Rethinking Equality Projects in Law: Feminist Challenges [Hardcover]

The concept of equality has been a key animating principle of modern feminism, and has been highly productive for feminist legal thought and feminist politics concerning law. Today however, given the failure to achieve material and psychic equality for women, feminists have come to challenge the usefulness of equality as a concept, a particular definition, or a basis for strategising. The papers in this collection reflect these concerns, primarily in the context of English-speaking, common law cultures. Collectively, the papers analyse a range of equality projects across a number of areas of public and private law, considering both competing conceptions of equality and alternatives to it. In taking stock across a century and a half and around the globe, the book illustrates the range of ways in which equality projects in law have been challenged by, and remain a challenge for, feminism.This book analyses a range of equality projects across public and private law, considering competing conceptions of equality and alternatives to it.Rosemary Hunter is a Professor of Law at the University of Kent, Canterbury, the Academic Editor of Feminist Legal Studies, and Chair of the RCSL Working Group on Gender and Law....a good primer to a rich set of theoretical arguments and debates, providing a solid overview, not just of international legal development through a feminist lens, but also feminist thought more generally. The extensive footnotes will be prized by law and APD scholars, as well as those looking at projects relating to the expression of gender in institutions more broadly. The collection represents a great effort by Hunter and her colleagues. Adam L. Kress,The Law and Politics Book Review, Vol. 19 No.1

Introduction: Feminism and Equality
Rosemary Hunter

Part I Equality Projects in Law Reform

1. The Married Women's Property Acts: Equality Was Not the Issue
Rosemary Auchmuty

2. The Demise of the Provocation Defence and the FailãŒ