E-Book Overview
This book is a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between feminist theories and the law, and the way in which developments of the former have affected, and been affected by, the latter. The book takes as its starting point a study of women and culture on an international level, which demonstrates how religious and cultural influences have been fundamental in establishing contemporary legal and social mores. This provides the setting for an investigation into legal and social discrimination and inequality, and how this has been addressed by the emergence of feminism. A number of critiques and developments are examined.
E-Book Content
SOURCEBOOK ON FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE CP Cavendish Publishing Limited London • Sydney SOURCEBOOK ON FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE Hilaire Barnett, BA, LLM Lecturer in Law Queen Mary & Westfield College CP Cavendish Publishing Limited London • Sydney First published in Great Britain 1997 by Cavendish Publishing Limited, The Glass House, Wharton Street, London WC1X 9PX Telephone: 0171-278 8000 Facsimile: 0171-278 8080 © Barnett, H, 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner. The right of the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Any person who infringes the above in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. Barnett, Hilaire A Sourcebook on feminist jurisprudence 1. Feminist jurisprudence I. Title 340.1’1’082 ISBN 1 85941 113 4 Printed and bound in Great Britain [W]omen have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics. But this creative power differs greatly from the creative power of men. And one must conclude that it would be a thousand pities if it were hindered or wasted, for it was won by centuries of the most drastic discipline, and there is nothing to take its place. It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how could we manage with one only?1 Virginia Woolf, 1929 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 A Room of One’s Own (1929) (Penguin, 1993), p 79. v PREFACE The literature on feminist jurisprudence is now both extensive and impressive. Whilst the modern feminist quest for equality may be traced to the writings of Mary Wollestonecraft in the 18th century, and that of John Stuart and Harriet Mill in the 19th century, the scholarship on women and law is of more recent origins. However, with the revitalised interest of the 1960s through to the current time, feminist jurisprudence has come of age. No longer is it possible to view feminist legal scholarship as a ‘minority’ interest. Whether the interest lies in identifying and campaigning for the removal of the remaining legal disabilities of women, or in theorising about the manner in which law reflects and reinforces gender-based inequalities, or in infusing traditional legal scholarship and teaching with a feminist perspective, feminism has become a mainstream discipline. In this book I have attempted to reflect the richness and variety of feminist schola