The Virtual Sociality of Rights: The Case of Women\u27s Rights are Human Rights

This essay traces the relationship between activists and academics involved in the campaign for women\u27s rights as human rights as a case study of the relationship between different classes of what I call knowledge professionals self-consciously acting in a transnational domain. The puzzle that animates this essay is the following: how was it that at the very moment at which a critique of rights and a reimagination of rights as rights talk proved to be such fertile ground for academic scholarship did the same rights prove to be an equally fertile ground for activist networking and lobbying activities? The paper answers this question with respect to the work of self-reflexivity in creating a virtual sociality of rights

Franchises lost and gained: post-coloniality and the development of women’s rights in Canada

The Canadian constitution is to some extent characterised by its focus on equality, and in particular gender equality. This development of women’s rights in Canada and the greater engagement of women as political actors is often presented as a steady linear process, moving forwards from post-enlightenment modernity. This article seeks to disturb this ‘discourse of the continuous,’ by using an analysis of the pre-confederation history of suffrage in Canada to both refute a simplistic linear view of women’s rights development and to argue for recognition of the Indigenous contribution to the history of women’s rights in Canada. The gain of franchise and suffrage movements in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are, rightly, the focus of considerable study (Pauker 2015), This article takes an alternative perspective. Instead, it examines the exercise of earlier franchises in pre-confederation Canada. In particular it analyses why franchise was exercised more widely in Lower Canada and relates this to the context of the removal of franchises from women prior to confederation

Interview with Arvonne S. Fraser

Founder, Women’s Equity Action League, Washington, D.C. Interviewed by Julia Lamber on March 28, 2016, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ohtitleix/1011/thumbnail.jp

Interview with Arvonne S. Fraser

Founder, Women’s Equity Action League, Washington, D.C. Interviewed by Julia Lamber on March 28, 2016, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ohtitleix/1011/thumbnail.jp