ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on feminist political economy and the law because of the changes that are occurring in the political and legal regimes that feminists encounter through the process of globalization. New international legal institutions are being constructed that profoundly shift the power structures (and legal institutions) that women have confronted in the twentieth century.This shift in the location of legal power destabilizes the various types of feminist methods that have been constructed over the past century for confronting all aspects of patriarchal economic power: the power of the state, the pervasive and unregulated power of capital, and male privilege.This means that many of the strategies that feminists have used to improve living and working conditions for women no longer have a familiar target. Some targets that were firmly in focus – the state and the corporation – are now more nebulous and increasingly able to sidestep responsibilities and deflect the focus of law (Ciscel and Heath 2001).
