The Women’s Court is an umbrella term, a common denominator, for a series of initiatives which differ from the mainstream judicial procedures and have been taking place since the early 1990s. These initiatives are not an alternative to the official judiciary systems but aim to supplement, and are therefore complementary to these official systems, especially with a view to transitional justice mechanisms. This text, while focusing on one of those initiatives – established following the violent break-up of Yugoslavia (...) – will contextualize the Women’s Court not only within the recent, short, albeit very significant, history of alternative justice systems, but – importantly for the argument of this text – will also situate this initiative within relevant theoretical concepts of justice. A description of the Women’s Court and its history is followed by locating it within the mainstream concept of justice as well as within feminist and the transitional justice concepts. Finally, returning to this initiative, some key issues are highlighted and assessed, despite the fact that this initiative is still an ongoing process and is therefore understandably difficult to evaluate. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its (...) feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

The analysis in this article provides an alternative interpretation of trafficked women’s self-presentation before the courts. I use complete observations of German judges deposing women in camera who are witnesses in criminal proceedings against their traffickers. My objective is to develop and inform a different account of the women’s self-presentation by prioritising the narrative accounts of their ‘lived’ experiences of trafficking. Invoking Judith Butler’s analysis of the complex transactions between subjectification and subversive agency and emerging debates in the (...) health arena in psychosocial theory on resilience, I ask: How is trafficked women’s self-presentation in criminal proceedings an expression of their agency and resilience? (shrink)

Recent years have seen the advent of two feminist judgment-writing projects, the Women’s Court of Canada, and the Feminist Judgments Project in England. This article analyses these projects in light of Carol Smart’s feminist critique of law and legal reform and her proposed feminist strategies in Feminism and the Power of Law (1989). At the same time, it reflects on Smart’s arguments 20 years after their first publication and considers the extent to which feminist judgment-writing projects may (...) reinforce or trouble her conclusions. It argues that both of these results are discernible—that while some of Smart’s contentions have proved to be unsustainable, others remain salient and have both inspired and hold important cautions for feminist judgment-writing projects. (shrink)

"Golf day 2005 @ federal golf club, red hill." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 7.

This study replicates and extends previous work by Oppenheimer and Wiesner [1990, Sex discrimination: Who is hired and do employment equity statements make a difference? Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Personnel and Human Resources Division], and examined the effects of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, the effects of employment equity directives when minority candidates are less qualified and the effects of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on hiring decisions. (...) The results indicate that when employment equity is in place, people are increasingly more likely to hire underrepresented group members, to the extent that they are more qualified. Men appear to be treated in a positively biased manner, and are more likely to be hired when they are less qualified. Women are less likely to be hired when they are under-qualified, and in the absence of employment equity directives or when there is a suggestion that women are underrepresented. Moreover, when employment equity directives are strengthened, there appears to be a subtle backlash for women but not for men. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s theory of equality has exerted a strong gravitational force over Canadian equality rights doctrine for more than two decades. And although Dworkin is never cited in the Supreme Court of Canada’s equality rights cases, his shadow is plainly visible in the reception of the right to ‘equal concern and respect’ in Andrews (1989), and the ‘right to moral independence’ in Law v Canada (1999).Although this paper assesses the extent to which Dworkin’s theory of equality has (...) been received in Canadian law, it also engages in debates between Dworkin and his critics that developed as Dworkin defended and modified his theory of rights and equality over the years. The debates between Dworkin and his critics are invaluable for interpreting Canadian constitutional jurisprudence, I will argue, because the Supreme Court does not always adequately justify the conceptions of equality, dignity, etc. that it incorporates into constitutional law. Indeed, it is not always evident that the Court is aware that it is choosing among alternative conceptions, rather than straightforwardly interpreting a determinate constitutional text. The payoff from a parallel study of Dworkin and the equality rights doctrine of the Supreme Court is the identification of resources from the academic debate that can be commended for the development of a more sound and stable constitutional doctrine. (shrink)

A woman from the Republic of Ireland has successfully challenged the country's restrictive abortion legislation at the European Court of Human Rights. 1 The woman was in remission from cancer and believed that she was at increased risk of relapse due to her unintended pregnancy. She believed that continuing with the pregnancy would have put her life at risk. She travelled to England for an abortion in 2005 and subsequently experienced medical complications when she returned to Republic of Ireland. (...) Abortion in the Republic of Ireland is permitted if the life of the pregnant woman is at risk, but given the uncertainty around interpreting the legislation and the fear of criminal sanctions, the provision is not always effective in practice. The woman argued that her right to an abortion had been denied because there was no law or procedure through which she could have her clinical entitlement established. The ECtHR was unanimous that her right to private and family life had been violated but did not uphold her challenge under Articles 2, 3 and 14. The woman was joined by two other women in the challenge but the other women were unsuccessful as their circumstances differed; their lives had not been at risk if they had continued with their pregnancies. 2The Court concluded ‘that neither the medical consultation nor litigation options, relied on by the Irish government, constituted effective and accessible procedures which allowed [her] … to establish her right to lawful abortion in Ireland’.3At the time of writing, the Irish government was considering how to implement the judgement.Review of arm's-length bodiesAs previously reported here, in July 2010 the UK Government announced plans to reform and abolish a large number of arm's-length bodies. 4 …. (shrink)

The notion of ‘Inclusionary Othering,’ in garnering uptake within diverse nursing spheres, muddies a critical understanding of Othering by obscuring the colonial production, exploitation and perpetuation of the Other for economic and political gain. The ongoing genocide of Indigenous women and girls in Canada is a direct manifestation of the Othering process and in response to the report's Calls for Justice, it is an apt time to re‐enliven the conversation of the process of Othering's philosophical construction. The purpose of (...) this article is to re/turn to the philosophical underpinnings of the process of Othering in hopes of enlivening a new wave of resistance within nursing and elsewhere to the means by which the Other is constructed as well as to the notion of Inclusionary Othering itself. Perhaps this re/turn to the philosophy of Edward Said and Sylvia Wynter can result in further thwarting the Othering construct by highlighting its colonial construction and usher in a pragmatic shift, increasing critical engagement with the construct as well as inspiring a re/newed resistance toward Othering in nursing practice. (shrink)

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal law prohibiting physician assisted death in Canada. In 2016, Parliament passed legislation to allow what it called ‘medical assistance in dying.’ The authors first describe the arguments the Court used to strike down the law, and then argue that MAID as legalized in Bill C-14 is based on principles that are incompatible with a free and democratic society, prohibits assistance in dying that should be permitted, (...) and makes access to medically-assisted death unnecessarily difficult. They then propose a version of MAID legislation that gives proponents and opponents of MAID everything they can legitimately want, contend that it is the only way to legalize MAID that is compatible with a free and democratic society, and conclude that it is the way to legalize MAID in Canada and other similarly free and democratic societies. (shrink)

In 2002 the constitutionality of the Sexual Offences Act, which criminalizes the behaviour of sex workers but fails to punish their clients, was at issue in the South African Constitutional Court. The majority of the Court held that the legislation does not constitute indirect discrimination on the basis of gender. The minority judgment found indirect gender discrimination, but held that the legislation did not infringe upon sex workers’ rights to dignity and privacy. This note argues that the reasoning (...) in both the majority and minority judgments reflects and contributes to detrimental stereotypes of feminine sexuality, which, in turn, exacerbate women’s vulnerability to H.I.V. infection in South Africa. (shrink)

The Maputo Protocol, adopted in 2003, was intended to counterbalance the normative deficiencies of the African Charter with respect to women’s rights. However, 15 years down the line, there is not much case law on the Protocol. The ECOWAS Court made its first pronouncement on the Protocol in 2017 in Dorothy Njemanze & 3 Others v. The Federal Republic of Nigeria. This paper analyses three gender-based violence decisions by the Ecowas Court: Dorothy Njemanze, Aminata Diantou Diane and (...) Mary Sunday cases. The paper examines the potential of the Protocol and the due diligence principle in influencing the Ecowas Court’s jurisprudence on women’s rights and makes recommendations. (shrink)

The requirement for disclosure of risks of treatment as part of informed consent came before the Supreme Court of Canada in two 1980 cases. The Court found the duty of disclosure of risks to be based in negligence and not battery. The scope of the duty is not to be determined by medical evidence alone and requires the physician to disclose the nature of the proposed treatment, its gravity, any material risks and any special or unusual risks (...) as well as answering in a reasonable way all specific questions asked by the patient. Whether the patient would have decided differently if all the information were known is an objective test, based on what the reasonable person in the patient's particular circumstance would do. (shrink)

This survey of the Supreme Court of Canada’s pivotal anti-discrimination rulings over a 30-year period assesses the extent to which the shifting nature of the grounds approach and the Court’s conceptions of dignity together form part of a gendered system of enunciation at the intersection of autonomy, identity and affect. This article is written as a corrective to some of the author’s early optimism about the possibilities that dignity may offer in the context of constitutional equality rights (...) cases and as a cautionary tale for those who would attempt to use it as a vehicle for rights claiming through the courts. These cases reveal that in the context of Canadian anti-discrimination law, the concept of dignity is most often used to circumscribe agency, limit subjectivity and curtail possibilities for redress by reducing large scale structural problems to the individual in ways that reproduce law’s originary violence. (shrink)

The so-called genetics revolution rests on a history which at its least can be described as controversial. Modern genetics needs to bear this history in mind. In particular, as with the past, the area of reproductive choice seems particularly vulnerable to potential abuse. Courts in the UK and elsewhere have already shown themselves willing to interfere with the choices of women in the management of their pregnancies. Medical advance, perhaps particularly the capacity to visualise the developing foetus, has added complexity (...) to the question of whether the health care provider has one patient (the woman) or two patients (the woman and the foetus). Additionally, pregnancy is thoroughly monitored in modern medical practice and genetics may provide a further impetus or incentive to mandate increased policing of pregnancy. Gene therapy, once offered, will add further to the desire to ensure that women make the 'right' choice, especially when the invasion required is relatively minimal. Further, genetic information is at best predictive, but may, because of its scientific nature, appear to those receiving it to be certain. Thus, the provision of genetic information may reduce rather than enhance choice, unless carefully and sensitively provided. A mature and sophisticated debate about the role of genetics in reproduction is required-engaging rather than bypassing the public-if the real potential of genetics is to be vindicated. (shrink)

In a recent 5‐to‐4 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada denied to Harvard University a patent on a genetically modified mouse. In their reasoning, the majority Justices, concerned obviously about the implications of granting the patent for the human case, argue that higher organisms (mammals) are not “compositions of matter” in the sense intended by the Canadian Patent Act. But if a mouse is not a composition of matter, what—indeed, what on earth—is it? As the minority Justices complain, (...) the majority decision smacks of dubious metaphysics and theology. Appealing to a quite unlikely source, the Bible, I show that the distinction between mice and men can be defended without introducing problematic metaphysical and question‐begging theological materials. I also show, en route, that the biblical position on the special status of men and women is not inconsistent with evolutionary theory. Granting a patent on the mouse (as was done in the U.S.A.) is compatible with denying it to human organisms. (shrink)

In England, Wales and Scotland, the vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. In 2009, for example, 91% of abortions were carried out at under 13 weeks gestation for women resident in England and Wales. 1 Early abortion opens up the opportunity for a woman to have a medical abortion rather than a surgical abortion. Medical abortion is considered to be less invasive and less expensive than surgical abortion, and is increasingly becoming the preferred method. (...) 1 The proportion of medical abortions to surgical abortions has doubled in the last five years with 52% of abortions being medical abortions under 9 weeks gestation in 2009. A medical abortion typically involves taking mifepristone to block the hormones that help a pregnancy to continue, and then later on misoprostol, which makes the womb expel the embryo/fetus, usually within 4–6 h. Current legislation requires that both sets of drugs are administered in an NHS hospital or approved place, but women can go home after taking the second dose of drugs to complete the abortion. There has long been disagreement between the Department of Health and the British Pregnancy Advisory Services about what constitutes ‘any treatment for the termination of pregnancy’ under the Abortion Act 1967, specifically whether a woman taking the second set of drugs is considered to be undergoing the ‘treatment’ and is therefore required to be present in premises permitted under the Act. At the end of 2010, BPAS went to the High Court to challenge the Department of Health's view that the legislation requires women to take both sets of drugs in an approved place. BPAS argued that ‘treatment’ stops at the point of prescription and women should be able to go home, …. (shrink)

This article uses a feminist political economy framework to analyse economic violence against women in the context of the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the introduction of neoliberal regimes in its successor states from the late 1980s until 2015. The authors’ focus is on the following processes before, during and after the breakup: the wider social, political and economic context of Yugoslavia before the war, already marked by the introduction of orthodox neoliberal standards and practices and combined with nationalism; the (...) period during the war, with escalation of conflict and growing nationalism; and the post-socialist transformation, marked by aggressive neoliberalism. The analysis is based on women’s testimonies given in preparation of and during the Women’s Court in Sarajevo in 2015. It points to the conclusion that orthodox neoliberal policy and privatization, intersecting with patriarchy, nationalism and conflict, induced economic violence against women in the region. (shrink)

In the form of a tongue-in-cheek how-to guide, Carole S. Vance discusses the complex role of the state and the media with regard to human trafficking. Calling attention to the portrayal of human trafficking as an overwhelmingly female issue, Vance explores the ubiquitous connection between prostitution and human trafficking, and weighs the impact of this portrayal on men and women who are trafficked into other, less problematized sectors of labor. Vance also contemplates the handling of human trafficking cases in criminal (...) courts when, she argues, the issue is a matter of human rights, not solely criminal justice. (shrink)

The extraction of a pecuniary penalty for the recusancy of married women was a heavily contested issue in the Parliament of Elizabeth. Under the rules of coverture, married women controlled no property. It was thus ineffective to fine them, for they were unable to pay the penalty. As a result, the government attempted to hold husbands responsible for the penalties of their wives through the use of recognizances under the auspices of the Commissions for Causes Ecclesiastical, a prerogative court. (...) Research into the York Commission’s use of recognizances indicated that it had indeed been possible legitimately and legally to obtain a pecuniary penalty for the recusancy of a married woman by the 1570s. This was generally believed to have been legally impossible until they became obtainable by statute in 1593. Detailed examination of the records of the Commission indicates clearly that the depiction in the scholarly literature of the levying of these penalties as somehow improper or even illegal is erroneous. These forfeitures might have seemed irregular, but were indeed legitimate and obtained by proper and legal means in the context of contemporary standards of authority and control, both governmental and familial. This study demonstrates how respect for the standards of coverture, patriarchy, and marital obligations incorporated in the use of the recognizance provided a highly effective and legal means to penalise and correct both recusant wives and their husbands. (shrink)

This article uses a comparative approach to elucidate the ways in which women’s testimony operated in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in Rwanda’s gacaca courts, to draw out some important lessons for future mechanisms of transitional justice. The author argues that while restorative justice mechanisms allow more space for including women’s own experiences of human rights violation than conventional trials, they may pose greater danger for those who testify. A significant problem resulting from the narratives of (...) both gacaca and the TRC is the way in which a ‘singular woman victim’ emerges that elides the complexity of women’s experiences in collective memory. It is feared that what has emerged from the official discourse of these two truth-seeking mechanisms is a one-dimensional female victim subject – in South Africa, she is of secondary importance, in Rwanda, she can only be Tutsi, and in both cases she is stripped of all agency, where rape becomes definitive of her experience. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is negatively impacting people’s mental health worldwide. The current study examined the effects of COVID-19 lockdown on adult women’s eating, body image, and social media habits. Furthermore, we compared individuals with and without signs of orthorexia nervosa, a proposed eating disorder. Participants were 143 women, aged 17–73 years, recruited during a COVID-19 lockdown in Canada from May-June 2020. Participants completed self-report questionnaires on their eating, body image, and social media habits during the pandemic. The Eating (...) Habits Questionnaire assessed symptoms of orthorexia nervosa. Compared to the period prior to lockdown, women with higher total orthorexia nervosa scores reported eating a lot more than usual, feeling greater pressure to diet and lose weight, thinking about food more often than usual, experiencing greater weight gain, and perceiving more pressure from social media specifically to lose weight and to exercise, compared to their healthy counterparts. We examined associations between individual EHQ subscales and perceived changes to eating and weight. Women who scored high on EHQ-Problems reported seeing more weight loss content on their social media than those who reported fewer orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Conversely, those who scored low on EHQ-Feelings reported feeling a lot less pressure to lose weight, somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight or to exercise from social media specifically, and trended toward less laxative use during lockdown, compared to those who scored higher on orthorexia nervosa. And those who scored low on EHQ-Knowledge reported feeling somewhat less or a lot less pressure to lose weight than those who reported more orthorexia nervosa symptoms. Together, the findings suggest that women with symptoms of orthorexia nervosa are experiencing an exacerbation of disordered eating thoughts and behaviors during COVID-19, and that social media may be a contributing factor. (shrink)

This work examines the evolution of law and legal method, and challenges the law's claim to neutrality by examining its role in creating and reproducing inequality between the sexes. It considers many of the current debates, and in each, the law is stated with reference to recent developments in statute and judicial decisions in the UK and other jurisdictions. The author illustrates how each issue is shaped by the current political climate and, where relevant, by the European Court. Reference (...) is also made to US and Australian case law. The book should be of interest to students studying women and the law, family law, criminal law and jurisprudcence, as well as those on criminology and sociology courses. It should also be useful to family and criminal practitioners. (shrink)

This article takes up Smart’s suggestion to examine the way the law works in practice. It explores the context of current criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences in Queensland, Australia. This article argues that legal method is applied outside the higher courts or “judge-oriented” practice and that the obstacles inherent to legal method can be identified in the practices of police, lower court staff, magistrates and lawyers. This article suggests that it may be difficult to deconstruct legal method, even (...) by focussing on law in practice, and as a result it may be difficult to successfully challenge law’s truth claims in this way. The analysis of criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences reported here supports Smart’s earlier findings that women and children who seek redress through the criminal justice process find the process at best ambivalent and at worst, destructive. However, the article also shows how, in the Queensland context, women sometimes find their way to feminism and personal empowerment by going to law. (shrink)

This article comments briefly on three specific issues in Shazia Choudhry’s paper “‘Best Interests’ What can healthcare law learn from family law?” The three issues are: (1) the implications of ‘best interests’ and ‘welfare science’ for women within the family law and the health care law context, (2) the risk of capture by the ‘welfare science’ industry, and (3) the proposal that a committee of medical experts and medical ethicists should be set up to provide reports to the Court (...) of Protection on cases brought under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA). I argue that the risk of capture by ‘welfare science’ is equally large in health care law and that a committee of the kind envisaged by Choudhry is unlikely to contribute significantly to conflict resolution under the MCA. (shrink)

. On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, holding that a naturally occurring DNA segment that has merely been “isolated” is not patent eligible, and effectively overturning a longstanding policy that had allowed for patents to be issued on thousands of human genes. Drawing largely on the expert testimony and arguments presented during the court proceedings, this paper provides an overview of the discovery and patenting of (...) the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes at issue in the case, the impacts of gene patents on biomedical research and innovation and clinical practice, and the legal analysis presented by the plaintiffs throughout the case for how patents issued on genes violate the Patent Act and the U.S. Constitution. Finally, it discusses how the Court’s decision in this case marked an extraordinary victory not only for the plaintiffs directly involved, but more generally for women, patients, researchers, civil liberties, and the future of medicine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedAt the Eleventh Hour: The Biography of Swami Rama. By Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, Ph.D. Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Himalayan Institute Press, 2002. Pp. 427. Hardcover $18.95.Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy. Edited by Polly Young Eisendrath and Shoji Muramoto. Hove, England: Brunner-Routledge, 2002. Pp. xii + 275. Paper $24.95.Beyond Metaphysics Revisited: Krishnamurti and Western Philosophy. By J. Richard Wingerter. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2002. Pp. vii + (...) 391. Hardcover $71.00.Bhāmatī and Vivaraṇa Schools of Advaita Vedānta: A Critical Approach. By Pulasth Soobah Roodurmun, foreword by V. N. Jha, and edited by Kanshi Ram. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2002. Pp. xv + 297. Price not given.A Bibliography of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. By James S. Crouch. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2002. Pp. 430. Price not given.Crisis Theory and World Order: Heideggerian Reflections. By Norman K. Swazo. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. x + 289. Hardcover $78.50. Paper $26.95.Devotional Literature in South Asia: Current Research 1997-2000: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Leuven, 23-26 August 2000. Edited by Winand M. Callewaert and Dieter Taillieu. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2002. Pp. xxii + 324. Price not given.Dharma Bell and Dhāraṇī Pillar: Li Po's Buddhist Inscriptions. By Paul W. Kroll. Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2001. Pp. viii + 95. Price not given.Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi. Edited, with introduction, by Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002. Pp. xiv + 249. Hardcover $39.95. Paper $16.95. Professional price $12.95.Ethical Questions: East and West. Edited by Bina Gupta. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Pp. vi + 279. Hardcover $70.00. Paper $26.95.Ethical Relativism and Universalism. By Saral Jhingran. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2001. Pp. xiv + 385. Price not given.Genius-In Their Own Words: The Intellectual Journeys of Seven Great 20th Century [End Page 431] Thinkers. Edited and with introduction by David Ramsay Steele, foreword by Arthur C. Danto. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 2002. Pp. xxii + 366. Paper $24.95.The Hatha Yoga Pradipika. The original Sanskrit by Svatmarama, an English translation by Brian Dana Akers. Woodstock, New York: YogaVidya.com, 2002. Pp. xii + 115. Hardcover $19.95. Paper $11.95.Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry. By Stephen C. Angle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xviii + 285. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $23.00.Indestructible Truth: The Living Spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism. By Reginald A. Ray. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 2002. Pp. x + 495. Paper $17.95.Introduction to Eastern Thought. By Marietta Stepaniants. Edited by James Behuniak and translated by Rommela Kohanovskaya. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, a division of Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Pp. xiv + 293. Hardcover $69.00. Paper $24.95.Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life. Edited by Christopher Key Chapple. Cambridge: Harvard University Press for the Center for the Study of World Religions, 2002. Pp. xliv + 252. Hardcover $32.95. Paper $22.95.Mediating the Power of Buddhas: Ritual in the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa. By Glenn Wallis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 263. Hardcover $86.50. Paper $29.95.Methodology in Religious Studies: The Interface with Women's Studies. Edited by Arvind Sharma. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 253. Hardcover $78.50. Paper $26.95.Persons and Valuable Worlds: A Global Philosophy. By Eliot Deutsch. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Pp. x + 309. Hardcover $80.00. Paper $34.95.Philosophy and Art in Gurdjieff's Beelzebub: A Modern Sufi Odyssey. By Anna T. Challenger. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2002. Pp. xi + 145. Paper EUR 27,00, U.S. $25.00.The Pratyabhijñā Philosophy. By G. V. Tagare. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2002. Pp. xii + 165. Price not given.Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School: Dynamic Responses to ong-ka-a's The... (shrink)

Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing is a technology which provides information about fetal genetic characteristics very early in pregnancy by examining fetal DNA obtained from a sample of maternal blood. NIPT is a morally complex technology that has advanced quickly to market with a strong push from industry developers, leaving many areas of uncertainty still to be resolved, and creating a strong need for health policy that reflects women’s social and ethical values. We approach the need for ethical policy-making by studying (...) the use of NIPT and emerging policy in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using an adapted version of constructivist grounded theory, we conducted interviews with 38 women who have had personal experiences with NIPT. We used an iterative process of data collection and analysis and a staged coding strategy to conduct a descriptive analysis of ethics issues identified implicitly and explicitly by women who have been affected by this technology. The findings of this paper focus on current ethical issues for women seeking NIPT, including place in the prenatal pathway, health care provider counselling about the test, industry influence on the diffusion of NIPT, consequences of availability of test results. Other issues gain relevance in the context of future policy decisions regarding NIPT, including funding of NIPT and principles that may govern the expansion of the scope of NIPT. These findings are not an exhaustive list of all the potential ethical issues related to NIPT, but rather a representation of the issues which concern women who have personal experience with this test. Women who have had personal experience with NIPT have concerns and priorities which sometimes contrast dramatically with the theoretical ethics literature. These findings suggest the importance of engaging patients in ethical deliberation about morally complex technologies, and point to the need for more deliberative patient engagement work in this area. (shrink)

On July 2021, the UK High Court of Justice heard the Case CO/2066/2020 on the application of Heidi Crowter who lives with Down’s syndrome, and Máire Lea-Wilson whose son Aidan has Down’s syndrome. Crowter and Lea-Wilson, with the support of the disability rights campaign, ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’, have been taking legal action against the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the UK Government) for a review of the 1967 Abortion Act: the removal of section 1(1)(d) making (...) termination of pregnancy lawful for ‘severe’ fetal indications detected after 24 weeks' gestation. On 23 September 2021, the High Court dismissed the claim. This action came at a time when non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) was introduced into the NHS England Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme for the trisomies 21, 13 and 18. The implementation of NIPT has been heavily criticised, in particular by ‘Don’t Screen Us Out’ campaigners, for increasing fetal selection and discrimination of people living with disabilities. The case of Crowter and Lea-Wilson echoes debates in other European countries such as in France and Germany, where the introduction of NIPT in the public healthcare system has provoked equally vehement public reactions and discussions. The comparison between these three countries allows contextualising the public discourses around NIPT and the ground for termination of pregnancy in relation to different socio-cultural and political contexts. We examine how each country, and particularly England, deals with the conflict between the principles of promoting the rights of people living with disabilities and preserving women’s reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to doing (...) academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

In Canada, much media attention has recently been focused on the formation of arbitration tribunals that would use Islamic law or Sharia to settle civil matters in Ontario. In fact, the idea of private parties voluntarily agreeing to arbitration using religious principles or a foreign legal system is not new. Ontario's Arbitration Act has allowed parties to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system for some time. This issue has been complicated by the fact that Canada has (...) a commitment to upholding both a policy of multiculturalism and an international obligation towards women's rights. Although these values need not necessarily conflict, in this context, they have carried a tension that must be reconciled. This paper will examine the legal implications of faith-based arbitration tribunals in family law, with a particular emphasis on the impact that Sharia could have on Muslim women in Ontario. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 221-242 [Access article in PDF] Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in Postbellum America Nan Johnson [Figures]Nervous, enthusiastic, and talkative women are the foam and sparkle, quiet women the wine of life. The senses ache and grow weary of the perpetual glare and brilliancy of the former, but turn with a sense of security and repose to the mild, (...) mellow glow irradiating the sphere of the latter. We associate all ideas of rest with quiet women. They are soul-divinities reverently guarding their sacred trusts in the Court of Silence. When she speaks, her words are aptly chosen and fitly spoken. She is wise and thoughtful, but loving and meek. "Still waters run deep," but not in the world-applied sense; babbling rills do not wear their channels deep, but streams of calmest flow have hidden depths undreamed of, unsuspected.--Anonymous, "Quiet Women" 461In an article entitled "Quiet Women," which appeared in The Ladies' Repository in 1868, an anonymous author argues that "quiet women are the wine of life." Capturing the deep cultural longing of the postbellum period for the icon of the American woman as angel of the hearth, this portrait deifies the quiet woman and demonizes the other possibilities: the enthusiastic woman, the talkative woman, the brilliant woman, and the babbling woman. The mild and mellow queen of the "Court of Silence" is graceful, calm, and, most important of all, silent. In this characterization, an idealized woman is defined as necessarily rhetorically meek. By worshiping "the quiet woman," influential proponents of public opinion such as The Ladies' Repository reinscribed for a postbellum readership a definition of true womanhood that equated silence with feminine virtue and enthusiastic vocality with its opposite. The argument that the rhetorical conduct of the "wise and thoughtful" woman could be contrasted instructively with the trivial and ultimately inconsequential rhetorical behavior of loud and talkative women is one that was made in so many cultural conversations of the postbellum period that it achieved the power of an ideological trope. 1 [End Page 221]Efforts to regulate women's rhetorical behavior intensified rather than abated in the decades following the Civil War as women pursued education, the right to vote, property rights, and mobility in public life. In conduct literature, a genre that proliferated during the postbellum period, the preferred construction of the "quiet" woman was a mainstay in an ideological agenda that supported the generally held nineteenth-century view that character and the nature of one's rhetoric are mutually revealing. Like other types of self-help materials marketed in the last decades of the century, such as elocution manuals and letter-writing guides, conduct manuals included among their vast tables of contents the matters of how and where one ought to speak. In their coverage of deportment in all areas of life, conduct manuals promised the aspiring middle-class American an education in the home in the culturally valuable skills of public speaking and writing. 2 The collective enterprise of the parlor rhetoric movement and conduct literature in particular was to offer happiness and success to those who would follow certain rules. Enormously popular in the postbellum period and well into the turn of the century, conduct manuals argued a conservative gender agenda that appealed to the middle-class readers of a nation who seemed eager to accept the idea that correct deportment in daily life could help to restore the social calm the postwar nation longed for. Although by the 1880s the American public had well in mind notable examples of women, such as Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Frances Willard, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had assumed powerful reformist voices in the causes of abolition, temperance, and women's rights, the rhetorical space these women occupied in shaping political and cultural life was viewed as the exception rather than the rule. 3 In spite of the high profile rhetorical careers of a handful of women, or, perhaps, because of them, postbellum America wondered uneasily just how public women's lives... (shrink)

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, feminist theory has had a forceful impact upon the history of Western philosophy. The present collection of essays has as its primary aim to evaluate past women’s published philosophical work, and to introduce readers to newly recovered female figures; the collection will also make contributions to the history of the philosophy of gender, and to the history of feminist social and political philosophy, insofar as the collection will discuss women’s views (...) on these issues. The volume contains contributions by an international group of leading historians of philosophy and political thought, whose scholarship represents some of the very best work being done in North and Central America, Canada, Europe and Australia. (shrink)

Fruit de la collaboration entre une historienne des femmes, du genre et de la sexualité basée à l’Université d’Ottawa et un spécialiste des études de la sécurité, de l’espionnage et du contre-terrorisme travaillant à l’Université de Birmingham, cet ouvrage se penche sur la surveillance par les services secrets canadiens des groupes luttant pour les droits des femmes dans les années 1960‑1980. Les sources principales de leur recherche sont les documents de renseignement constitués par la Royal...

In an attempt to study the factors contributing to the decision to become an entrepreneur, an intensive interview survey of 36 successful women entrepreneurs was conducted. The importance of paternal occupation and psychodynamic interactions with both the mother and father was highlighted. The study revealed mirror images of the patterns found to be correlated with male entrepreneurship.

Catharine Macaulay's first political pamphlet, “Loose remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr. Hobbes's philosophical rudiments of government and society with a short sketch for a democratical form of government in a letter to Signor Paoli,” published in London in 1769, has received no significant scholarly attention in over two hundred years. It is of primary interest because of the light it sheds on Macaulay's critique of patriarchal politics, which helps to establish a new line of thinking about (...) the historian as an early feminist writer. It appears she was working from an unauthorized edition of the Thomas Hobbes'sDe Cive entitledPhilosophicall Rudiments of Government and Society, printed by a royalist bookseller in London 1651. Some errors in this translation may explain Macaulay's skewed understanding of Hobbess argument in support of the premises of monarchy. Her intriguing analysis of paternal authority in “Loose Remarks” anticipates recent feminist explorations of Hobbesian political thought. (shrink)

The purpose of this research was to discover and describe the economic contribution one group of women entrepreneurs. The research participants were lowresource and laid-off women who had graduated from a Microenterprise Assistance Program . There was no differentiation among women by age, race, or ethnicity. The theoretical landscape that underpins this research includes economic geography and women entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship and economic development. This research provided a geographic representation of the dispersion and volume of the self-reported business expenses of (...) women entrepreneurs located in one geographic area. In addition, this research developed and examined the viability of an assessment tool that maps the business payments made by entrepreneurs. (shrink)

The female characters in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad have generally been interpreted by scholars in two opposing fashions: as fictional characters whose historicity can be dismissed or as representative of actual women in ancient India. Both of these interpretations, however, overlook the literary elements of this text and the role that these female characters play within the larger philosophical debate. This paper is an analysis of the various women who appear in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka and their role in this text. Close attention (...) is paid to their characterizations, their relationship to the doctrine discussed, and their functions in the larger narrative structure. The paper concludes with a discussion about the relationship of narrative to history and fundamental problems with the “woman question” based on this text. (shrink)

: Catharine Macaulay's first political pamphlet, "Loose remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr. Hobbes's philosophical rudiments of government and society with a short sketch for a democratical form of government in a letter to Signor Paoli," published in London in 1769, has received no significant scholarly attention in over two hundred years. It is of primary interest because of the light it sheds on Macaulay's critique of patriarchal politics, which helps to establish a new line of thinking (...) about the historian as an early feminist writer. It appears she was working from an unauthorized edition of the Thomas Hobbes's De Cive (1647) entitled Philosophicall Rudiments of Government and Society, printed by a royalist bookseller in London 1651. Some errors in this translation may explain Macaulay's skewed understanding of Hobbes's argument in support of the premises of monarchy. Her intriguing analysis of paternal authority in "Loose Remarks" anticipates recent feminist explorations of Hobbesian political thought. (shrink)

The “fathers’ rights” movement represents policies that undermine women's reproductive autonomy as furthering the cause of gender equality. Khader argues that this movement exploits two general weaknesses of equality claims identified by Luce Irigaray. She shows that Irigaray criticizes equality claims for their appeal to a genderneutral universal subject and for their acceptance of our existing symbolic repertoire. This article examines how the plaintiffs’ rhetoric in two contemporary “fathers’ rights” court cases takes advantage of these weaknesses.

Feminist scholars have critically analyzed the effects of sex segregation in numerous social institutions, yet sex-segregated sport often remains unchallenged. Even critics of sex-segregated sport have tended to accept the merits of women-only teams at face value. In this article, we revisit this issue by examining the underlying assumptions supporting women’s and girls’ teams and explore how they perpetuate gender inequality. Specifically, we analyze the 14 U.S. court cases wherein adolescent boys have sought to play on girls’ teams (...) in their respective high schools. The courts’ decisions reveal taken-for-granted, essentialist assumptions about girls’ innate fragility and athletic inferiority. While the courts, policy makers, and many feminist scholars see maintaining teams for girls and women as a solution to the problem of boys’ and men’s dominance in sport, the logic supporting this form of segregation further entrenches notions of women’s inferiority. (shrink)

Unjustifiable assumptions about sex and gender roles, the untamable potency of maleness, and gynophobic notions about women's bodies inform and influence a broad range of policy-making institutions in this society. In December 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continued this ignoble cultural pastime when they decided Everson v. Michigan Department of Corrections. In this decision, the Everson Court accepted the Michigan Department of Correction's claim that “the very manhood” of male prison guards both threatens (...) the safety of female inmates and violates the women's “special sense of privacy in their genitals” and declared that sex-specific employment policies for prison guards is not impermissibly discriminatory. I believe that the Court's decision relies on unacceptable stereotypes about sex, gender and sexuality and it significantly undermines Title VII's power to end discriminatory employment practices. (shrink)

1 Introduction I don't know ... I don't belong to any group. ... I never was a socialist. I never was a communist. ... I never wanted anything of that kind. ...