ODEC 8085 - Feminist Legal Theory: Applications in Policy

Contemporary feminism in the west is often situated as arising in the 19th century with the first women’s emancipation campaigns, and through feminist activism ranging from voting rights, the right to choose and #MeToo. In essence the feminist movement has been focused with addressing women’s subordination.

Feminist legal theory, though a very debated concept, is in general the intellectual effort to understand the nature of such subordination and the role of law in it, and to propose remedies.

The objective of this seminar is twofold. On the one hand, we hope to introduce some of the main strands of contemporary feminist legal theory. On the other hand, and perhaps most interestingly, we will seek to understand how different strands of feminist legal theory inform different policy debates about women rights and social policy today and how often they reach different conclusions. In doing so, we hope to provide students - but also to gain ourselves - with better tools to understand and think about contemporary policy today.

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The format of the seminar is the following. Each session will have only one main reading, which will be the basis of our discussion. Reading in advance is thus mandatory. In each session the instructors will introduce a different policy issue - such as abortion rights, gendered buses or bathrooms, or maternal leave - and we will discuss as a seminar how the theory we are discussing informs potential answers to this policy issue, and others we have discussed before.

Class participation and preparation.

An academic article will be assigned for each session. These will range from 20-40 pages