Arguing that law must be looked at holistically, this book investigates the 'hidden gender' of the so-called neutral or objective legal principles that structure the law addressing violence against women. Adopting an explicitly feminist perspective, it investigates how legal responses to violence against women presuppose, maintain and perpetuate a certain context that may not in fact reflect women's experiences. Carline and Easteal draw upon relevant legislation, case law and secondary studies from a range of territories, including Australia, England and Wales, the United States, Canada and Europe, to contextualize and critique different policy responses. They go on to examine the potential and limits of law, making recommendations for best practice models of policymaking and law reform. Aiming to help improve government, community and legal responses to women who experience violence, Shades of Grey - Domestic and Sexual Violence Against Women: Law Reform and Society will assist law-makers, academics, policymakers and a wider audience in understanding the complexities of violence against women.

This book examines the divergent medical, political and legal constructions of intersex. The authors use empirical data to explore how intersex people are embodied through these frameworks which in turn influence their lived experiences. Through their analysis, the authors reveal the factors that motivate and influence the way in which policy makers and legislators approach the area of intersex rights. They reflect on the limitations of law as the primary vehicle in challenging healthcare's framing of intersex as a 'disorder' in need of fixing. Finally, they offer a more holistic account of intersex justice which is underpinned by psychosocial support and bodily integrity.

Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress toward appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law. Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and explores how the development of an anti-refugee agenda in many Western states exponentially increases vulnerability for refugees making gendered claims. The volume includes contributions from scholars and members of the advocacy community that allow the book to examine conceptual and doctrinal themes arising at the intersection of gender and refugee law, and specific case studies across major Western refugee-receiving nations. The book will be of great interest and value to researchers and students of asylum and immigration law, international politics, and gender studies.

For feminist international law scholars, practitioners, and advocates, the first two decades of the new millennium have produced moments of elation and disenchantment. In the Research Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law, a network of scholars and practitioners from a diverse group of countries contemplate the future of feminist engagement with international law. Can international law increase its relevance, beneficence, and impact for women in the developed and developing world? How can international law deal with a much wider range of issues relevant to women's lives than it currently does? What are the next frontiers for gender and international law making, law reform, and the beneficiaries of international law? The diverse global contributions to this Research Handbook delineate a future where feminist engagement with international law is robust, diverse, inclusive, influential, and leads to positive change in women's lives. The Research Handbook addresses larger themes of feminism and international law that will interest international law and gender studies scholars as well as HDR students. Additionally, this exploration will prove to be an asset to UN and INGO networks, regional organizations, and NGOs and social movements. Contributors include: J. Aeberhard-Hodges, S. Airey, M.P. Assis, B. Bennett, K. Chandrakirana, L. Chappell, H. Charlesworth, S.E. Davies, J.J. Dawuni, D. Estrada-Tanck, P. Finckenberg-Broman, G.M. Frisso, V. Fynn Bruey, J. Geng, F. Gerry, B. Goldblatt, R. Grey, M. Hansel, S. Harris Rimmer, R. Houghton, A. Isaac, M. Keyes, E. Larking, R. Maguire, A. O'Donoghue, D. Otto, K. Ogg, J. Ramji-Nogales, K. Rubenstein, S. Samar, G. Simm, N. Tzouvala, K. Woolaston, E. Yahyaoui Krivenko

Groups seeking legal equality often take a victory as the end of the line. Once judgment is granted or a law is passed, coalitions disband and life goes on in a new state of equality. Policy makers too may assume that a troublesome file is now closed. This collection arises from the urgent sense that law reforms driven by equality call for fresh lines of inquiry. In unintended ways, reforms may harm their intended beneficiaries. They may also worsen the disadvantage of other groups. Committed to tackling these important issues beyond the boundaries that often confine legal scholarship, this book pursues an interdisciplinary consideration of efforts to advance equality, as it explores the developments, challenges, and consequences that arise from law reforms aiming to deliver equality in the areas of sexuality, kinship, and family relations. With an international array of contributors, After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship will be an invaluable resource for those with interests in this area.

This book addresses a growing area of concern for scholars and development practitioners: discriminatory gender norms in legally plural settings. Focusing specifically on indigenous women, this book analyses how they, often in alliance with supporters and allies, have sought to improve their access to justice. Development practitioners working in the field of access to justice have tended to conceive indigenous legal systems as either inherently incompatible with women's rights or, alternatively, they have emphasised customary law's advantageous features, such as its greater accessibility, familiarity and effectiveness. Against this background - and based on a comparison of six thus far underexplored initiatives of legal and institutional change in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia - Anna Barrera Vivero provides a more nuanced, ethnographic, understanding of how women navigate through context-specific constellations of interlegality in their search for justice. In so doing, moreover, her account of ongoing political debates and local struggles for gender justice grounds the elaboration of a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the legally plural dynamics involved in the contestation of discriminatory gender norms.

Did you know: women are 59% more likely than men to receive an incorrect diagnosis when experiencing heart attack. Or: women are more susceptible to pain medications than men, leading to higher rates of addiction because doctors simply prescribe pain medication in the same way. Or: among alcoholics, women are almost 100% more likely to die due to alcohol-related diseases than men are? In a field that, for millennia, has been dominated by men. The vast majority of medicines and treatments that we use today were designed for, and by, men and the myth that medicine is gender-neutral has had terrible repercussions for women. In THIS WON'T HURT, Dr Marieke Bigg takes a deep dive into all the ways medicine is not gender neutral, using stories and experiences to demonstrate how these flawed mindsets have paved the way for sub-par treatment, and how prevailing attitudes in a patriarchal world can have unexpected effects far downstream. From sex and reproduction, to female bones and female pain, Marieke explores how women's bodies have been ignored, misunderstood and misdiagnosed, and asks the fundamental question: How can we make sure we do better? Blending fascinating examples with historical and cultural context, and with an eye to a better future, THIS WON'T HURT is a must-read for anyone committed to making this world safe to navigate for all.

Each year, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) asylum seekers apply for asylum in EU Member States.This book considers the position of LGBTI asylum seekers in European asylum law. Developing an encompassing approach to the topic, the book identifies and analyzes the main legal issues arising in relation to LGBTI people seeking asylum including: the underestimation of the relevance of criminalization of sexual orientation as well as the large scale violence against trans people in countries of origin by some European states; the requirement to seek State protection against violence even when they originate from countries where sexual orientation or gender identity is criminalized, or where the authorities are homophobic; the particular hurdles faced during credibility assessment on account of persisting stereotypes; and queer families and refugee law. The book gives a state of the art overview of law in Europe, both at the level of European legislation and at the level of Member State practice. While being largely focused on Europe, the book also takes into account asylum decisions from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States and is of relevance internationally, offering analysis of issues which are not specific to particular legal systems.

In Australia, the US, England, Scotland, Italy, France and in Egypt there have been repetitive calls to legislate against the practices of female circumcision described as female genital mutilation. But in western countries where anti-female genital mutilation legislation has been passed there has been little or no consultation with the communities in which the practices occur: documents are published only in English, and community responses are ignored or simply deemed biased or irrelevant. Opportunities for dialogue quickly turn into opportunities for education and legislation about the unacceptability of the practices. But why are communities denied their capacity to speak and influence political opinion and legal decision making? Why in an era of human rights, which heralds the importance of self-determination, freedom of expression and women's participation in political arenas, are women from these communities unable to engage in dialogue on this practice? Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights considers how such assertive legislative responses, and this lack of curiosity and consultation with communities, points to a particular liberal investment the practices called female genital mutilation and what they signify. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Juliet Rogers examines the language of recent statutes and, where relevant, some of the accompanying policies and broader media debates, Female genital mutilation, she argues, elicits such a singular legal response insofar as it embodies that subjectivity against which the very subject of liberal law is imagined - and only imagined - to exist: in a state of non-mutilation, non-prohibition or, in a psychoanalytic idiom, non-castration.

While there is no shortage of studies addressing the state's regulation of the sexual, research into the ways in which the sexual governs the state and its attributes is still in its infancy. The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority argues that there are good reasons to suppose that our understandings of state power quiver with erotic undercurrents. The book maintains, more specifically, that the relationship between ideas of political authority and male same-sex desire is especially fraught. Through a series of case studies where a statesman's same-sex desire was put on trial (either literally or metaphorically) as a problem for the good exercise of public powers, the book shows the resilience and adaptability of cultural beliefs in the incompatibility between public office and male same-sex desire. Some of the case studies analysed are familiar ground for both political/constitutional history and the history of sexuality. The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority argues, however, that only by systematically reading questions of institutional politics and questions of sexuality through each other will we have access to the most interesting insights that a study of these trials can generate. Whether they involve obscure public officials or iconic rulers such as Hadrian and James I, these compelling fragments of queer history reveal that the disavowal of male same-sex desire has been, and partly remains, central to mainstream understandings of political authority.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. What is feminist peace? How can we advocate for peace from patriarchy? What do women, globally, advocate for when they use the term 'peace'? This edited collection brings together conversations across borders and boundaries to explore plural, intersectional and interdisciplinary concepts of feminist peace. The book includes contributions from a geographically diverse range of scholars, judges, practitioners and activists, and the chapters cut across themes of movement building and resistance and explore the limits of institutionalized peacebuilding. The chapters deal with a range of issues, such as environmental degradation, militarization, online violence and arms spending. Offering a resource to advance theoretical development and to advocate for policy change, this book transcends traditional approaches to the study of peace and security and embraces diverse voices and perspectives which are absent in both academic and policy spaces.

The law is a well-known tool in fighting gender inequality, but which laws actually advance women's rights? This book unpacks the complex nuances behind gender-responsive domestic legislation, from several of the world's leading experts on gender equality. Drawing on domestic examples and international law, it provides a primer of theory alongside tangible and practical solutions to fulfil the promise of the law to deliver equality between men and women. Part I outlines what progress has been made to date on eradicating gender inequality, and insights into the law's potential as one lever in the global struggle for equality. Parts II and III go on to explore concrete areas of law, with case studies from multiple jurisdictions that examine how well domestic legislation is working for women. The authors bring their critical lens to areas of law often considered from a gender perspective - gender-based violence, women's reproductive health, labour and gender equality quotas - while bringing much-needed analysis to issues often ignored in gender debates, such as taxation, environmental justice and good governance. Part IV seeks to move from a theoretical goal of greater accountability to a practical one. It explores both accountability for international women's rights norms at the domestic level and the potential of feminist approaches to legislation to deliver laws that work for women. Written for students, academics, legislators and policymakers engaged in international women's rights law, gender equality, government accountability and feminist legal theory, this book has tremendous transformative potential to drive forward legal change towards the eradication of gender inequality.

The distinction between male and female, or masculinity and femininity, has long been considered to be foundational to society and the organization of its institutions. In the last decades, the massive literature on gender has challenged this discursive construction. Gender has been disassembled and reassembled, variously considered as social practice, performance, ideology. Yet the binary relationship 'man/woman' continues to be a characteristic trait of Western societies. This book gathers together contributions by experts in various fields - including law, sociology, philosophy and anthropology - to pin down the relationship between institutions and the gender binary. Centrally, it examines the way in which the present-day gender binary is shored up by the conceptualization and regulation of sex and gender at societal and institutional levels. Based on this examination, it tackles the issue of what the practices and processes of subjectivation are that preserve this binary distinction as the foundation of gender. Each of the chapters discusses this pressing question with a view to considering whether current equality policies challenge hierarchical and hegemonic understandings of gender or are the residue of a sexist understanding of gender. This analysis then paves the way for a more general and crucial question: whether institutions can, or should, contribute to the process of deconstructing the gender binary.

Arguing that law must be looked at holistically, this book investigates the 'hidden gender' of the so-called neutral or objective legal principles that structure the law addressing violence against women. Adopting an explicitly feminist perspective, it investigates how legal responses to violence against women presuppose, maintain and perpetuate a certain context that may not in fact reflect women's experiences. Carline and Easteal draw upon relevant legislation, case law and secondary studies from a range of territories, including Australia, England and Wales, the United States, Canada and Europe, to contextualize and critique different policy responses. They go on to examine the potential and limits of law, making recommendations for best practice models of policymaking and law reform. Aiming to help improve government, community and legal responses to women who experience violence, Shades of Grey - Domestic and Sexual Violence Against Women: Law Reform and Society will assist law-makers, academics, policymakers and a wider audience in understanding the complexities of violence against women.

Groups seeking legal equality often take a victory as the end of the line. Once judgment is granted or a law is passed, coalitions disband and life goes on in a new state of equality. Policy makers too may assume that a troublesome file is now closed. This collection arises from the urgent sense that law reforms driven by equality call for fresh lines of inquiry. In unintended ways, reforms may harm their intended beneficiaries. They may also worsen the disadvantage of other groups. Committed to tackling these important issues beyond the boundaries that often confine legal scholarship, this book pursues an interdisciplinary consideration of efforts to advance equality, as it explores the developments, challenges, and consequences that arise from law reforms aiming to deliver equality in the areas of sexuality, kinship, and family relations. With an international array of contributors, After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship will be an invaluable resource for those with interests in this area.

Law, Religion and Homosexuality is the first book-length study of how religion has shaped, and continues to shape, legislation that regulates the lives of gay men and lesbians . Through a systematic examination of how religious discourse influences the making of law - in the form of official interventions made by faith communities and organizations, as well as by expressions of faith by individual legislators - the authors argue that religion continues to be central to both enabling and restricting the development of sexual orientation equality. Whilst some claim that faith has been marginalized in the legislative processes of contemporary western societies, Johnson and Vanderbeck show the significant impact of religion in a number of substantive legal areas relating to sexual orientation including: same-sex sexual relations, family life, civil partnership and same-sex marriage, equality in employment and the provision of goods and services, hate speech regulation, and education. Law, Religion and Homosexuality demonstrates the dynamic interplay between law and religion in respect of homosexuality and will be of considerable interest to a wide audience of academics, policy makers and stakeholders.

To what extent is the legal subject gendered? Using illustrative examples from a range of jurisdictions and thematically organised chapters, this volume offers a comprehensive consideration of this question. With a systematic, accessible approach, it argues that law and gender work to co-produce the legal subject. Cumulatively, the volume's chapters provide a systematic evaluation of the key facets of the legal subject: the corporeal, the functional and the communal. Exploring aspects of the legal subject from the ways in which it is sexed and sexualised to its national and familial dimensions, this volume develops a complete account of the various processes through which legal orders produce gendered subjects. Across its chapters, each theoretically ambitious in its own right, this volume outlines how the law not only acts on the social world, but genders it.

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.

Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress toward appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law. Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and explores how the development of an anti-refugee agenda in many Western states exponentially increases vulnerability for refugees making gendered claims. The volume includes contributions from scholars and members of the advocacy community that allow the book to examine conceptual and doctrinal themes arising at the intersection of gender and refugee law, and specific case studies across major Western refugee-receiving nations. The book will be of great interest and value to researchers and students of asylum and immigration law, international politics, and gender studies.

Did she choose that?' Or, more normatively, 'Why would she choose that?' This book critiques and offers an alternative to these questions, which have traditionally framed law and policy discussions circulating around controversial genderized practices. It examines the simplicity and incompleteness of choice-based rhetoric and of presumptions that women's conduct is shaped, in an absolute way, either by choice or by coercion. This book develops an analytical framework that aims to discern the meaning and value that women may ascribe to morally ambiguous practices. An analysis of law's approach to polygamy, surrogacy and sex work, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, provides a basis for evaluating the choice-coercion binary and for contemplating alternate modes for assessing, from a law and policy standpoint, the palatability of social practices that appear pernicious to women. Weaving together interdisciplinary research, an innovative analytical framework for assessing choices ostensibly harmful to women, and a critique of the legal rules governing such choices, this book bears relevance for students, scholars, practicing jurists and policymakers seeking a richer understanding of conduct that moves women to the margins of law and society.

Women, Judging and the Judiciary examines debates about gender representation in the judiciary and the importance of judicial diversity. It offers a fresh look at the role of the (woman) judge and the process of judging and provides a new analysis of the assumptions which underpin and constrain debates about why we might want a more diverse judiciary, and how we might get one. Through a theoretical engagement with the concepts of diversity and difference in adjudication, Women, Judging and the Judiciary contends that prevailing images of the judge are enmeshed in notions of sameness and uniformity: images which are so familiar that their grip on our understandings of the judicial role are routinely overlooked. Failing to confront these instinctive images of the judge and of judging, however, comes at a price. They exclude those who do not fit this mould, setting them up as challengers to the judicial norm. Such has been the fate of the woman judge. But while this goes some way to explaining why, despite repeated efforts, our attempts to secure greater diversity in our judiciary have fallen short, it also points a way forward. For, by getting a clearer sense of what our judges really do and how they do it, we can see that women judges and judicial diversity more broadly do not threaten but rather enrich the judiciary and judicial decision-making. As such, the standard opponent to measures to increase judicial diversity - the necessity of appointment on merit - is in fact its greatest ally: a judiciary is stronger and the justice it dispenses better the greater the diversity of its members, so if we want the best judiciary we can get, we should want one which is fully diverse. Women, Judging and the Judiciary will be of interest to legal academics, lawyers and policy makers working in the fields of judicial diversity, gender and adjudication and, more broadly, to anyone interested in who our judges are and what they do.

"Feminist Theory, Crime, and Social Justice" offers an insightful look at the primarily masculine-driven perspective on crime and justice through the lens of feminist theory. This first installment in the Theoretical Criminology series presents the argument that an increased understanding of the female crime typology, life course, and gender-specific programming will improve social justice for offenders. Discussions on the direct implications of the way society views crime and justice contribute to policy recommendations for helping to improve these views, specifically as they relate to female crime.

About the Theoretical Criminology Series: The Theoretical Criminology series consists of short-format content on some of the best cross-disciplinary studies focusing on contemporary theory and thought from across the social sciences and humanities, all specifically designed to meet the needs of the criminal justice community. Each work is designed to provide students and scholars with a rigorous introduction to the theory or perspective under consideration as well as its direct implications for the way we think about issues of crime and justice. Students and instructors wishing to add theoretical enrichment to their courses and studies can add these digestible, inexpensive works to their reading lists, bringing insight and understanding from the world of social science and humanities to that of criminal justice.
Includes a robust introduction to feminist theory and its evolution into feminist criminologyDescribes gender-specific differences in crimes committed by men and womenIdeal for use as a supplemental text in many criminology courses, or as one of a collection of smaller texts for high-level theory courses

With contributions from some of the most prominent voices writing on gender, law and religion today, this book illuminates some of the conflicts at the intersection of feminism, theology and law. It examines a range of themes from the viewpoint of identifiable traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, from a theoretical and practical perspective. Among the themes discussed are the cross-over between religious and secular values and assumptions in the search for a just jurisprudence for women, the application of theological insights from religious traditions to legal issues at the core of feminist work, feminist legal readings of scriptural texts on women's rights and the place that religious law has assigned to women in ecclesiastic life. Feminists of faith face challenges from many sides: patriarchal remnants in their own tradition, dismissal of their faith commitments by secular feminists and balancing the conflicting loyalties of their lives. The book will be essential reading for legal and religious academics and students working in the area of gender and law or law and religion.

There has been much important work done in the past two decades in America on issues of under representation based on social differences such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and age. While this scholarship has examined the ways in which women and racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities suffer disproportionately on measures of full citizenship, social class and culture have received relatively little attention. This new study addresses various manifestations of social class and cultural difference as well as their implications for political representation. The analysis demonstrates how three of the most influential feminist theorists who write about political representation conceive of group representation, identify the problems that group representation claims to remedy, and assess the strengths and weaknesses associated with these models. Using theoretical argument, the volume suggests practical electoral reform in order to encourage new and emancipating forms of political engagement. It will be of value to those interested in public policy and governance, political theory, gender studies and law and society in general.

This book presents papers from an International Symposium on Contact Disputes and Allegations of Domestic Violence: Identifying Best Practices, held in London in May 2017. The editors invited a group of international experts to explain the approaches taken in their jurisdictions to allegations of domestic violence in child contact cases, with a view to identifying international best practices in such cases. The book includes contributions from England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Sweden and Spain, as well as information presented at the symposium from New Zealand and Australia. The chapters include attention to particular issues such as specialist domestic violence courts, judicial training and hearing children's voices. Collectively, the chapters identify a set of common problems experienced across all of the jurisdictions, including an overwhelming emphasis on the value of children's ongoing contact with non-resident parents and the consequent minimisation of domestic violence and the muting of the voices of children who do not wish to have contact with abusive parents. Best practices in taking domestic violence seriously and providing adequate protection from further abuse for children and non-abusive parents were less in evidence. However, the concluding chapter draws together details of several initiatives and approaches which offer promising ways forward. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.