ABSTRACT
Feminism as a social movement 92 The struggle for legal rights 92 Economic and cultural objectives 93
Feminism and jurisprudence 94 Liberal feminism 95 Radical perspectives 96 The feminist critique of law 98
Empirical studies of legal practice 100 How women experience divorce 100 The experiences of indigenous battered women 101
Women in the legal profession 103 A two-tier occupation 103 Experiences of sexism 105 An ethnographic study 107
Some critical issues 109 A different way of doing law 109 Understanding the backlash 110
Questions 110
Further reading 110
Boxes 5.1 Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s pornography ordinance 97
5.2 Fertility treatment as a feminist issue 99 5.3 Feminism as method 101
There will be younger readers of this book, living in Western democratic societies, for whom the term ‘feminism’ may have little meaning, or seem either irrelevant or even vaguely threatening. This is interesting because, between the late 1960s and 1980s, feminism was highly influential, not only in universities, but across society as a social and political movement. There were campaigns that changed the law so this benefited women, or particular groups of women, in a way that we now take for granted. There was a transformation in the cultural life of society so that women could express themselves in the arts. Moreover, women have been the main beneficiaries of the expansion of higher education that took place during this period. Whereas in the 1950s, most students in universities were men, today there is a majority of female students outside some scientific subjects and mathematics. The legal profession itself was almost exclusively a male occupation. Today, equal numbers of men and women enter the profession and, in theory, have an equal chance of becoming judges. There are also more opportunities for women to enter politics and make law through the political process. Prominent female politicians such as Condoleeza Rice, the American Secretary of State during the George W. Bush administration, and Hillary Clinton, who lost to Barak Obama in the 2008 contest to become the Democratic presidential candidate, demonstrate that women can occupy the highest positions in government.
