In the past fifteen years there has been a marked increase in the international scholarship relating to women in law. The lives and careers of women in legal practice and the judiciary have been extensively documented and critiqued, but the central conundrum remains: Does the presence of women make a difference? What has been largely overlooked in the literature is the position of women in the legal academy, although central to the changing culture. To remedy the oversight, an international network of scholars embarked on a comparative study, which resulted in this path-breaking book. The contributors uncover fascinating accounts of the careers of the academic pioneers as well as exploring broader theoretical issues relating to gender and culture. The provocative question as to whether the presence of women makes a difference informs each contribution.

Two women a week are killed by a spouse or partner. Every seven minutes a woman is raped. Now is the time for change. 'Fascinating and chilling' Caroline Criado Perez, bestselling author of Invisible Women Helena Kennedy, one of our most eminent lawyers and defenders of human rights, examines the pressing new evidence that women are being discriminated against when it comes to the law. From the shocking lack of female judges to the scandal of female prisons and the double discrimination experienced by BAME women, Kennedy shows with force and fury that change for women must start at the heart of what makes society just. 'An unflinching look at women in the justice system... an important book because it challenges acquiescence to everyday sexism and inspires change' The Times

Confronting the patriarchal origins and male-dominated institutions of international law, over the last several decades serious thinking about gender and international law has developed into a flourishing discourse within its host discipline. From the lecture theatres and conferences of academia to the corridors of international institutions frequented by non-governmental organizations, diplomats, and the bureaucrats of international institutions, gender issues are now placed firmly on the international-law agenda. Indeed, scholarship on gender and international law is now an important and dynamic area of critique that continues to challenge the failures of the political, legal, and institutional frameworks of international law. As research in gender and international law continues to flourish, this new four-volume collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Law series brings together the most influential scholarship to date, gathering foundational and canonical theoretical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions. It provides an understanding of the development of the field of gender and international law, as well as highlighting areas of thought-provoking research to stimulate future developments in the field. The first volume in the collection ('Defining Gender and International Law') assembles key works to illustrate the development of the field and provide users with a clear understanding of the concepts, methods, and theoretical underpinnings of gender and international law. Volume II ('Doing Gender and International Law: Actors and Institutions') brings gender and international law to life as an action-orientated field, theoretically sophisticated, but focused on and contributing to changes in how international and national law-makers treat gendered issues. Volume III ('Key Legal Themes in Gender and International Law') provides an overview of the different legal themes that have engaged scholars analysing international law from feminist, women-centred, or gendered perspectives. The scholarship assembled in the final volume ('Critical Movements and Emerging Issues in Gender and International Law') collects work that encourages critical reflections about gendered analyses of contemporary issues in international law. It also highlights where increased attention is needed, or where current approaches by feminist international legal scholars might require further scrutiny. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Gender and International Law is an essential work of reference and will be welcomed by researchers, advanced students, practitioners, and policy-makers.

Domestic violence accounts for approximately one-fifth of all violent crime in the United States and is among the most difficult issues confronting professionals in the legal and criminal justice systems. In this volume, Elizabeth Britt argues that learning embodied advocacy-a practice that results from an expanded understanding of expertise based on lived experience-and adopting it in legal settings can directly and tangibly help victims of abuse. Focusing on clinical legal education at the Domestic Violence Institute at the Northeastern University School of Law, Britt takes a case-study approach to illuminate how challenging the context, aims, and forms of advocacy traditionally embraced in the U.S. legal system produces better support for victims of domestic violence. She analyzes a wide range of materials and practices, including the pedagogy of law school training programs, interviews with advocates, and narratives written by students in the emergency department, and looks closely at the forms of rhetorical education through which students assimilate advocacy practices. By examining how students learn to listen actively to clients and to recognize that clients have the right and ability to make decisions for themselves, Britt shows that rhetorical education can succeed in producing legal professionals with the inclination and capacity to engage others whose values and experiences diverge from their own. By investigating the deep relationship between legal education and rhetorical education, Reimagining Advocacy calls for conversations and action that will improve advocacy for others, especially for victims of domestic violence seeking assistance from legal professionals.

Sexual rules and regulations are among society's oldest yet it is only in recent decades that this once-stigmatized field has become the focus of scholarly attention. This volume, which includes some of the most thought-provoking and hard-to-find essays in the field, covers a diverse range of topics from sexual orientation and gender identity to intersexuality and commercial sex, and from HIV/AIDS and trafficking to polygamy. Through historical, political and critical-theoretical lenses, and through a global focus, the selections ask how we conceptualize the groups and acts subjected to sexual regulation and how regulations in the field implicate and produce understandings of sexuality and identity. By placing this variety of works together, Sexuality and Equality Law invites fresh insights into commonalities and synergies across regulatory arenas that are often isolated from one another. The volume's introduction situates all of these works in the broader field and offers readers an extensive bibliography.

This volume draws on several decades of advocacy for law reform to advance gender equality. The essays illustrate the evolution of dominant theoretical approaches and trace their application to core issues, such as the meaning of gender, family formation and roles, equality in the workplace, reproductive rights and violence. The selections are international in their range and include recent works that summarize foundational discussions as well as less well-known articles and essays which capture defining issues with enduring resonance. Taken together, these articles form the basis for discussions of recurring themes such as: how best to define and account for biological, social or cultural differences based on gender; how the law can recognize historic and ongoing gender subordination while supporting individuals' autonomy and agency; and the nature and role of women's sexuality. They exemplify the ongoing dialectic between well-intentioned reform and unintended consequences that characterizes ongoing efforts to advance equality based on gender.

This volume is the fully revised and updated version of the first comprehensive commentary on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol. It reflects the developments during the decade following the publication of the first edition in 2012, which has also seen a notable rise in individual complaints (more than 85), ten new General Recommendations, and six new inquiry procedures as well as numerous statements, partly in conjunction with other UN human rights bodies. The Convention is a key international human rights instrument and the only one exclusively addressed to women. It has been described as the United Nations' 'landmark treaty in the struggle for women's rights'. At a time when the backlash against women's human rights and the concept of gender-based discrimination is increasingly challenged by governments and powerful societal actors, the Commentary is an important instrument to hold all state powers to account on their international obligations under the Convention. The Commentary analyses the interpretation of the Convention through the work of its monitoring body, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It comprises detailed analyses of the Preamble and each article of the Convention and of the Optional Protocol, including a separate chapter on the cross-cutting substantive issue of violence against women. The sources relied on are the treaty language and the general recommendations, concluding observations, and case law under the Optional Protocol (individual complaints and inquiries), through which the Committee has interpreted and applied the Convention. Each chapter is self-contained, but the Commentary is conceived of as an integral whole. The book also includes an introduction which provides an overview of the Convention and its embedding in the international law of human rights as well as the most recent challenges to women's human rights worldwide.

In the fall of 2016 those promoting patriarchal ideals saw their champion Donald Trump elected president of the United States and showed us how powerful patriarchy still is in American society and culture. Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy's Resurgence and Feminist Resistance explains how patriarchy and its embrace of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and violence are starkly visible and must be recognized and resisted. Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards offer a bold and original thesis: that gender is the linchpin that holds in place the structures of unjust oppression through the codes of masculinity and femininity that subvert the capacity to resist injustice. Feminism is not an issue of women only, or a battle of women versus men - it is the key ethical movement of our age.

This thought-provoking book conceptualizes femicide as a multifaceted human rights violation and proposes state responsibility for group-related risks of violence against women and girls. In doing so, it reassesses the concept of femicide, analysing it in view of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, as well as several facets of human rights. Angela Hefti challenges the common definition of femicide, extending it beyond the killing of women due to their gender to include elements of victim blame, sexual abuse, forced marriage and delayed investigations by authorities. Chapters address femicide in the context of the African, Inter-American and European regional and universal human rights systems. Case studies from Iraq, Nigeria and Mexico provide a fundamental understanding of the multidimensional and worldwide nature of femicide. Spanning several key academic debates, the book incorporates underlying feminist legal theory and approaches pertaining to the subordination of women and girls in society, arguing that femicide should qualify as an autonomous human rights violation. Providing an impetus for further research on femicide, particularly on state responsibility for crimes committed by private actors, this book will be a crucial resource for academics in human rights and humanitarian law, criminal law and justice. The book will also be highly valuable to activists, practitioners, and lawyers with an interest in advancing aspects of femicide in international human rights law.

How have femininity and masculinity been defined and understood in China from prehistoric times to the present day? Gender History in China presents for the first time in English the work of leading Japanese scholars in the fields of archaeology, history, literature, sociology and law who examine the gender dynamics that have shaped and changed Chinese society over several thousand years. The eighteen chapters and six columns look at the ways gender norms and customary legal practices shaped the family, kinship, and the social order, and how those norms were reflected in work patterns, inheritance, daily life, and literary works. Attention is given to the fundamental principle of qi (material essence) as a building block in cosmology, as well as in legal understandings of family relations. The second part of the volume turns to the dramatic changes in gender patterns from the late nineteenth century, looking at the inflow of new ideas, the struggle for political rights and economic equality, and the institution of new gender norms in socialist and reform-era China. The authors take up such topics as the view of the body in relation to Chinese cosmology, the incorporation of the military man into China's model of hegemonic masculinity, the household registration system as a means of control, the appraisal of "talented women", and the intersection of gender norms and nationalism. Gender History in China enriches our understanding of Chinese history and of contemporary Chinese society.

How have femininity and masculinity been defined and understood in China from prehistoric times to the present day? Gender History in China presents for the first time in English the work of leading Japanese scholars in the fields of archaeology, history, literature, sociology and law who examine the gender dynamics that have shaped and changed Chinese society over several thousand years. The eighteen chapters and six columns look at the ways gender norms and customary legal practices shaped the family, kinship, and the social order, and how those norms were reflected in work patterns, inheritance, daily life, and literary works. Attention is given to the fundamental principle of qi (material essence) as a building block in cosmology, as well as in legal understandings of family relations. The second part of the volume turns to the dramatic changes in gender patterns from the late nineteenth century, looking at the inflow of new ideas, the struggle for political rights and economic equality, and the institution of new gender norms in socialist and reform-era China. The authors take up such topics as the view of the body in relation to Chinese cosmology, the incorporation of the military man into China's model of hegemonic masculinity, the household registration system as a means of control, the appraisal of "talented women", and the intersection of gender norms and nationalism. Gender History in China enriches our understanding of Chinese history and of contemporary Chinese society.