Examining Gender Stereotypes in New Work/Family Reconciliation Policies: The Creation of a New Paradigm for Egalitarian Legislation

The 2011 symposium: The Changing Face of Families, will focus on the evolution of assisted reproductive technologies, and its effects on traditional legal notions of marriage, parent, and family

Domestic Violence Lawmaking in Asia: Some Innovative Trends in Feminist Lawmaking

Domestic violence lawmaking intersects global human rights norms and domestic women\u27s movements. Domestic violence is both a global and local phenomenon. The World Bank argues that domestic violence accounts for one in five lost years in women aged 15-44. The costs range from direct expenses such as medical care and social services to productivity and labor market costs to the psychological toll imposed by the intergenerational transmission of violence. The international women\u27s movement and the international human rights conventions have confirmed that violence in the home is neither a private issue nor a cultural practice. Domestic violence was placed on the global agenda as a global epidemic largely due to an explosion of activism by women\u27s rights activists. Bolstered by increasing pressure from international women\u27s human rights advocates, domestic movements demanded the governments make domestic violence lawmaking central to good governance. The explosion of lawmaking around the world on domestic violence makes this clear by establishing state accountability for violence in the home. The positive responsibility of the state inherent in human rights treaties therefore required states to take positive measures to end domestic violence. The concept of state responsibility to include accountability for acts of private individuals is an integral part of the definition of domestic violence as a human rights violation. The concept of state responsibility has expanded to not only direct state action but also a state\u27s systematic failure to act. Despite the weak enforcement of these laws, the law making processes provide women\u27s movements an opportunity to network globally. The transformation of international human rights and transnational idea sharing into domestic violence lawmaking has been defined as one of the most important social movements of our times. Although much more must be done to realize the promise of these laws, countries that are in the process of lawmaking have much to learn from these experiences. In the last decade, many countries in the Asian region have either passed or are in the process of passing national domestic violence laws. Despite the fact that the laws in force are yet to be transformed fully into practice these laws are important benchmarks and integrate some novel elements in domestic violence lawmaking. Although there is little homogeneity in the Asian region in the field of political, economic, social, or cultural development, these laws have the transformative potential to create new standards in an area where women victims of violence are often silenced because of a culture of impunity. The existence of a law provides space for women to claim their right to bodily integrity and security. Many elements of these laws in different parts of Asia are also instructive to other jurisdictions and can resonate between and across the Asian region

Opportunities and Challenges for Gender-Based Legal Reform in China

No abstract availabl

When Law is Complicit in Gender Bias: Ending De Jure Discrimination Against Women as an Important Target of Sustainable Development Goal 5

Ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls is not only a basic human right, but also crucial to accelerating sustainable development. The very first target of Goal 5. 1.1 calls to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere and the indicator for the goal is: “Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex”. In many countries around the world the legal frameworks themselves allow for both direct (de jure) and indirect (de facto) discrimination against women. This essay identifies some areas of de jure discrimination in laws regulating women’s family lives that explicitly impact both their personal and public lives and examines some recent law reform in this area

A Rapidly Shifting Landscape : Why Digitized Violence is the Newest Category of Gender-Based Violence

This paper proposes that new research on technology-facilitated violence must shape gender-based violence against women laws. Given the AI revolution, including large language models (“ LLMs ”), and generative artificial intelligence, new technologies continue to create power disparities that help facilitate gender-based violence both online and offline. The paper argues that the veil of anonymity provided by the digital realm facilitates violence ; and the automation capabilities offered by technology amplify the scope and impact of abusive behavior. Although the direct physical act of sexual violence is different from offline violence, there are similarities. Firstly, both acts share the structural gender and intersectional inequities that lie at the root of such conducts in the first place. Secondly, the defense that women and girls are free to exercise the option to leave an abusive online environment denies women’s and girls’ free exercise of rights to assembly and expression in the online public square. In the final analysis, although not all isolated acts of online violence meet a legal threshold, we need to see these acts as a part of a continuum of offline violence that call for new forms of discourse and a dynamic application of international women’s human rights norms into evolving categories of violence

Why Women\u27s Leadership is the Cause of Our Time

Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions throughout the world. Yet, studies show that the exclusion of women from politics and public service negatively impacts the public good. Identifying women\u27s leadership as the economic and moral imperative of our time, this Article explores the way in which greater representation of women in leadership positions yields beneficial results for both women and men, as well as social and economic progress. By examining the reasons for the substantial barriers women face in obtaining such positions, including the masculinization of politics, gendered caregiving responsibilities, and gender violence, this Article concludes that unless women have full and equal participation in policymaking, the full promise of development and democracy will never be fulfilled

Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex-Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India

Sital Kalantry’s Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India addresses a long-existing gap in feminist theory at the intersection of a migrant woman’s experience and culturally motivated reproductive decisions. By recognising the possibility that ‘practices that are oppressive to women in one country context may not have a negative impact on women in another country context’ Kalantry takes an important step in creating a framework for evaluating competing human rights interests within the complex cultural contexts that arise in migrant-receiving countries. Her proposed framework rejects the decontextualisation and politicisation of the migrant woman’s experience in favour of an appropriately nuanced approach, which inhabits a context-specific interstitial space between cultural relativist and universalist arguments