during childbirth in hospital settings. It explores the status of women's bodies during labour and childbirth where too easily they become objectified, and it raises important issues around consent. The book highlights links to the law on sexual offences and women's loss of power under the medical gaze. Women's Birthing Bodies and the Law includes contributions from leading feminist philosophers, healthcare professionals, and academics in healthcare and law, and offers pioneering analysis relevant to lawyers and healthcare professionals with an interest in medical law and ethics; feminist theory; criminal law; tort law; and human rights law.

The Sexual Politics of Border Control conceptualises sexuality as a method of bordering and uncovers how sexuality operates as a key site for the containment, capture and regulation of movement. By bringing together queer scholarship on borders and migration with the rich archive of feminist, Black, Indigenous and critical border perspectives, it highlights how the heteronormativity of the border intersects with the larger dynamics of racial capitalism, imperialism and settler colonialism; reproductive inequalities; and the containment of contagion, disease and virality. Transnational in focus, this book includes contributions from and about different geopolitical contexts including histories of HIV in Turkey; the politics of reproduction in Palestine/Israel; settler colonialism and anti-Blackness in the United States; the sexual geographies of the Balkan and Southern Europe; the intimate politics of marriage migration between Vietnam and Canada; and sex work in Australia, the United States, France and New Zealand. This collection constitutes a key intervention in the study of border and migration that highlights the crucial role that sexual politics play in the reproduction and contestation of national border regimes. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

- Contains primary source documents - Will engage students on both side of the pro-life and pro-choice debate - Synthesizes a huge body of research in an easily digestible way for students

Contributing an original dimension to the significant body of published scholarship on women in 16th-century England, this study examines the largest corpus of women's private writings available to historians: their wills. In these, female voices speak out, commenting on their daily lives, on identity, gender, status, familial relationships and social engagement. Wills show women to have been active participants in a civil society, well aware of their personal authority and potential influence, whose committed actions during life and charitable strategies after death could and did impact the health of that society. From an intensive analysis of more than 1200 wills, this pioneering work focuses on women from all parts of the country and all strata of society, revealing an entire population of articulate, opportunistic, and capable individuals who found the spaces between the lines of the law and used those spaces to achieve personal goals. Author Susan James demonstrates how wills describe strategies for end-of-life care, create platforms of remembrance, and offer insights into the myriad occupational endeavors in which women were engaged. James illuminates how these documents were not simply instruments of bequest and inheritance, but were statements of power and control, catalogues of material culture from which we are able to gauge a woman's understanding of her own reality and the context that formed her environment. Wills were tools and the way in which women wielded these tools offers new ways to look at England in the 16th century and reveals the seminal role women played in its development.

Migrant women across Asia disproportionately work in precarious, insecure, and informal employment sectors that are subject to few regulations, pay low wages, and expose women to harm, of which domestic work is among the most prevalent. This book uses the cases of the Philippines and Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive, intersectional, rights-based approach to better protect women migrant domestic workers against exploitation. As accounts of exploitation, gender-based violence, torture, and death among migrant domestic workers increase, the recognition and defence of their human and labour rights is an urgent necessity. The Philippines and Sri Lanka are two of the leading labour-sending states of women domestic workers in Asia, and their economies have become increasingly dependent on the remittances they send back home. Drawing on extensive original research this book argues that these two sending states are guilty of structural violence by sustaining a network of institutions, policies and practices, which serve to systematically disadvantage and discriminate against women migrant domestic workers. The research covers the entire migration process, from pre-departure, through to overseas employment, followed by return and reintegration. This book's innovative application of structural violence theory as a way to investigate the role of state institutions in labour-sending countries in the Global South will be of interest to researchers from across the fields of migration studies, gender studies, human rights law, and Asian Studies.

Hindu women in India have independent right of ownership to property under the Law of Succession (The Hindu Succession Act, 1956). However, during the last five decades of its operation not many women have exercised their rights under the enactment. This volume addresses the issue of Hindu peasant women's ability to effectuate the statutory rights to succession and assert ownership of their share in family land. The work combines a critical evaluation of law with economic analyses into allocation of resources within the family as a means of addressing gender relations and explaining resulting gender inequalities.

* Explores the many roles women play in the criminal justice system, including victims, justice-involved individuals, and professionals. * Designed to appeal to a generation standing on the threshold of change they believe in and helped to initiate, within the context of contemporary social movements such as the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter. * Features an empowerment approach that focuses on the intersection of gender, race, and class.