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Describing the constitutional rights of women in twelve countries, the contributors to this collection draw on a wide range of legal cases covering issues such as abortion, sexual harassment, employment discrimination, sexual abuse, pornography, family relationships, access to health and social assistance benefits, and electoral rights, among others. Their analysis reveals how essentially male judges decide cases that are mainly about women's equality claims. The volume's comparative perspective provides readers with the basis for independent pursuits of constitutional equality for women.
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P1: KcZ 0521835550agg.xml CY446/Baines 0521823366 July 13, 2004 This page intentionally left blank ii 10:13 P1: KcZ 0521835550agg.xml CY446/Baines 0521823366 July 13, 2004 10:13 The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence To explain how constitutions shape and are shaped by women’s lives, the contributors to this volume examine constitutional cases pertaining to women in twelve countries. Analyzing jurisprudence about reproductive, sexual, familial, socioeconomic, and democratic rights, they focus constructively on women’s claims to equality, asking who makes these claims, what constitutional rights inform them, how they have evolved, what arguments work in defending them, and how they relate to other national issues. Their findings reveal significant similarities in outcomes and in reasoning about women’s constitutional rights in these twelve countries, challenging the tradition of distinguishing constitutional jurisprudence depending on whether the country has a written or unwritten constitution, subscribes to civil or common law, is a federal or unitary state, limits constitutional adjudication to the public rather than also including the private domain, accords international norms binding or subject to incorporation force, or relies on a specialized or general court to adjudicate constitutional matters. Beverley Baines is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where she originated the Law Gender Equality and Feminist Jurisprudence courses. Her research interests include issues in constitutional law, feminist legal theory, antidiscrimination law, multiculturalism, and equality rights. She has contributed chapters to Conversation among Friends – Entre Amies: Women and Constitutional Reform, Changing Patterns: Women in Canada, and Women and the Constitution, and she has written articles for major Canadian and international journals. Ruth Rubio-Marin is Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Seville, Spain. She is author of Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States and of articles on language rights, nationality, immigration, and gender in law. She has taught at several North American academic institutions, including Princeton University and Columbia Law School, and is currently a member of the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University. i P1: KcZ 0521835550agg.xml CY446/Baines 0521823366 ii July 13, 2004 10:13 P1: KcZ 0521835550agg.xml CY446/Baines 0521823366 July 13, 2004 The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence Edited by BEVERLEY BAINES Queen’s University RUTH RUBIO-MARIN Universidad de Sevilla iii 10:13 Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780