Women, Gender, and Sex

International Women's Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. It is a day when women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political. Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point to build support for women's rights and participation in the political and economic arenas. We invite you to learn about the history of women’s rights and the UN's contribution to the cause.

A federal judge in Texas is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit that aims to block access to one of the two drugs typically used in medication abortions. Plaintiffs in the case are seeking a nationwide injunction, meaning the drug would become unavailable across the country.

The New York Times is tracking the status of abortion laws in each state following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

At least 150 bills have been filed by Republican lawmakers across the United States that target transgender people, with at least seven states enacting bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Other bills have targeted drag performers, doctors and trans adults seeking transition-related care. For more on growing conservative attacks on transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community, we speak to Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, who says the backlash “at its core has always been about pushing trans people out of public life and eradicating transness.”

In this episode of The Geek in Review, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert interview M.C. Sungaila, an appellate attorney and the host of The Portia

Many lawmakers continue to threaten the livelihoods of transgender people and their families. In states across the country, policymakers are targeting transgender young people with bills that prevent student-athletes from participating in the sports they love. Transgender youth want the opportunity to play sports for the same reason other young people do: to be a part of a team where they feel like they belong. Discriminatory efforts like these can make trans youth feel unwelcome on their teams, in their sports, and in their communities.

Bans on youth participation in sports that aligns with their gender identity.

View a list of legislation, organized alphabetically by state, in the below chart. Click on the bill to read more information about it, including sponsors, latest action, and its status.

On April 5, 2006, ASU Law was officially renamed the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. It was the first law school to be named after a woman.

"The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale

"[T]his book is an indispensable tool for stimulating a serious analysis of the financial and economic penalties imposed on women who must navigate between the modern Scylla and Charybdis of work and family life. This book poses substantive questions about the family, the market, the state, and the gender order, and provides a variety of analytic tools for thinking about them. The American gender order has changed in dramatic ways since the turn of the twentieth century, and to a great extent, it was the marketplace that gave rise to these changes. The family wage associated with union jobs in the industrial has largely disappeared. In the new economy, high-paying careers demand steep investments of education and training, while jobs accessible to those without college and post-graduate training increasingly tend to be McJobs that offer flexibility, but little in the way of high wages, good benefits, stability, or access to a progressive career ladder. In order to pursue the good life, women as well as men now expect to be in the marketplace for much of their adult lives"--Publ. web site.

"She was brilliant, ambitious, and unafraid to break barriers. As the only member of a squad of twenty high-powered lawyers who was not a white male, she devised the strategy that in the 1930s sent Mafia chieftain Lucky Luciano to prison. She achieved so much--but what could she have accomplished if not for barriers of race and gender? ..."--Back cover.;"She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in the New York of the 1930s--and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city's underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male. Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter's grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who--together with his friend Dashiell Hammett--would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed. Moving, haunting, and as fast paced as a novel, [this book] tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson's remarkable book, her long-forgotten story is once again visible."--Jacket.

"For Women's History Month our display of books and other resources from the collection near the library's entrance are joined by some additional signage spotlighting the trailblazing women at the University of Georgia School of Law."

"He introduced his historic choice at a White House ceremony Friday."

"Frequently when women's issues are discussed researched and/or analyzed they do not always take into account additional and separate issues that may be faced by women of color. When it was learned that then-ABA president Hilarie Bass would have as one of her primary initiatives a study and research based on the long-term careers of women in law it occurred to us that the experiences of women of color could be different. After all we could within minutes identify approximately 90 percent of the women of color practicing in firms more than 30 years. This is not a good thing."

"The trope of the strong Black woman is not only false it's dangerous. Black women more than anyone need to practice self-care."