Women, Gender, and Sex

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Foltz, the first woman admitted to the California Bar. Famous in her time as a public intellectual, leader of the women's movement, and legal reformer, Foltz faced terrific prejudice and well-organized opposition to women lawyers as she tried cases in front of all-male juries, raised five children as a single mother, and stumped for political candidates. She was the first to propose the creation of a public defender to balance the public prosecutor. Woman Lawyer uncovers the legal reforms and societal contributions of a woman celebrated in her day, but lost to history until now. It casts new light on the turbulent history and politics of California in a period of phenomenal growth and highlights the interconnection of the suffragists and other movements for civil rights and legal reforms.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed that the equal rights of women belonged in the Constitution. She stood on the shoulders of brilliant women who persisted across generations to change the Constitution. We the Women tells their stories, showing what's at stake in the current battle for the Equal Rights Amendment.The year 2020 marks the centennial the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women's constitutional right to vote. But have we come far enough?

"I read these stories of the first generation of women lawyers with awe and gratitude. We are all in their debt - and in Jill Norgren's, too, for recovering this forgotten history." - Linda Greenhouse, Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow, Yale Law School In Rebels at the Bar, prize-winning legal historian Jill Norgren recounts the life stories of a small group of nineteenth century women who were among the first female attorneys in the United States. Beginning in the late 1860s, these determined rebels pursued the radical ambition of entering the then all-male profession of law. They were motivated by a love of learning. They believed in fair play and equal opportunity. They desired recognition as professionals and the ability to earn a good living. Through a biographical approach, Norgren presents the common struggles of eight women first to train and to qualify as attorneys, then to practice their hard-won professional privilege. Their story is one of nerve, frustration, and courage. This first generation practiced civil and criminal law, solo and in partnership. The women wrote extensively and lobbied on the major issues of the day, but the professional opportunities open to them had limits. They never had the opportunity to wear the black robes of a judge. They were refused entry into the lucrative practices of corporate and railroad law.Although male lawyers filled legislatures and the Foreign Service, presidents refused to appoint these early women lawyers to diplomatic offices and the public refused to elect them to legislatures. Rebels at the Bar expands our understanding of both women's rights and the history of the legal profession in the nineteenth century. It focuses on the female renegades who trained in law and then, like men, fought considerable odds to create successful professional lives. In this engaging and beautifully written book, Norgren shares her subjects' faith in the art of the possible. In so doing, she ensures their place in history.Jill Norgrenis Professor Emerita of Political Science at John Jay College, and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is the award winning author of many articles and books, includingBelva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President( NYU Press, 2007);The Cherokee Cases; and American Cultural Pluralism and Law(with Serena Nanda).

"Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Proving Pregnancy documents how women - Black and white, enslaved and free - gradually lost control over reproduction to male medical and legal professionals"--

"When it comes to breaking down barriers for women in the workplace, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's name speaks volumes for itself-but, as she clarifies in the foreword to this long-awaited book, there are too many trailblazing names we do not know. Herma Hill Kay, former Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law and Ginsburg's closest professional colleague, wrote Paving the Way to tell the stories of the first fourteen female law professors at ABA- and AALS-accredited law schools in the United States. Kay, who became the fifteenth such professor, labored over the stories of these women in order to provide an essential history of their path for the more than 2,000 women working as law professors today and all of their feminist colleagues. Because Herma Hill Kay, who died in 2017, was able to obtain so much first-hand information about the fourteen women who preceded her, Paving the Way is filled with details, quiet and loud, of each of their lives and careers from their own perspectives. Kay wraps each story in rich historical context, lest we forget the extraordinarily difficult times in which these women lived. Paving the Way is not just a collection of individual stories of remarkable women but also a well-crafted interweaving of law and society during a historical period when women's voices were often not heard and sometimes actively muted. The final chapter connects these first fourteen women to the "second wave" of women law professors who achieved tenure-track appointments in the 1960s and 1970s, carrying on the torch and analogous challenges. This is a decidedly feminist project, one that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg advocated for tirelessly and admired publicly in the years before her death"--

This book provides a deep dive into various aspects of voice and presentation including breath, resonance, articulation, inflection and shaping openings and closing for maximum impact on the jury. It is divided into five primary sections, Tuning Your Instrument, Catching Their Interest, Catching Their Heart, Amplifying Through Body Language and Gesture, and Applying Voice to Everyday Legal Situations. The pedagogical goal is to provide a training model that yields actual and lasting results for litigators and attorneys who want a wider range of story-telling skills to strengthen their success in and out of the courtroom. This book's contribution is the depth into which the authors go into the subject of voice and its relation to story-telling, providing a clear and tangible pathway to skill development and lasting transformation.

On March 16, 1970, the day Newsweek published a cover story on the fledgling feminist movement, forty-six Newsweek women charged the magazine with discrimination in hiring and promotion. It was the first female class action lawsuit, and it inspired other women in the media to follow suit. Povich was one of the ringleaders. She tells the story of this dramatic turning point through the lives of several participants, and shows how personal experiences and cultural shifts led a group of well-mannered, largely apolitical women to challenge their bosses-- and what happened after they did.

This unique book analyses the impact of international human rights on the concept of gender, demonstrating that gender emerged in the medical study of sexuality and has a complex and broad meaning beyond the sex and gender binaries often assumed by human rights law. The book illustrates which dynamics within the field of human rights hinder the expansion of the concept of gender beyond binaries and which strategies and mechanisms allow and facilitate such an expansion.

"Physical, psychological, and sexual abuse among intimate partners, commonly known as domestic violence, but more recently as intimate partner violence or IPV, is a significant social and public health problem in the United States and worldwide. IPV had long been considered private by law enforcement, rarely investigated by social science researchers, and poorly understood by mental health professionals. In the 1980s, a series of well-publicized court cases, such as Thurman v. City of Torrington (1985), brought to light the grossly inadequate law enforcement response at the time, which allowed repeat offenders to avoid prosecution while their partners continued to be victimized, often fatally. In response, a grassroots victim advocacy movement established shelter and other services for victims while lobbying state legislatures across the United States, and subsequently to Canada, the U.K., and other nations, to enact new laws that would hold offenders accountable (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002; Russell, 2010)"--

In 1998, an Asian woman first joined the ranks of federal judges with lifetime appointments. It took ten years for the second Asian woman to be appointed. Since then, however, over a dozen more Asian women have received lifetime federal judicial appointments.   This book tells the stories of the first fifteen. In the process, it recounts remarkable tales of Asian women overcoming adversity and achieving the American dream, despite being the daughters of a Chinese garment worker, Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II, Vietnamese refugees, and penniless Indian immigrants. Yet The First Fifteen also explores how far Asian Americans and women still have to go before the federal judiciary reflects America as a whole.    In a candid series of interviews, these judges reflect upon the personal and professional experiences that led them to this distinguished position, as well as the nerve-wracking political process of being nominated and confirmed for an Article III judgeship. By sharing their diverse stories, The First Fifteen paints a nuanced portrait of how Asian American women are beginning to have a voice in determining American justice.

This book provides new, feminist perspectives on famous family law cases that span generations. The chapters take court decisions and rewrite them with feminist ideas in mind. Each rewritten opinion is penned by a leading scholar who relied only on materials available at the time of the original decision. The decisions address topics such as the criminalization of polygamy, intimate partner violence as a ground for asylum, the legality of gestational surrogacy, the rights of cohabitants, discrimination against transgender parents, immigration rules governing non-citizen parents, and child welfare and child support systems, among others. Each opinion is accompanied by a commentary that explains the original opinion as well as its contemporary relevance, and each commentary also is authored by a respected scholar. The combination of a rewritten opinion and its commentary provides an in-depth examination of the most important topics in family law.

Reproductive justice (RJ) is a pivotal movement that supplants the language and limitations of reproductive rights. RJ's tenets are that women have the human rights to decide if or when they'll become pregnant, whether to carry a pregnancy to term, and to parent the children they have in safe and healthy environments. Recognizing the importance of the rights at stake when the law addresses parenting and procreation, the authors in this book re-imagine judicial opinions that address the law's treatment of pregnancy and parenting. The cases cover topics such as forced sterilization, pregnancy discrimination, criminal penalties for women who take illegal drugs while pregnant, and state funding for abortion. Though some of the re-imagined cases come to the same conclusions as the originals, each rewritten opinion analyzes how these cases impact the most vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities, poor women, and women of color.

Could a feminist perspective change the shape of tax laws? Feminist reasoning and analysis are recognized as having tremendous potential to affect employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and reproductive rights laws - but they can likewise transform tax law (as well as other statutory or code-based areas of the law). By highlighting the importance of perspective, background, and preconceptions on reading and interpreting statutes, this volume shows what a difference feminist analysis can make to statutory interpretation. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions brings together a group of scholars and lawyers to rewrite tax decisions in which a feminist emphasis would have changed the outcome, the court's reasoning, or the future direction of the law. Featuring cases including medical expense deductions for fertility treatment, gender confirmation surgery, tax benefits for married individuals, the tax treatment of tribal lands, and business expense deductions, this volume opens the way for a discussion of how viewpoint is a key factor in statutory interpretation.

How could feminist perspectives and methods change the shape of property law? This volume assembles a group of diverse scholars to explore this question by presenting fundamental property law cases rewritten from a feminist perspective. The cases cover a broad range of property law topics, from landlord-tenant rights and obligations, patents, and zoning to publicity rights, land titles, concurrent ownership, and takings. These rewritten opinions and their accompanying commentaries demonstrate how incorporating feminist theories and methods could have made property law more just and equitable for women and marginalized groups. The book also shows how property law is not neutral but is shaped by the society that produces it and the judges who apply it.

This volume provides an alternate history of health law by rewriting key judicial opinions from a feminist perspective. Each chapter includes a rewritten opinion penned by a leading scholar relying exclusively on court precedents and scientific understanding available at the time of the original decision accompanied by commentary from an expert placing the case in historical context and explaining how the feminist judgment might have shaped a different path for subsequent developments. It provides a map of the health law field-where paternalism, individualism, gender stereotypes, and tensions over the public-private divide shape decisions about informed consent, medical and nursing malpractice, the relationships among health care professionals and the institutions where they work, end-of-life care, reproductive health care, biomedical research, ownership of human tissues and cells, the influence of religious directives on health care standards, health care discrimination, long-term care, private health insurance, Medicaid coverage, the Affordable Care Act, and more.

"By rewriting both canonical and lesser-known tort cases from a feminist perspective, this volume exposes gender and racial bias in how courts have categorized and evaluated harm stemming from prenatal malpractice, pregnancy loss, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, invasion of privacy, and the award of economic and non-economic damages. The rewritten opinions demonstrate that when confronted with gendered harm to women, courts have often distorted or misapplied conventional legal doctrine to diminish the harm or deny recovery. Bringing this implicit bias to the surface can make law students, and lawyers and judges who craft arguments and apply tort doctrines, more aware of inequalities of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation or identity. This volume shows the way forward to make the basic doctrines of tort law more responsive to the needs and perspectives of traditionally marginalized people, in ways that give greater value to harms that they disproportionately experience"--Back cover.

"Could feminist perspectives and methods change the shape of employment discrimination law? To answer this question, we assembled a group of scholars and lawyers to use feminist perspectives and methodology to rewrite significant employment discrimination cases from the United States Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. This volume, like all of the books in Cambridge University Press's Feminist Judgments Series, demonstrates that judges with feminist viewpoints could have changed the law as well as the reasoning underlying the law, based on the precedent and other legal sources in effect at the time of the original decision. It demonstrates that use of feminist approaches can assure a more accurate and fair resolution of employment discrimination disputes, a resolution that more closely mirrors the purposes of the employment discrimination statutes. In essence, employment discrimination laws were enacted to protect the most vulnerable workers-those who are less powerful because of their age, race, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, and religion-from discriminatory hiring, working conditions, promotions, and discharges. But unfortunately, the law has developed in ways that make it difficult for vulnerable workers who have suffered discrimination to prevail in their claims. Some of these reasons entail the complexity and difficulty of proving employment discrimination"--

"This is the first ethnography of American midwives and their clients and advocates. The culmination of more than a decade of participant-observation, interviews, and archival research, this project specifically interrogates the potential and pitfalls of legal and political campaigns for reproductive autonomy"--

During her lifetime, Myra Bradwell (1831-1894) - America's "first" woman lawyer as well as publisher and editor-in-chief of a prestigious legal newspaper - did more to establish and aid the rights of women and other legally handicapped people than any other woman of her day. Her female contemporaries - Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone - are known to all. Now it is time for Myra Bradwell to assume her rightful place among women's rights leaders of the nineteenth century. With author Jane Friedman's discovery of previously unpublished letters and valuable documents, Bradwell's fascinating story can at last be told.

Beginning with the introduction of abortion law in the nineteenth century, this reader includes important documents from nearly two hundred years of debate over abortion. These legal briefs, oral arguments, court opinions, newspaper reports, opinion pieces, and contemporary essays are introduced with headnotes that place them in historical context. Chapters cover the birth control movement, changes in abortion law in the 1960s, Roe v. Wade, the Hyde Amendment and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, state and federal regulation of abortion practices, and the freedom of speech cases surrounding anti-abortion clinic protests. The first section of each chapter sets the stage and explains the choice of documents. This rich, balanced collection is an indispensable reference tool for the study of one of the most passionate debates in American history. It brings together the writings of doctors, lawyers, scientists, philosophers, elected officials, judges, and scholars as few other legal readers do, and it is essential reading for those engaged in the ongoing debate about abortion law in the United States.

Kathryn Rubino talks with Linda Coberly, Chicago Office Managing Partner for the law firm of Winston & Strawn and Chair of the ERA Coalition’s Legal Task Force, about the ongoing fight for the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment.   Episode Resources     Episode Highlights The adoption of the ERA - 0:47 The right to vote - 2:07 The proposal of the ERA - 4:36 There are protections against discrimination - 5:30 The ERA inside the Constitution - 14:48 Working cases - 22:23 Expectations about a case - 23:23 The Congress and the Department of Justice - 26:40   Subscribe, Share and Review To get the next episode subscribe with your favorite podcast player. Subscribe with Follow on Leave a review on

In this special bonus episode, Melissa and Kate are joined by co-editor Reva Siegel to discuss their book "Reproductive Rights & Justice Stories," in a conversation moderated by Rebecca Traister and hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

In recent years, states have enacted escalating numbers of restrictions on women's reproductive health care, many in the form of targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws that shut clinics under the pretense of safeguarding health. In addition, religious objectors are increasingly demanding exemptions from laws protecting access to reproductive health care, including health insurance coverage for contraception. Together these restrictions are dramatically altering women's access to health care. How can advocates challenge these new restrictions under Planned Parenthood v. Casey? What other modes of advocacy are needed, in addition to litigation? Speakers: Caitlin Borgmann, Professor of Law, The City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law Khiara M. Bridges, Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; Associate Professor of Anthropology, Boston University Kathleen Clyde, State Representative, Ohio House of Representatives, 75th District Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU; Director, ACLU Center for Liberty Julie Rikelman, Litigation Director, Center for Reproductive Rights

The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law signed by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. The Act provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress when prosecutors chose to not prosecute cases. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the U.S. Department of Justice.

This guide will mainly focus on the traditional “women’s rights” areas, and discuss the variety of opportunities, issue areas, and practice settings to advocate for women’s rights. However, there are an infinite number of women’s issues to fight for, and an equally large number of avenues in which to advocate for equal justice. Be creative in your thinking, spread wide your research, and find the issue and practice area in which you can most effectively achieve your goals.

Welcome to the Women's Legal History (WLH) website! The website is the home of a searchable database of articles and papers on pioneering women lawyers in the United States. Also located here are the Indexes and Bibliographic Notes for Barbara Babcock, "Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz. ...

The UCLA Journal of Gender and Law is an academic legal journal that uses the power of language to educate people and make women's voices heard.

Rolando T. Acosta, Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, First Department, discusses the Equal Rights Amendment, which has yet to be incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. New York was one of the first states to ratify the proposed federal ERA in 1972, but has yet to pass a state ERA. He writes: Given the uncertain future of the ERA as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, women’s rights need to be protected under the New York Constitution.

This bibliography references a selection of English language books and journal articles which link, explicitly or implicitly, women's health and human rights. The works selected articulate a connection between these concepts, as highlighted by the annotations.

This bibliography references select works on the development, interpretation and implementation of women's international human rights as established by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and other international and regional human rights conventions. This bibliography is confined to international law and does not include materials on national or comparative sex discrimination laws, except to the extent that such articles integrate domestic human rights issues with a discussion international women's human rights law.