Advanced Introduction to Feminist Perspectives on Law: (Elgar Advanced Introductions series)

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This Advanced Introduction overviews the ongoing struggle for gender equality since the nineteenth century. It considers how women have looked to law as a means of facilitating entry into the public sphere, including in higher education, work and professional life. The book examines the feminist assertation that ‘the personal is political’ and addresses issues in the private sphere that have long been on the reform agenda, including marriage, divorce, sexual assault and violence against women. It also considers the current fragmentation of feminism, or ‘postfeminism’; while critics argue the aims of feminism have been achieved, data on sexual harassment and violence against women by intimate partners reveals the continuing elusiveness of gender equality. Key Features: An essential exploration of both modern and historical feminism Focuses on the four key themes of active citizenship, paid work, intimate relations and violence and criminality to clarify how law reform is addressed Considers the increasing diversity in trends in intimate relationships, such as same sex marriage, the decline in traditional marriage and the consequences of separation. The Advanced Introduction to Feminist Perspectives on Law is highly beneficial to students and scholars of gender law, legal theory, legal philosophy and feminist history.

About the Author :
Margaret Thornton, Emerita Professor, ANU College of Law, The Australian National University, Australia

Review :
‘Margaret Thornton’s extraordinary Introduction provides a concise summary of the efforts of feminist law reformers, worldwide, to use law in order to combat the subordinating and oppressive constraints on women’s lives at work, in family life, as citizens, and as professionals and producers in civil society, their forced dependency as caregivers and the impoverishment that dependence brings, their relative rights-lessness in their reproductive role, bodies, and lives, and their sufferance of sexualized violence, from rape and femicide to their subjection to cyberstalking, pornography, sex trafficking and prostitution. Thornton shows that over centuries, and in all corners of the globe, feminists have used law to achieve notable advances against the pervasiveness of patriarchal patterns of control. Each legal advance however, has been plagued by contradiction and limitations, as the sought after reformed law itself carries with it the weight of the assumptions and limitations that the feminist legal reform targets. Antidiscrimination law does not address the debilitating second shift; no-fault divorce has not arrested the impoverishment suffered by many divorced and divorcing women; the reform of rape laws has not notably slowed the rate of sexualized violence. Thornton provides dozens of such examples. Law’s homage to tradition seemingly limits its own liberatory potential. Today, not only the limits of law, but also the assumptions of neoliberalism and postfeminism further threaten feminism’s substantial advances. Equality remains elusive. This Advanced Introduction to the potentials and limitations of law in combating patriarchy is lucid, illuminating, and powerful. It will serve as a resource for established scholars in various fields of jurisprudence and gender studies, as well as students and others who are approaching feminist ideals and legal challenges for the first time.’