ABSTRACT
By the middle of the 1980s, ‘second wave’ feminism could be said to have ‘arrived’, and to have secured a foothold, in many law schools. It was now a decade since the work that had been done in the 1970s, which, itself taking its cue from early second wave feminist writers – De Beauvoir, Friedan and, later, Firestone, Greer, Oakley and many others – had begun to ask why law fails to provide ‘equality’. In the interim, this demand had itself been subjected to critique from within feminism, which had asked: What does it mean for ‘women’ to want to be ‘equal’ to ‘men’? Is the project of legal feminism to ensure that ‘women’ are treated ‘like men’ by law? Feminism was divided as to the true answers to these questions. The divide, broadly, was between radical feminism, with its revolutionary agenda of a law which recognised women as women, rather than only ‘seeing’ women who were ‘like men’; and liberal feminism, with its rejection of revolution and preference for gradualism and reform, and a continued emphasis on the demand for ‘equality’ before the law.
