Feminism and the Power of Law

Feminism and the Power of Law PDF Author: Carol Smart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134972830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In this now established text the author presents her analysis of the power of law and argues for a feminist post-structuralist approach. She comments on pornography, as well as discussing recent research on rape trials and abortion legislation.

Contesting Femicide

Contesting Femicide PDF Author: Adrian Howe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138478626
Category : Feminist jurisprudence
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Focusing on femicide, this book draws upon, whilst also providing a contemporary re-evaluation of, Carol Smart's innovative approach to the law question as first outlined in her ground-breaking book, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989).

Feminism Unmodified

Feminism Unmodified PDF Author: Catharine A. MacKinnon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674298743
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"Catharine A. MacKinnon, noted feminist and legal scholar, explores and develops her original theories and practical proposals on sexual politics and law. These discourses, originally delivered as speeches, have been brilliantly woven into a book that retains all the spontaneity and accessibility of a live presentation. Through these engaged works on issues such as rape, abortion, athletics, sexual harassment, and pornography, MacKinnon seeks feminism on its own terms, unconstrained by the limits of prior traditions. She argues that viewing gender as a matter of sameness and difference--as virtually all existing theory and law have done--covers up the reality of gender, which is a system of social hierarchy, an imposed inequality of power"--Back cover.

Feminism and Power

Feminism and Power PDF Author: Mary Caputi
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739175807
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Feminism and Power: the Need for Critical Theory is a six-chapter manuscript which offers an important critique of “power feminism.” The latter, having produced such spinoffs as “grrrl power,” “choice,” “babe,” “lipstick,” and “stiletto” feminisms, encourages women to be strong, self-sufficient, feisty, and independent. While I have no argument with much of that tough-minded ideal, I ask whether this “brave new girl” doesn’t too readily acquiesce in a neo-liberal ideology whose underlying tenets derive from American rugged individualism. At its worst, this strain within Third Wave feminism contains no critique of capitalism, no distance on neoliberal theory, no effort to address the injustices contained in globalization’s asymmetries and the industrialized North’s exploitation of developing countries. Feminism and Power: the Need for Critical Theory therefore argues that the critical theories of Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida have much to offer feminism, and a feminist understanding of female empowerment. Its pages rely on Adorno’s assertion that it is only by allowing the sufferer to speak that we can unveil social truth rather than be duped by the bravado of victory culture. Similarly, it demonstrates how Derrida’s insistence on the trace, as well as the asymmetries of friendship and hospitality, lead feminism away from the perils of contented triumphalism. The book promotes listening as a paradigmatic feminist gesture, rather than always speaking up and out.

Feminist Legal History

Feminist Legal History PDF Author: Tracy A. Thomas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814784266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Attuned to the social contexts within which laws are created, feminist lawyers, historians, and activists have long recognized the discontinuities and contradictions that lie at the heart of efforts to transform the law in ways that fully serve women's interests. At its core, the nascent field of feminist legal history is driven by a commitment to uncover women's legal agency and how women, both historically and currently, use law to obtain individual and societal empowerment. Feminist Legal History represents feminist legal historians' efforts to define their field, by showcasing historical research and analysis that demonstrates how women were denied legal rights, how women used the law proactively to gain rights, and how, empowered by law, women worked to alter the law to try to change gendered realities. Encompassing two centuries of American history, thirteen original essays expose the many ways in which legal decisions have hinged upon ideas about women or gender as well as the ways women themselves have intervened in the law, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's notion of a legal class of gender to the deeply embedded inequities involved in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, a 2007 Supreme Court pay discrimination case. Contributors: Carrie N. Baker, Felice Batlan, Tracey Jean Boisseau, Eileen Boris, Richard H. Chused, Lynda Dodd, Jill Hasday, Gwen Hoerr Jordan, Maya Manian, Melissa Murray, Mae C. Quinn, Margo Schlanger, Reva Siegel, Tracy A. Thomas, and Leti Volpp

Contesting Femicide

Contesting Femicide PDF Author: Adrian Howe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351068024
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Focusing on femicide, this book provides a contemporary re-evaluation of Carol Smart’s innovative approach to the law question as first outlined in her ground-breaking book, Feminism and the Power of Law (Routledge 1989). Smart advocated turning to the legal domain not so much for demanding law reforms as construing it as a site on which to contest gender and more particularly, gendered constructions of women’s experiences. Over the last 30 to 40 years, feminist law scholars and activists have launched scathing trans-jurisdictional critiques of the operation of provocation defences in hundreds of femicide cases. The evidence unearthed by feminist scholars that these defences operate in profoundly sexed ways is unequivocal. Accordingly, femicide cases have become critically important sites for feminist engagement and intervention across numerous jurisdictions. Exploring an area of criminal law that was not one of Smart’s own focal concerns, this book both honours and extends Smart’s work by approaching femicide as a site of engagement and counter-discourse that calls into question hegemonic representations of gendered relationships. Femicide cases thus provide a way to continue the endlessly valuable discursive work Smart advocated and practised in other fields of law: both in articulating alternative accounts of gendered relationships and in challenging law’s power to disqualify women’s experiences of violence while privileging men’s feelings and rights.

Governance Feminism

Governance Feminism PDF Author: Janet Halley
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452956405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Describing and assessing feminist inroads into the state Feminists walk the halls of power. Governance Feminism: An Introduction shows how some feminists and feminist ideas—but by no means all—have entered into state and state-like power in recent years. Being a feminist can qualify you for a job in the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Criminal Court, the local prosecutor’s office, or the child welfare bureaucracy. Feminists have built institutions and participate in governance. The authors argue that governance feminism is institutionally diverse and globally distributed. It emerges from grassroots activism as well as statutes and treaties, as crime control and as immanent bureaucracy. Conflicts among feminists—global North and South; left, center, and right—emerge as struggles over governance. This volume collects examples from the United States, Israel, India, and from transnational human rights law. Governance feminism poses new challenges for feminists: How shall we assess our successes and failures? What responsibility do we shoulder for the outcomes of our work? For the compromises and strange bedfellows we took on along the way? Can feminism foster a critique of its own successes? This volume offers a pathway to critical engagement with these pressing and significant questions.

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State PDF Author: Catharine A. MacKinnon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674896468
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Presents the author's analysis of politics, sexuality and the law from the perspective of women. Using the debate over Marxism and feminism as a point of departure, MacKinnon develops a theory of gender centred on sexual subordination and applies it to the State.

Feminism, Media, and the Law

Feminism, Media, and the Law PDF Author: Martha Fineman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195096290
Category : Feminism
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Drawing on a striking array of sources, this book presents a collection of essays by leading scholars and activists that explore how the media represents and constructs gender, law, and feminism. Topics include hate radio, Anita Hill, popular women's magazines, and the portrayal of women in film and television.

Feminist Judgments

Feminist Judgments PDF Author: Kathryn M. Stanchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107126622
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
Fifty feminist law professors come together to rewrite twenty-five major Supreme Court opinions on gender justice and equality.