Women, Gender, and Sex History & Rights

One hundred years after passage of the 19th Amendment, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris honored Black American women who “so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.” About 90% of Black women voted for President-elect Joe Biden over Donald Trump, making them Democrats’ most loyal bloc. For the past five presidential cycles, they have shown up to the polls at

"This book explores how women from diverse backgrounds interact with the law in response to intimate partner violence, over time. Every year, millions of women globally turn to law to help them live lives free and safe from violence. Women engage with child protection services and police. They apply for civil protection orders and family court orders to help them manage their children's contact with a violent father, and take special visa pathways to avoid deportation following separation from an abuser. Women are often compelled to interact with law, through their abuser's myriad legal applications against them. While separation may seem like a solution, it often accelerates legal engagement providing new opportunities for continued abuse. Countless women who have experienced Intimate Partner Violence are enmeshed in overlapping, complex and often inconsistent legal processes. They have both fleeting and longer-term connections with legal system actors. Their stories demonstrate how abusers harness multiple aspects of the legal process, and its actors, to continue their abuse. They highlight the regular failure of legal processes and actors to comprehend the significance of non-physical abuse. Women show how legal system actors' common expectation that separation is a single event, rather than a process, has implications for their connections with law and the outcomes they achieve. From time to time, the women in this study attained the safety and closure they sought from law, sometimes in circular and unexpected ways, but their narratives demonstrate the level of endurance, tenacity and time this often required."

"Fragmented Protection of Women's Rights in Conflict: an Introduction The regulation of women's rights in conflict has travelled a great distance since initial feminist interventions into international law, which identified a 'masculine world' of international law with reinforcing organisational and normative structural factors that excluded women from its practice and women's lives from its areas of concern.1 States have agreed to limit the lawful conduct of armed conflict - including against female combatants and civilians - under international humanitarian law (IHL),2 and provided for international criminal jurisdiction over individuals bearing greatest responsibility for the most serious violations of these laws perpetrated against women.3 The extent to which states can limit the human rights of women, even in times of violent conflict, has been negotiated, litigated and interpreted in various instruments, consensus and interpretative documents grouped under international human rights law (IHRL)"--

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).

"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.

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.

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"--

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.

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

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.

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.

New research examines gender bias within four industries with more female than male workers — law, higher education, faith-based nonprofits, and health care. Having balanced or even greater numbers of women in an organization is not, by itself, changing women’s experiences of bias. Bias is built into the system and continues to operate even when more women than men are present. Leaders can use these findings to create gender-equitable practices and environments which reduce bias. First, replace competition with cooperation. Second, measure success by goals, not by time spent in the office or online. Third, implement equitable reward structures, and provide remote and flexible work with autonomy. Finally, increase transparency in decision making.

The ABA Journal is read by half of the nation's 1 million lawyers every month. It covers the trends, people and finances of the legal profession from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Discover the inspiring stories of history's most famous female lawyers who broke barriers, fought for justice, and paved the way for future generations