Women's Movements & the Law

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.

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.

Harvard Law Review

Sexual and reproductive health and rights have increasingly been recognized in the international arena, but their evolution and the definition of their scope and content have not been received without controversy. From population control to human rights, from demographers’ competence to governmental prerogative, from couples’ rights to universal rights, this article will present an overview of the evolution of sexual and reproductive rights in the international arena. The development of these rights cannot be read in isolation but must be analyzed together with the broader landscape that hosts social and political movements, ideologies, religions, and revolutions. Understanding sexual and reproductive health and rights as historical creations, rather than timeless givens, enables us to devise historically informed instruments and policies that are more likely to succeed. This article contributes to the scholarly literature by providing an overview of past trends and of the conditions under which they occurred. Retracing the history of these rights enables us to clarify the scope of the state’s obligations to realize the right to sexual and reproductive health, to improve monitoring opportunities, and to ensure accountability for violations. This article explores these (and forthcoming) developments contributing to identify the existing obligations, the relevant actors, and the challenges that lie ahead.

The Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, a continuation of Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, was founded in 1984 by a group of students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law who came together with a vision of “preserving our voices of diversity and maintaining our commitment to social change within the often-stifling confines of a law school environment.” Now in its thirtieth year of publication, BGLJ is guided by an editorial policy that distinguishes us from other law reviews and feminist journals. Our mandate is to publish feminist legal scholarship that critically examines the intersection of gender with one or more axis of subordination, including, but not limited to, race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. Because conditions of inequality are continually changing, our mandate is also continually evolving. Pieces may come within the mandate because of their subject matter or because of their analytical attention to differences in social location among women.

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

Women’s History Month has been recognized in the United States since President Reagan issued Presidential Proclamation 5619 on March 16, 1987, with all the succeeding presidents echoing those sentiments annually.

Corporate America is at a crossroads. The choices companies make today will impact women in the workplace for decades to come.

There may be one thread that runs through Michele Kilpatrick’s life and career: A dedication to making public policy and politics work for…

Retired federal appellate judge and law professor Richard Posner is the most cited U.S. legal scholar on record, followed by Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein, and the late New York University law professor Ronald Dworkin.

Yale Law Women survey highlights that only 20% of equity partners are women

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday that it will not tolerate violence against anyone who is trying to obtain an abortion in Texas as federal officials explore options to challenge a new state law that bans most abortions .

The account @PayGapApp is retweeting law firm and other employers’ tweets commemorating the global day with an auto response detailing their median hourly pay gap using data from a UK government website.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it is lifting a requirement that patients seeking medication abortion had to pick up the medication in-person, instead allowing pills to be sent by mail.

Five women in Texas who were denied abortions are suing the state for denying them necessary medical care even though their pregnancies were nonviable and posed serious risks to their health. “I cannot adequately put into words the trauma and despair that comes with waiting to either lose your own life, your child’s life, or both. For days, I was locked in this bizarre and avoidable hell,” said Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff, during a press conference Tuesday in Austin to announce the case, which also includes two doctors. While the Texas abortion ban is meant to have exceptions, many doctors are reluctant to perform the procedure because of the high legal risk, including the loss of medical licenses, hefty fines and decades in prison. “Right now abortion bans are exposing pregnant people to risks of death, illness and injury, including the loss of fertility,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is bringing the lawsuit, at a press conference Tuesday in Austin. “Contrary to the stated purpose of furthering life, abortion bans are making it less likely that every family who wants to bring a child into the world will be able to do so and survive the experience.”

As President Biden proposes his new budget, which expands military spending, as well as social services, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Barbara Lee, co-chair of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. She recently reintroduced the People Over Pentagon Act to cut $100 billion from the Pentagon budget and reallocate funds to overlooked priorities like healthcare and education. Lee is one of three House Democrats who have announced their candidacy for outgoing California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat. Lee is the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to House leadership and would be just the third Black woman to serve in the Senate’s 233-year history. She shares her platform on foreign policy, reproductive rights and racial justice on Democracy Now! “We’re going to fight to make sure that the resources of our country go directly to the American people, because it’s a budget for the American people,” says Lee.

USWNT sued US Soccer for equal pay in March 2019, three months before start of World Cup. The USWNT went on to win second consecutive World Cup title

Clemson University settled a historic Title IX case, promising to ensure equality between men and women's athletic teams. 'Both the men and women sued on different Title IX grounds—and they