ABSTRACT

The feminist jurisprudence movement appears to have originated in the US in the 1970s, possibly as a part of the Critical Legal Studies movement (see Chapter 21). It seems to have taken the form, in its earlier years, of a considered theoretical response by women jurists and lawyers to a widely-held perception of American jurisprudence as the product of an exclusively male ideology which, by its origins and nature, effectively excluded women from significant participation in legal affairs and institutionalised their formal and informal subservience to men. The growth of the movement was recognised by the CLS Conference of 1983 which included in its programme an examination of the basis of feminist jurisprudence.