The University of San Francisco School of Law is seeking applicants for a visiting professor in Criminal Law for the 2023-2024 academic year. The Visitor may also have the opportunity to teach an elective/seminar, if the schedule permits, as part of a commitment to two courses each semester.
For anyone doing comparative anti-discrimination work, a fact sheet (here) prepared by Iris an der Heiden and Maria Wersig and published by the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agencyprovides insight into gender-based price discrimination. Here is a summary:
The survey systematically examines the gender-based differentiation of prices (gender pricing) in case of the same or very similar products and services in Germany. Moreover, on the basis of empirical findings on gender pricing a legal evaluation with regard to the General Equal Treatment Act (German abbreviation: AGG) is conducted. The survey is based on empirical research into the product and services category of the basket of goods and services of the Federal Statistical Office.
Some of the most salient conclusions are:
Of the 1,682 products which could be identified as similar in the survey only 3.7 per cent had different prices. In 2.3 per cent of those cases women pay higher prices for the female variant of the same product, in 1.4 per cent of those cases men pay higher prices for the male product variant. The average surcharge for women and men amounts to approximately 5.00 €.
The more obvious gender-based price differences refer to services offered by dry cleaners and hairdressers: 89 per cent of the hairdressers offer different rates for the same short haircuts for women and men, whereas women pay an average surplus amount of 12.50 €. One third of the dry cleaners have different flat rates for men’s shirts and women’s blouses. The price difference in this case, too, is borne by women, who on average have to pay 1.80 € more for the dry cleaning of blouses than men for shirts.
Read the full piece here.
Cambridge University Press is offering a 20% discount on all titles in the US Feminist Judgments Series. Use the code Fem23 at Cambridge.org.
Here are all the published titles in the series:
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court
Edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, Bridget J. Crawford
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions
Edited by Bridget J. Crawford, Anthony C. Infanti
Feminist Judgments: Reproductive Justice Rewritten
Edited by Kimberly M. Mutcherson
Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten
Edited by Rachel Rebouché
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Trusts and Estates Opinions
Edited by Deborah S. Gordon, Browne C. Lewis, Carla Spivack
Feminist Judgments:Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
Edited by Ann C. McGinley, Nicole Buonocore Porter
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tort Opinions
Edited by Martha Chamallas, Lucinda M. Finley
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Property Opinions
Edited by Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod, Elena Maria Marty-Nelson
Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions
Edited by Bennett Capers, Sarah Deer, Corey Rayburn Yung
Feminist Judgments: Corporate Law Rewritten
Edited by Anne M. Choike, Usha R. Rodrigues, Kelli Alces Williams
Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten
Edited by Seema Mohapatra, Lindsay Wiley
The Yale Journal of Law & Feminism invites you to register for our symposium: Meeting the Moment: Legal Frameworks for Feminist Futures. This event will be held on Friday, March 31—the last day of Women’s History Month—at Yale Law School from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
Both globally and domestically, trans and nonbinary people, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and racially subjugated groups are under attack from political regimes hostile to our rights and liberation. Against this backdrop, it is vital that we envision and build feminist futures. The purpose of this symposium is to grapple with the relationship between feminist legal theory and practice, with an eye toward what you can do to meet the moment. We’re bringing preeminent feminist scholars together with legal advocates and practitioners to discuss some of the most pressing issues of our times. We hope you’ll join the conversation.
Meeting the Moment
Legal Frameworks for Feminist Futures
(This schedule is tentative. More speakers will be added!)
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Registration & Breakfast
(Registration will be open all day.)
Morning Panels
9:00 a.m. – 10:10 a.m.
We, the Feminists
The Symposium’s opening panel will reflect on how the field of feminist legal thought emerged and grapple with the question of which groups of people have been integral, or marginal, to its development.
Sarah Deer
University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas and Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals
Deborah Dinner
Professor of Law at Cornell School of Law
Joanna L. Grossman
Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and the Law and Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law
Serena Mayeri
Professor of Law & History at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
10:20 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Meeting the Moment: Why Feminist Legal Thought Matters
This panel will frame the Symposium and address why feminist legal thought matters—and why it matters now.
Alexandra Brodsky (moderator)
Staff Attorney at Public Justice & Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School
Elizabeth F. Emens
Thomas M. Macioce Professor of Law at Columbia Law School
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School & James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Keina Yoshida
Barrister Ass. at Doughty Street Chambers, Legal Adviser at Center for Reproductive Rights & Visiting Fellow at the Center for Women, Peace & Security
11:40 a.m. – 12:40 p.m.
Keynote Address
Welcome Remarks: Jelani Hayes (J.D. ’23, Ph.D. candidate in History at Harvard University)
Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism
Keynote speaker to be announced!
12:40 p.m. – 1:40 p.m.
Lunch
(Lunch will be provided to the first 150 attendees.)
Afternoon Panels
1:50 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Beyond “Choice”
Contributing to the post-Dobbs reproductive justice dialogue, this panel is designed to move the discussion beyond the question of “choice” and give weight to the ways in which discourses around the right to have an abortion have shaped law and public opinion.
Aziza Ahmed
Professor of Law and R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law at Boston University School of Law
Michele Goodwin
Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law
Patrice D. Douglass
Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
Patrice D. Douglass holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Culture and Theory from the University of California, Irvine and a M.A. in Ethnic
3:10 p.m. – 4:20 p.m.
Challenging Carceral Feminism
This panel engages with the critique of carceral feminism–and the critique of the challenge to the feminist reliance on the criminal legal system.
Kate D’Adamo
Policy & Advocacy Advisor at Reframe Health & Justice Consulting
Aya Gruber
Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School
I. India Thusi
Professor of Law at the Maurer School of Law at the Indiana University Bloomington & Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute
4:30 pm. – 5:40 p.m.
Rethinking Family Regulation
This panel will interrogate the structural harms imbedded in the family regulation system, including its roots in punitive public welfare regimes, disparate harms in Black and Indigenous communities, discrimination against parents with disabilities, and the system’s recent intramentalization in efforts to remove children from their homes who seek gender-affirming care.
Douglas NeJaime (moderator)
Anne Urowsky Professor of Law at Yale Law School
Jennifer Levi
Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights at GLAD
Robyn M. Powell
Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law
Lisa Sangoi
Co-Founder & Co-Director at Movement for Family Power
BeKura Shabazz
President & Founder at Coalition for Families Against Child Separation
From Dr. Kim Barker, Senior Lecturer in Law, Head of Department, Director, Observatory on Online Violence Against Women, The Open University Law School
We are seeking to recruit a Research Associate to work on the Protecting Girls from Online Harm (PGOH) project which is funded through the REPHRAIN Centre. The PGOH Project aims to address the challenge of protecting young people (under 18) from online harms and is based at the Observatory on Online Violence Against Women in the Open University Law School. Our vision here is to close the knowledge gap that exists in relation to how young girls from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds experience and respond to harmful online behaviours.
We are looking for a proactive post-doctoral researcher with a background in law, education or educational policy, or similar.
The successful applicant will lead desk-based systemic literature reviews on online harms affecting children and young people. The role will require the post-holder to collect and analyse data through surveys and focus groups with teenagers in inner city schools, work collaboratively with the project team, and support dissemination activities of the research to stakeholders, including core educational partners, police, academics ad policymakers.
Full details, including of terms and conditions are available via the job description. You can find the link to the job advert and full information here: https://www.open.ac.uk/about/employment/vacancies/postdoctoral-research-associate-protecting-girls-online-harm-20804 (scroll down for job description).
For queries, or questions relating to the vacancy, please contact Dr Kim Barker via email: kim.barker@open.ac.uk.
Marc Spindelman (OSU) has posted to SSRN a version of his essay Countering Dobbs: A Sex Equality Approach by States Could Protect Abortion Rights, and then Some, published earlier this month in the American Prospect (Feb. 21, 2023), here.
Here is the abstract:
This brief commentary engages state-level constitutional amendment efforts to counter the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. It urges reformers to consider a sex equality approach to state constitutional amendments (and interpretation), given the benefits of such an approach over autonomy-focused rivals presently advancing in different jurisdictions.
You can read the essay on SSRN here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4366225.
Depends on who you ask. Over in the UK, television presenter Davina McCall has been touting its benefits to her. The London Mail has some coverage in an article here.
Some excerpts:
Topping up testosterone levels can transform a woman’s flagging libido, [testosterone advocates] say, banish brain fog, and improve energy and mood. In the longer term, advocates add, it could even stave off dementia, improve bone strength and maintain muscle mass. * * *
Last week, figures revealed how powerful the so-called ‘Davina effect’ has been. NHS prescriptions for testosterone gels have rocketed ten-fold in the last seven years, with a significant uptick following the airing of Davina McCall’s documentary on the subject.
The data, from a Freedom of Information request by the Pharmaceutical Journal, revealed 4,675 women over 50 were prescribed testosterone in November 2022 alone – up from 429 in November 2015. The same pattern was true for women aged 49 and under.
But experts have pointed out these figures are only the tip of an iceberg. GPs remain cautious about prescribing the hormone – partly because there is no licensed testosterone drug specifically for women in the UK.
Far more patients are thought to get it privately, at a significant personal cost, from private doctors: the same doctors who are extolling its benefits the loudest. It means the true number of women taking it remains unknown, but it could run to more than 100,000.
***[D]octors and scientists say there is no evidence to justify most of the claims regarding testosterone.
Women are being exploited, they argue, by those who say the hormone gels are ‘the answer’ to their menopause problems.
They warn that, without appropriate supervision, patients could end up taking the hormone when they don’t need it, or taking too much – risking a wide range of side effects including acne, excess hair growth, greasy skin and even voice changes. They also warn of a condition called clitoromegaly, which causes the clitoris to become permanently enlarged.***
Hormone specialist Dr Annice Mukherjee said: ‘Women are being hood winked to some extent. Testosterone is a trend, driven by social media, which promises a one-size-fits-all approach to the menopause which is simply not the reality. When the right women get it, it’s transformational. When the wrong women get it, it can cause harm.
‘Some are struggling to feed their families during a cost-of-living crisis, and are being rightly told by their GP they don’t need testosterone. Yet they feel they’re being deceived because of what they’ve heard online. Many pay hundreds of pounds a year privately for it.
‘I’ve never seen so much confusion and distress among women because they feel they can’t get hold of what they think they need. It is so wrong.’
Read the full article here.
Over at HuffPo, Dana Dufosse writes, “I Coined The Term ‘Cisgender’ 29 Years Ago. Here’s What This Controversial Word Really Means.”
I coined the term “cisgender” in 1994. Nearly three decades later, the word has had ramifications I never dreamed of.
It began innocently enough. I was in graduate school and writing a paper on the health of trans adolescents. I put a post on alt.transgender to ask for views on transphobia and inclusion on the campus of the University of Minnesota. I was struggling because there did not seem to be a way to describe people who were not transgender without inescapably couching them in normalcy and making transgender identity automatically the “other.”
I knew that in chemistry, molecules with atoms grouped on the same side are labeled with the Latin prefix “cis–,” while molecules with atoms grouped on opposite sides are referred to as “trans–.” So, cisgender. It seemed like a no-brainer. I had no idea that hitting “enter” on that post would start an etymological time bomb ticking.
It took years for the term to take off….
Before now, I have not spoken publicly, or even disclosed my role in the origin of the word cisgender to anyone beyond a few close friends and colleagues. Although I’ve not yet experienced personal attacks for being associated with its creation, it is painful when people imply it was intended to hurt others. I never believed that adding the word to the lexicon caused problems ― it only revealed them. Whatever the fate of the word, I feel compelled to speak out against the idea that it is hateful.
Read the full piece here.
Breanne Fahs (Women and Gender Studies, ASU) has a smart essay over at Signs (here) called The Urgent Need for Radical Feminism Today. Here is an excerpt:
Though in some ways short-lived, and certainly not without its limitations, second-wave radical feminism opened up new understandings of gender and power, reimagined solidarity between movements, made space for angry and impatient agitators, and embodied notions of feminist praxis. For example, radical feminists demanded the outright abolition of abortion laws and argued for a constitutional amendment that guaranteed women the fundamental right to bodily autonomy. They also demanded deep-seated revisions to the economic distribution of resources and the commutation of prison sentences for women who acted in self-defense against domestic violence. Far more than their liberal counterparts, radical feminists understood the role of race and class in women’s liberation, and that the links between the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and labor movements were critical. * * *
Given the rich and varied histories of radical feminism and their ties to other radical movements, it is all the more tragic that radical feminism is now seen, particularly online, as synonymous with the figure of the TERF: an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Indeed, most of the time radical feminism is mentioned on social media is in the context of the rejection of TERF-dom. This fusion links the histories, ideologies, and practices of radical feminism to the figure of the TERF, reducing the complexity of radical feminism to trans exclusion. This not only falsely represents radical feminism, it also promotes the false narrative that trans activism and radical feminism do not have common origins, goals, and enemies. The belief that one must either be for trans rights or identify as a radical feminist has problematic implications for trans liberation and women’s liberation.
The full piece is here.
From the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center:
Are you a feminist thinker, writer, artist, scholar, or activist seeking interdisciplinary community to help build your work? Are you local to the Five Colleges or Western Massachusetts and trying to carve out dedicated time to move your ideas forward? Are you a non-local or international feminist thinker looking to be in conversation with a vibrant scholarly and cultural community?
The Five College Women’ s Studies Research Center is now accepting applications for its 2023-24 Research Associates (Visiting Scholars) program. Located on Hampshire College campus, the FCWSRC provides Research Associates with access to resources in the Five College Consortium and surrounding area, including important archival and museum collections. Research Associates, in residence for a semester or academic year, have opportunities to network with preeminent scholars, workshop and present their projects, and build feminist community across discipline, methodology, and geography.
The deadline is Friday, February 24, 2023.
The program is holding a Zoom information session Monday, January 23, 2023, 1-2pm EST.
More information is available here.
Luke Boso (U San Francisco) has posted to SSRN his working paper, Religious Liberty, Discriminatory Intent, and the Status Quo Constitution. Here is the abstract:
The Supreme Court shocked the world at the end of its 2021-22 term by issuing landmark decisions ending constitutional protection for abortion rights, expanding gun rights, and significantly weakening what remained of the wall between church and state. The thread uniting these blockbuster cases is originalism — a backwards-looking theory of constitutional interpretation focused on founding-era meaning and intent. The Court has been clear that preserving the status quo and insulating the Constitution from change is originalism’s core function.
Originalism is not the only mechanism by which an increasingly conservative Court has sought to protect traditional social norms and hierarchies from disruption. This Article identifies the discriminatory intent doctrine as another useful tool for fortifying status quos. The Burger and Rehnquist Courts laid the contemporary foundation for discriminatory intent’s manipulation in the equal protection context, effectively shielding many racist and sexist legal structures from constitutional reproach.
Today, discriminatory intent rules are creating radical change in religious liberty jurisprudence. In free exercise claims, the Court has gone out of its way to infer even the possibility of discriminatory intent against Christians when the government seeks compliance with pandemic-era public health measures and LGBTQ-inclusive antidiscrimination laws. In establishment claims, the Court has seemingly abandoned longstanding intent rules prohibiting favoritism or hostility towards religion; instead, the sole relevant question is now whether majoritarian founding-era practices support the government’s religious involvement. Together, these shifting roles for discriminatory intent effectively protect conservative Christian interests from encroaching progressive change, leaving religious minorities and non-believers with diminished constitutional protection.
The full paper is available here.
Advice from Gender & Law Journal Editors: Tips for Prospective Authors
Live Zoom Webinar Sponsored by the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project
January 20, 2023 2-3 pm Eastern/11am-12n Pacific
advance registration required (here; free)
Specialty law journals are important outlets for legal scholars working on gender-related issues. What are gender journal editors looking for when they review articles? How can authors improve their chances of receiving an offer of publication? What is the best time to submit an article to a gender journal? What role do the author’s cover letter and CV play in the selection process? Hear from current student editors at three journals—the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism—with answers to these questions along with advice and tips for navigating the submission process.
Moderators: Bridget J. Crawford (Pace) & Kathryn M. Stanchi (UNLV)
Participating Editors: Renée Mihail, Yale Law ’24; Hannah Mezzacapa, Michigan Law ’23; Addie Davies, Harvard Law ‘23
The webinar is free and open to all with pre-registation (here). The event is co-sponsored by the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, together with The Feminism and Legal Theory Project, The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative, the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode, and the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education.
There’s an interactive map over here at Aunt Flo. Some state legislation is more (or less) comprehensive.
And in related news, USA Today reports here that the Department of Education is considering making menstrual product provision part of schools’ Title IX mandate, at least in part in response to the public comments filed (here) by Professors Marcy Karin (UDC), Margaret Johnson (Baltimore), Elizabeth Cooper (Fordham), Naomi Cahn (Virginia), Emily Waldman (Pace) and me, here. A group of public health scholars and clinicians made similar recommendations in their comments (here).
I have previously blogged here, here, and here with speculation about how much it costs for schools to provide “free” menstrual products in bathrooms.
Based on actual data from the Cambridge (MA) Public Schools, the figure appears to be approximately $2.48 per menstruating student (see here). If that number is correct, I ask myself, how much would it cost to provide menstrual products to all public school students nation-wide? My rough (and admittedly inaccurate) estimate is approximately $60 million. States like Texas would have a big bill (about $6.4 million per year); states like Wyoming would be paying about $117,00 per year.
While these seem like big dollar amounts, in most jurisdictions, the outlay would represent an extremely small share (less than two one-hundreths of one percent) of total current spending on students and likely would boost student attendance numbers.
My back-of-the-envelope calculations (extremely rough) on a per state basis appear after the fold.
A few weeks ago, two Yale undergrads, Zoe Larkin and Ella Attell, interviewed Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life America, Borat-style. Their spoof video (embedded above) is a funny-not-funny commentary on the absurd rhetoric deployed by anti-abortionist activists (Hawkins endorsed the concept of a clothing line targeted toward pregnant tweens….!).
Apparently, Hawkins and Students for Life America did not take too kindly to finding out that the interview was satire (did she miss the red flags that one of her interlocutors would be “Bertha Child”? How about some of the absurd questions the student interviewers, in character, asked Hawkins?). Hawkins has threatened to sue the students and gone so far as to contact the Dean of Yale College and summer employers (!) of the students.
Brava, Larkin and Attell!
The Yale Daily News has coverage here.
You can follow the student filmmakers on Instagram @saveyalenow
A UK study suggests that consumers there did not benefit from repeal of the tampon tax (see here). A new study out of Germany suggests contrary results in that country.
Here is the abstract of VAT Pass-Through: The Case of a Large and Permanent Reduction in the Market for Menstrual Hygiene Products by Alisa Frey and Justus Haucap, both of the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf – Department of Economics:
This paper is about the price effects caused by a VAT (value-added tax) reduction for menstrual hygiene products in Germany. Several aspects make this VAT reduction particularly interesting: The exogeneity of the reduction under otherwise constant economic conditions, the reduction was substantial and permanent, demand for the products is inelastic and in many cases, pass-through rates are more than 100 percent. We find that the VAT reduction is completely passed through to consumers. Despite this complete pass-through, we still detect a significant effect of retailer competition: When more retailers offer a product, the price reduction is larger.
The full paper is available here.
Carla Cardova (Pomona College), Markus Grabka (German Institute for Economic Research — DIW Berlin) & Eva Sierminska (LISER; DIW Berlin) have posted to SSRN their working paper, Pension Wealth and the Gender Wealth Gap. Here is the abstract:
We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able to identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gender wealth gap. The data for our analysis come from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), one of the few surveys collecting information on wealth and pension entitlements at the individual level. Pension wealth data are available in the SOEP for 2012 only. While the relative raw gender wealth gap is about 35% (or 31,000 euros) when analysing the standard measure of net worth, it shrinks to 28% when pension wealth is added. This reduction is due to redistributive elements such as caregiver credits provided through the statutory pension scheme. Results of a recentered influence functions (RIF) decomposition show that pension wealth reduces the gap substantially in the lower half of the distribution. At the 90th percentile, the gender wealth gap in net worth and in augmented wealth remains more stable at roughly 27-30%.
The full paper is available here.
You’re not alone.
Here’s the abstract for Martina Anto-Ocrah et al., Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)–Related Stress and Menstrual Changes, Obstetrics & Gynecology (October 27, 2022; DOI 10.1097/AOG.0000000000005010).
A total of 354 women of reproductive age across the United States completed both the menstrual and COVID-19–related stress components of our survey. More than half of these women reported at least one change in their menstrual cycles since the start of the pandemic (n=191), and 10.5% reported high COVID-19–related stress (n=37). Compared with those with low COVID-19–related stress, a greater proportion of women with high COVID-19–related stress reported changes in cycle length (shorter or longer; P=.008), changes in period duration (shorter or longer; P<.001), heavier menstrual flow (P=.035), and increased frequency of spotting between cycles (P=.006) compared with prepandemic times. After adjusting for age, smoking history, obesity, education, and mental health history, high COVID-19–related stress was associated with increased odds of changes in menstrual cycle length (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.32; 95% CI 1.12–4.85), duration (aOR 2.38; 95% CI 1.14–4.98), and spotting (aOR 2.32; 95% CI 1.03–5.22). Our data also demonstrated a nonsignificant trend of heavier menstrual flow among women with high COVID-19–related stress (aOR 1.61; 95% CI 0.77–3.34).
CONCLUSION:
High COVID-19–related stress is associated with significant changes in menstrual cycle length, alterations in period duration, and increased intermenstrual spotting as compared with before the pandemic. Given that menstrual health is frequently an indicator of women’s overall well-being, clinicians, researchers, and public health officials must consider the association between COVID-19–related stress and menstrual disturbances.
The full article is available here.
A copy of the report by the (UK) Tax Policy Associates is here. Some highlights:
5% VAT applied to tampons and other menstrual products until January 2021. Then, following the high-profile “tampon tax” campaign, it was abolished. Many expected that the benefit of the tax saving would go to women, in the form of reduced prices.
However, an analysis of ONS data by Tax Policy Associates demonstrates that the 5% VAT saving was not passed onto women. At least 80% of the saving was retained by retailers (and very possibly all of it).
The key piece of evidence is this chart showing price changes before and after the abolition of the “tampon tax” on 1 January 2021. Ignoring the large spike in December 2020, average prices after the change are only slightly lower than before the change. For reasons explained further below, this likely reflects normal market movements rather than the passing on of the VAT saving.
Read the full report here.
A related news article appears in the (UK) Daily Mail here.
Lenore Palladino (Roosevelt Institute) has posted a working paper, The Contribution of Shareholder Primacy to the Racial Wealth Gap. Here is an excerpt:
I find a Black–white ratio of 0.013 and a Hispanic–white ratio of 0.016 for total shareholder payments made over the period from Q1 2004 to Q2 2019. Total shareholder payments made to white households during that time frame totaled $13 trillion, while $181 billion went to Black households and $212 billion to Hispanic households. This measure gives a clear sense that shareholder payments, in the form of corporate dividends and stock buybacks, are flowing disproportionately to white households.
The full paper is available here.
H/T Francine Lipman
Proving that there is a Foucauldian approach to just about everything, Shu-Chien Chen (Erasmus University Rotterdam) has posted to SSRN Discourses in the Tampon Tax Campaign, 2022 Analize: Journal of Gender & Feminist Studies 114. Here is the abstract:
The Tampon Tax Campaign is a global social movement that aims to abolish consumption tax on menstruation hygienic products and provide free universal access to them as the ultimate goal. In the campaign, there are different discourses supporting abolishing the tampon tax and discourses casting doubts on the campaign. Discourses supporting the campaign center around breaking the menstruation taboo, including eradicating menstruation poverty, ensuring menstruation health, pursuing human rights, and ending tax discrimination. Doubt-casting discourses include the revenue reduction and economics inefficiency in the market after abolishing tax on menstruation hygienic products. These doubt-casting discourses talk about money. I will use Foucault’s discourse analysis approach, not only to analyze discussions from scholars, but also to compare legislation records of Australia, California and Scotland between 2017 and 2020 that are in response to the tampon tax campaign. The comparison demonstrates that all these conflicting discourses exist in all three jurisdictions. Furthermore, this essay also analyzes less-heard of or less-discussed discourses in response to the tampon tax campaign. These discourses are produced by non-profit organizations that receive subsidies from the tampon tax fund in the UK and by major hygienic products manufacturing companies in Australia via submitting their public consultation opinion. This essay argues that menstruation inequality is an intersectional issue, as well as the discourses around it. Focusing on ‘tax’ is a smart strategy for a movement, but there should be continuous efforts to address the menstruation taboo. The tampon tax campaign is not only about tax nor about tampons, but the power relations underlying the socially constructed menstruation taboo.
The full article is available here.
Jayne Jagot was sworn in last week as the 56th justice of the High Court of Australia. She is the Court’s seventh woman appointed to the High Court, which now has a female majority. See news reports here.
Law professor Heather Roberts (ANU) has thoughts (here; paywall — sorry) on why the gender balance of the High Court is significant. Professor Roberts also has a short video (below and here) providing some context for discussions of gender and judging, in light of Justice Jagot’s appointment.
TOOLS FOR TACKLING THE TOXIC WORKPLACE:
A Conversation with Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
7:00-9:00 p.m. EDT
Furman Hall, Lester Pollock Colloquium
245 Sullivan Street
New York, NY 10012
Please join the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and Lift Our Voices for a discussion and training with Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky — leaders in the global #MeToo movement who took on Fox News and its chairman Roger Ailes — moderated by Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law and BWLN Faculty Director Melissa Murray.
The session will include practical tips on knowing your workplace rights, the kinds of protective tools that are available, what the law does (and doesn’t) say — and how women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community are uniquely impacted by oft-used contractual silencing mechanisms such as concealment clauses, NDAs, and forced arbitration. And it will feature candid conversation that focuses on mobilizing to change the narrative around toxic workplace culture from the start — especially how law and business students can play a part.
Light hors d’oeuvres will be available. In accordance with NYU’s COVID safety protocols, you will be asked to provide proof of COVID vaccination and booster. While this event is free and open to the public, registration is required. We are unfortunately unable to accept walk-ins. Kindly register via Qualtrics.
For questions, please email womensleadership@nyu.edu.
Quite a bit.
For those who would like to know more, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has issued a new report on The Geographic Distribution of Extreme Wealth in the U.S. Here are a few of the report’s key findings:
▶ More than one in four dollars of wealth in the U.S. is held by a tiny fraction of households with net worth over $30 million. Nationally, we estimate that wealth over $30 million per household will reach $26 trillion in 2022 with roughly one-fifth of that amount ($4.5 trillion) held by billionaires.
▶ A nationwide tax of 2 percent on wealth over $30 million could have raised nearly $415 billion if it were in effect this year, while a similar tax applying only to wealth in excess of $1 billion could have raised $62 billion. This tax would affect just 1 in 400 households nationwide, or 0.25 percent of the population. No state would see more than 0.5 percent of its population affected by such a tax.
▶ New York is home to the highest concentration of extreme wealth in the nation. Of all wealth over $30 million per household found in the U.S., more than 1 in 5 of those dollars can be found in New York. This finding points to the outsized importance of Wall Street as a source of extreme wealth in the U.S. and to the economic clout of New York City more broadly. (For more about the novel methodology behind this finding, see Appendix E.)
▶ Other states with an outsized concentration of extreme wealth achieve that distinction through a variety of means, including industry mix and the location decisions of a small number of billionaires. Other states with above-average shares of wealth in excess of $30 million are Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington State, Wyoming and the District of Columbia.
▶ The Northeast is home to a higher concentration of extreme wealth than any other region and would therefore pay a significant share of a tax on wealth over $30 million per household. The Midwest and South would be least affected by such a tax as these regions possess smaller amounts of extreme wealth.
▶ A large share of extreme wealth is held in the form of unrealized capital gains, meaning investment income on which these families have yet to pay tax (and may never pay tax under current law). Nationally, among families with more than $30 million in wealth, an estimated 43 percent of that wealth takes the form of unrealized gains.
▶ Lawmakers could consider taxing the existing stock of unrealized capital gains either as part of a transition to taxing such gains on an annual basis or under a standalone, one-time tax. A one-time tax on the current stock of unrealized capital gains over $10 million per household could generate between $529 billion and $3.9 trillion depending on the parameters chosen for the tax.
▶ The federal government and states have no shortage of options for taxing extreme wealth, including net worth taxation, mark-to-market taxation, ending stepped-up basis, raising rates on realized capital gains and strengthening or creating estate and inheritance taxes. Notably, many options that the federal government might pursue in taxing extreme wealth would also be helpful to states seeking to diversify their own revenue streams to include extreme wealth within their tax bases.
H/T Francine Lipman
Law professors are among those commenting on the proposed regulations under Title IX, issued by the Department of Education, Docket #ED-2021-OCR-0166:
It’s anyone’s guess on when the final regulations will be issued, but the best guess from insiders is about 6 months from now.
The concerns are not new. Michele Gilman (Baltimore) and others have been sounding this alarm for some time now. (Read Professor Gilman’s important essay, Periods for Profit and Menstrual Surveillance, 41 Colum. J. Gender & Law 100 (2021) here.)
What is new is the attention that journalists and tech companies themselves are now paying to the lack of privacy when it comes to period trackers and other health-related apps. Consider, for example, a new study by Mozilla, reported over at The Verge:
Most popular period and pregnancy tracking apps don’t have strong privacy protections, according to a new analysis from researchers at Mozilla. Leaky privacy policies in health apps are always a problem, but issues that fall into this particular category are especially concerning now that abortion is illegal in many places in the United States.
Period and pregnancy tracking apps collect data that could theoretically be used to prosecute people getting abortions in places where it’s illegal. Data from period tracking apps isn’t the biggest thing used to tie people to abortions right now — most often, the digital data used in those cases comes from texts, Google searches, or Facebook messages. But they’re still potential risks.
Read the full article at The Verge here.
The interesting question is whether tech companies will take any action in response, or whether they will continue to function as profit facilitators for those who traffic in health data.
Yup. The NYT has full coverage here.
As Emily Waldman (Pace) and I write in our book, Menstruation Matters: Challenging the Law’s Silence on Periods (NYU Press 2022):
On an international level, the most dramatic menstrual equity development that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic was Scotland’s November 24, 2020 passage of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act, which requires local authorities to ensure that period products are obtainable free of charge by all who need them. This law, described further in Chapter 9, passed unanimously in the Scottish Parliament. Although it had been in the works even before the pandemic began—a draft bill had received initial approval in February 2020—the pandemic heightened its urgency. The lawmaker who had submitted the bill, Monica Lennon, explicitly linked its final passage to the pandemic, telling her fellow lawmakers right before the vote that “[i]n these dark times, we can bring light and hope to the world this evening.” Lennon further reflected that the bill “matters now more than ever, because periods don’t stop in a pandemic.”
The law passed in 2020 has now taken effect. This is a giant occasion.
For those interested more in the background to the Scottish reform, check out this special issue of Open Library of Humanities has a special issue devoted to “The Politics and History of Menstruation: Contextualising the Scottish Campaign to End Period Poverty.” The editors are Bettina Bildhauer (University of St Andrews), Camilla Røstvik (University of Leeds) and Sharra Vostral (History, Purdue University).
On a Women’s Studies listserv, one poster recently asked for subscribers’ thoughts on “the most important and discussed feminist issues currently.” Writer Katha Pollitt responded as follows (reprinted with permission):
I think the major feminist issues are the same as always: repro rights and justice, male violence and coercion (rape, assault, dv, murder, sexual harassment) and the failure of society to take them seriously, poverty, domestic inequality, lack of adequate and respectful health care, affordable childcare, lack of pay equity and the many ways women are sidelined at work, lack of political representation, impoverishment of women in old age, misogynist pop culture, including misogynistic pornography.
An important reminder to many of us that the more things change, the more things stay the same, for sure.
-Bridget Crawford
The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the Harvard Law School Federalist Society have announced a symposium to be held on October 29, 2022:
It’s a symposium on Adrian Vermeule’s book, which certainly has female readers …. Was it simply not possible to strike a gender balance?
I checked the journal’s list of “advisors” here and—mirabile dictu—not so many women on the journal’s list there, either:
E. Spencer Abraham, Founder
Steven G. Calabresi
Douglas R. Cox
Jennifer W. Elrod
Charles Fried
Douglas H. Ginsburg
Orrin Hatch
Jonathan R. Macey
Michael W. McConnell
Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain
Jeremy A. Rabkin
Hal S. Scott
David B. Sentelle
Bradley Smith
Jerry E. Smith
Couldn’t the students find any more women to speak at the program or serve as an “advisor”? Maybe they consulted binders full of women for both, but none could participate. Did any of the speakers ask about the gender or other diversity of the program speakers? I don’t know.
The Open Library of Humanities has a special issue devoted to “The Politics and History of Menstruation: Contextualising the Scottish Campaign to End Period Poverty.” The editors are Bettina Bildhauer (University of St Andrews), Camilla Røstvik (University of Leeds) and Sharra Vostral (History, Purdue University). Here is a description of the journal’s special issue:
In 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right. This has attracted extraordinary attention internationally, positioning Scotland as a leader on menstrual policy. Yet, little is known about why Scotland has been able to take on this role, and why at this historical moment of watershed change in many practices and policies surrounding menstruation, including sustainable period products, transgender menstruation, workplace menopause, tracking apps, menstrual disorders.
This special collection tracks the roots of the current developments through the history of politics, activism, medicine, public health, the arts and education around menstruation in Scotland and transnationally. It is the first collection to analyse and contextualise Scottish menstrual policy. Using archives, interviews, and case studies from other countries and historical periods, our collection poses the question: Why Scotland? Why menstrual rights? Why now?
Here is the current table of contents, which will be updated as additional articles are added:
The entire issue is open access and available here.
Professor Elizabeth D. Katz of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law has been selected as the 2021-2022 Haub Law Emerging Scholar in Gender & Law for her paper Sex, Suffrage, and State Constitutional Law: Women’s Legal Right to Hold Public Office, 33 Yale J. Law & Feminism. 110 (2022). Professor Katz is an Associate Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis School. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Professor Katz will be a visiting professor of law at Northwestern, Duke, and Boston College. She teaches first-year criminal law, family law, and a seminar on the law’s treatment of race and religion in family contexts, historically and today.
Congratulations, Professor Katz!
Read the full press release here.
Grapple with American novelist and ArtForum writer Dodie Bellamy’s revelatory feature of Los Angeles-based Basque multimedia artist, Erlea Maneros Zabala in her piece, “Erlea Maneros Zabala: A feminist reimagining of Spain’s fascist past,” (July 25, 2022).
Read the excerpts below to better understand Bellamy’s impression of Maneros Zabala’s work in a post-Roe context as well as Maneros Zabala’s central message within her art: to reclaim the female figure and female voice despite the residue of Franco’s fascist violence.
“BORN AND RAISED IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY, Erlea Maneros Zabala relocated to Los Angeles in 2000. I met her briefly in 2007 through Raymond Pettibon. Though we instantly clicked, our paths didn’t cross again until 2019, when we found ourselves at the same Christmas Eve party. In May, I visited Erlea in her house in the high desert, two hours outside of Los Angeles, where she walked me through a slide presentation of “The Voice of the Valley,” her solo exhibition currently on view at Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country through September 18, 2022. The show comprises four installations that are loosely in conversation with one another. I was particularly engaged by Prompt Book, 2016–22, a response to gruesome depictions of women in artworks created during the Franco Regime.
Since my visit to Joshua Tree in early May, Erlea and I have talked on the phone for dozens of hours, open-ended conversations about our personal lives, gossip, politics, history, art. The more we looked at and discussed misogynist art from the Spanish fascist period, the more apparent were its resonances with current attacks on women’s rights. Situated in the same room as Prompt Book is the eponymous The Voice of the Valley, 2017, a video of Erlea’s hands in her Joshua Tree studio doing various art-related tasks such as sanding a frame as she listens to the local right-wing radio station. Watching the four-hour video is an act of endurance, witnessing the epic cultural assault of angry male voices upon Erlea, i.e., the female artist, i.e., women in general. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I reaffirmed my commitment to spotlight feminist projects such as Erlea’s. So, over Zoom on June 26, she and I discussed her Artium exhibition and its ramifications.”
—
EMZ: Until recently, the Spanish public has been unable to address the forty years of the fascist regime they endured. As I saw visitors walk through the room—so small that it felt more of a passage space between larger rooms—I was bewildered by how seldom anyone actually stopped to look at any of it.
But what struck me was the fact that every female figure in these small, cutesy artworks was being subjected to physical violence. The film, projected to fill the whole wall, consisted of a seventy-three minute monologue of a man not only making excuses for his son killing his wife but also blaming another woman for brainwashing the son into doing it.
Observing these brutalized female figures trapped in these artworks ticked me off. As I looked at them, they became animated; they turned into protagonists in a play. I imagined the thoughts and conversations they might be having all taking place in Euskara (my mother tongue) in the spirit of a group of women talking in a coffee shop or a hair salon in my hometown, sharing their grievances.
DB: Was it your intent to leave Prompt Book in Basque?
EMZ: I liked the idea that the text would be written in a language that was illegal in Spain when the artworks were created. Most people who would have seen that version of Prompt Book would not have been able to understand what the women were saying so they would have experienced the text merely as image. Later they would have been able to access the full breadth of the project by reading the translation.
For more, read the complete article here.
-PS
Read the British Columbia Law Institute’s newly published guide, “Gender Diversity in Legal Writing: Pronouns, Honorifics, and Gender-Inclusive Techniques,” (June 27, 2022), which urges legal scholars to make a conscious shift to inclusive and expansive language, particularly regarding gender and gender identity, in their writings.
Read the abstract below:
Like the law, language and styles of writing evolve over time to meet the needs of new generations. One such shift is towards language that reflects a modern understanding of gender and gender identity. Inclusivity can no longer be limited to masculine and feminine but must be extended to include people who identify as non-binary, agender, two spirited, or genderqueer. To meet these needs, the British Columbia Law Institute is creating a guide to "Gender Diversity in Legal Writing: Pronouns, Honorifics, and Gender-Inclusive Techniques." Legal writing comprises many forms: legislation, court submissions, opinion letters, transactional writing (e.g., contracts, wills), communications with clients and other lawyers, legal memoranda, legal texts and academic writing, court forms, judgments and decisions, and other reports and papers. Ultimately, the writer must choose the gender inclusive techniques needed for their audience and subject matter. The methods and tools explored in this publication give legal writers guidance to consider inclusivity in their writing. The Guide: - Defines terms and addresses common misconceptions associated with certain terminology (e.g., transgender, not transgendered); - Outlines techniques to reflect inclusivity and gender neutrality, including review of honorifics, greetings, and pronouns; - Provides examples of how to incorporate gender inclusivity into one’s own writing style; and - Provides a list of resources for legal writers who want to learn more.
Find the attached article here.
-PS
As reported in the recent Human Rights Watch piece, “UK: Tackling Violence against Some Women, But Not All,” (July 22, 2022), although the United Kingdom government has just sworn to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women as of July 31, 2022, over a decade after its initial signing, this landmark measure is stained by the exclusion of migrant women from its protections.
Its reservation to Article 59 will force migrant women victims of domestic violence to continue to be reliant on their abusers for residency status, therefore “putting their health and lives at ongoing risk…without assured access to crucial support and a pathway to escape violence.”
Read excerpts from the piece to better understand the effects of this exclusionary treaty:
“Patel said the government will apply a reservation to Article 59 while awaiting the evaluation of the Support for Migrant Victims scheme, a pilot project introduced alongside the Domestic Violence Act of 2021 to support a limited number of women who cannot access public benefits. People on visas tied to spouses or fiancés have “No Recourse to Public Funds” under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, making them ineligible for most government benefits, which often includes refuge spaces.
The Support for Migrant Victims scheme, which concluded in March, was roundly criticized by key organizations led by-and-for Black and minoritised and migrant women as “wholly inadequate” both in scope and in substance to meet the needs of migrant women victims of violence.
Significant evidence already points to the need for greater protections for migrant women victims of violence with precarious residency status. In research by the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, 62 percent of migrant women in London surveyed said their abusers had threatened deportation if they reported the abuse to authorities.
Southall Black Sisters, which ran the Support for Migrant Victims Scheme, has reported that over 60 percent of women seeking their assistance have insecure immigration status. Research from the office of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales highlights that women in such circumstances are less likely to seek or benefit from services or escape abuse.
The UK has long positioned itself as a champion of tackling violence against women and girls internationally, but has faced mounting evidence of inadequate prevention, response, and accountability measures domestically and failure to prioritize combating it at home.”
Read the complete article here.
-PS
Earlier this week, Ms. Magazine published an article (here) revealing the somewhat surprising decision of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University to decline the records of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, begun at the University of Wisconsin in 1984 and still going strong at Emory University, under the leadership of path-breaking scholar Professor Martha Fineman. Here‘s an excerpt from the story:
For close to four decades, Fineman’s Feminism and Legal Theory Project has hosted hundreds of conversations where feminist thinkers from across the United States and world have shaped and explored a wide range of concepts relating to women’s position within law and society. Those conversations delved into the “public nature of private violence,” the legal regulation of motherhood, feminism’s reception in the media, the relevance of economics to feminist thought, the complexities of sexuality, conflicting children’s and parental rights, the origins and implications of dependency and vulnerability, and the extent and nature of social responsibility. ***
Out of these conversations emerged the first anthology of feminist legal theory, At the Boundaries of Law, published in 1991. Many more followed, including over a dozen collections, numerous special issues of law reviews and hundreds of individual articles developing an interdisciplinary approach to feminist legal theory.
“In the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, we created what I called ‘uncomfortable conversations’—events where people who shared values, but disagreed about strategies and implementation, could talk,” said Fineman. “If there were areas of disagreement around collective objectives, you could talk about them and work through them hopefully in a constructive manner. That’s how actual progress can be made.” ***
Fineman recorded all of these conversations—a treasure trove of close to four decades of feminist intellectual history. But she is now struggling to find a home for this invaluable archive of the first generation of feminist legal thinkers.
“History has something to teach us. If we don’t collect the history and preserve it, then it can’t teach us,” said Fineman.
The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University is one of the few facilities that currently has the resources to care for the Fineman’s collection, but they told her that although they saw its value, they would not take her archives because they had other priorities. According to Fineman, a representative from Harvard told her: “We do see the real importance of the conferences, the ideas generated, and know it is an important resource for scholars. Unfortunately, it doesn’t align with our current strategic priorities, which involve a heightened focus on lives of women of color. We wouldn’t be able to commit the resources the archives need to its care.”
Others archives, including the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University and the Pembroke Center Archives at Brown University, indicated they have other priorities (e.g. Smith is prioritizing papers related to sex workers’ rights while Duke “does not focus on the papers of legal scholars”) or they do not have the resources or technical capacity to house the collection.
“Some people are telling me the size of the collection is prohibitive,” said Fineman. “They talk about the necessity to digitize everything initially—but then explain that current technology will need ongoing updating, and this will all add to the cost, ironically decreasing the amount of material that they can actually collect.”
Read the full story here.
Read World Politics Review writer Graciela Monteagudo’s piece, “Argentina’s Feminist Backlash Takes Aim at Inclusive Spanish,” (July 19, 2022), which tackles the ongoing struggle for Latin American educators to adopt gender neutral language within the restrictive masculine/feminine designations that Spanish harbors. This past June, the city government in Buenos Aires banned teachers from including any gender-neutral language in the classroom or in communications with parents, insisting such language violated the grammatical rules of Spanish and put students’ “reading comprehension” in jeopardy.
Here is an excerpt:
In what could be seen as petty revenge for Argentina’s legalization of abortion in 2020, Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, the chief of government of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, has banned gender-inclusive language in the city’s public schools.
The decision, which was announced at the end of June, is the latest development in what many consider a widening war on feminism in Argentina. The main advocates of the ban, the Royal Spanish Academy and the Argentine Academy of Letters, have argued that changing the Spanish language to accommodate gender neutrality would be confusing and, in any case, unnecessary. As Alicia Zorrilla, president of the Argentine Academy of Letters, explained, “The grammatical masculine is already inclusive [and] covers that function as an unmarked term of the gender opposition.
Read the complete World Politics Review article here, accompanied by New York Times writer Ana Lankes’s recent piece contextualizing the struggle for the acceptance of gender neutral terms in Romance languages in her work, “In Argentina, One of the World’s First Bans on Gender-Neutral Language,” (July 20, 2022).
-PS
Read La Prensa Latina’s piece, “Bolivia moves reform bill to strengthen gender violence law” (July 20, 2022) which touches on community leaders’ efforts to legally curb rising numbers of femicides and sexual violence.
Here is an excerpt below:
The Bolivian government on Tuesday moved a bill that seeks to strengthen a 2013 law on violence against women, the full application of which has been an ongoing demand of social organizations.
Justice minister Iván Lima and presidency minister María Nela Prada separately highlighted that the draft was worked on with broad participation from various sectors, with more than 1,000 proposals to improve Law 348 – the Comprehensive Law to Guarantee Women a Life Free From Violence.
[Social leader Flora Aguilar to President Luis] Arce highlighted some measures taken by his government, such as the creation of a commission that reviewed cases in which those sentenced for femicides and infanticides were released, and the recent approval of a law that establishes punishments against judicial officials that in any way favor those accused of these crimes.
The bill creates “a special criminal procedure to punish differentiated crimes of violence that eliminates unnecessary stages or hearings to reach trial” and reinforces the application of special protection measures for victims, Aguilar said.
It also establishes the “priority of searching for women in case of disappearance” if there is a history of violence and proposes the creation of a “differential sanctioning administrative system in the areas of health, education, work and communication,” she said.
Read the complete article here.
-PS
Read The New Yorker writer’s Merve Emre’s wrestling with gender, journeys and Latin American liberation in Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza’s latest oeuvre of works within her piece, “Cristina Rivera Garza’s Bodies Politic,” (July 4, 2022).
Read the excerpts from Emre’s piece to better understand how Rivera Garza allows these subjects to intertwine:
In Rivera Garza’s fiction, quests for desirable bodies do not destroy cities. They destroy the identities—man, woman—worshipped by rulers.
The “Torso of Adèle” is among the smallest and most sensual of Auguste Rodin’s partial figures. She has neither head nor legs; her body reclines with its elbows raised and one arm flung across her neck, her back arching into the air. The eye seeks the point that balances her movement. Skimming her breasts, her ribs, her navel, it comes to rest on her iliac crest, the bone that wings its way across the hip. “From there, from Ilion, from her crest, Odysseus departed on his return to Ithaca after the war,” thinks the narrator of “The Iliac Crest” (2002), the second novel by the Mexican-born writer Cristina Rivera Garza. To his wandering mind, “Iliac” summons Ilion, Homer’s Troy—a city destroyed because one selfish man desired one beautiful woman.
The mystery and obscurity that envelop Rivera Garza’s fiction caress both gender and genre, words with a shared etymology. In “The Iliac Crest,” gothic shades into noir, noir into fable, with fable climaxing in the metafiction cherished by Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges. Trapped in the undertow of this procession, it is easy to forget what prompted the narrator’s quest in the first place: the name of the hip bone. It appears only on the novel’s final page, when such cruel, inexplicable things have passed between him and his various Amparo Dávilas that the word “iliac” clarifies nothing. It hangs before us, flush with the deferred promise of some ruinous or transcendent revelation. “I smiled upon remembering, too, that the pelvis is the most definitive area to determine the sex of an individual,” the narrator thinks, with irony. Nothing is definitive anymore, least of all the relationship between anatomy and gender.
Read the complete piece here.
-PS
Susan Etta Keller (Western State) has posted to SSRN her paper, Gender-Inclusive Bathrooms: How Pandemic-Inspired Design Imperatives and the Reasoning of Recent Federal Court Decisions Make Rejecting Sex-Separated Facilities More Possible, 23 Geo. J. Gender & L. 35 (2021). Here is the abstract:
This article suggests that the moment may be right to rethink the societal need for sex-separated bathrooms, and to consider the harmful ways in which they perpetuate a problematic gender binary. Architectural innovations for public restroom design, inspired by the need to increase social distancing during the pandemic, align well with designs that have already been proposed for gender-inclusive bathrooms. At the same time, recent federal cases have confronted the tortured logic of those insisting on policing the gender binary that sex-separated bathrooms represent. The responses in these decisions, which uphold the rights of transgender students to have access to the bathrooms that align with their gender identity, are shown to undermine the logic of the gender binary in general and the rationale for sex-separated facilities in particular.
Read the full paper here.
Read the perspectives of the staff at a Houston abortion clinic after the Supreme Court ruled to end the constitutional right to abortion in The New Yorker writer Stephania Taladrid’s article, “Roe’s Final Hours in One of America’s Largest Abortion Clinics,” (June 25, 2022). Look at Meredith Kohut’s chilling photographs of the emotional toll this news took on health providers in the largest clinic in the country’s second most populated state. Under the new law, the Houston Women’s Clinic can no longer legally provide abortions.
“One by one, women were called into the back of the clinic to receive their ultrasounds and counselling sessions, or to await the doctor, who had not yet appeared. A row of stiff wooden chairs where they bided their time faced a framed photograph of Portofino’s cerulean bay. As the women stared at the Italian village, or their phones, a dozen anxious staff members huddled by the front desk. One of the medical assistants placed her phone against a stack of patient files so that her colleagues could see the Supreme Court’s schedule for the day. A nurse started braiding the receptionist’s brightly dyed hair. Ivy’s boss, Sheila, who directs the clinic, had been in touch with lawyers at the A.C.L.U. “’t can come any minute,’ she told her colleagues of the decision, adding with a nervous smile, ‘My sister is trying to distract me. She just sent me an article: ‘How to Stop Dating People Who Are Wrong for You.’ ‘Someone yelled from another room: ‘Send it to me!'”
“Despite the tension, for the next hour, the workers tried to focus on their particular responsibilities, including answering the phone, which rang constantly. The faster they worked, the more patients they could ready to see the doctor, who would either give the eligible women pills to begin a medication abortion or proceed with a surgical one. But at 9:11 a.m., before the doctor had walked through the door and any abortions had commenced, Sheila heard from an A.C.L.U. lawyer. ‘Roe, overturned,’ she said flatly. Ivy, emerging from the lab, hadn’t caught Sheila’s exact words, but she understood them when she saw her hands shaking.”
“For a few seconds, no one said a word. Ivy retreated to an area of the clinic where women’s vitals were taken and a urine sample awaited analysis. Alone, she pressed her fingers to her welling eyes. Other workers wrapped their arms around one another. Confused, one of the patients left her seat and interrupted their silence. ‘Why are y’all crying?’ she asked. Sheila, trying to collect herself, wiped her tears away and turned to the woman and three other patients in the waiting room. ‘Ladies, I’m so sorry to tell you that the law for abortion has been overturned,’ she said. ‘We are not able to perform any abortions at this time, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have an option, O.K.?'”
Read the complete New Yorker article here.
-PS
Look to the work of Amazonian lawyer and activist Dandara Rudsan to understand the importance of arm-in-arm organizing in marginalized environments and bodies:
“Dandara Rudsan is a Black and trans activist from Altamira, in the Brazilian state of Pará. She currently serves as an environmental racism specialist in the Public Defender’s Office of Pará State. Rudsan says her activism began when she realized the invisibility of Amazonian bodies, particularly LGBTIQ+ Amazonian bodies.”
“’For the thirteenth time, Brazil leads the global ranking of trans people murdered. Imagine if trans women from the Amazon rainforest, who are invisible, were counted?’ says Rudsan. ‘Visibility is linked to our survival.’”
“Rudsan says that while she celebrates the Brazilian Supreme Court’s 2019 decision to uphold the criminalization of homophobia and transphobia, continued and collective work is needed for true healing. ‘When I talk about collective work, it is not only among LGBTIQ+ people,’ says Rudsan. ‘A very solid alliance between trans and cisgender women is strengthening our work, and, together, we can work on tools for the defense of life.'”On April 5, 2022, Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice ruled that the Maria da Penha Law offering legal protection to victims of domestic violence also applies to transgender women. Rudsan is quoted in the Brazilian newspaper, Brasil de Fato, celebrating the news, calling it the first path to a permanent law.
“The entire Judiciary now from the lower courts, from the higher instances will start to dialogue, to ponder their decisions, to ponder their referral, because before it was a direct path of denial. Now we are no longer on this direct path of denial, which has to stop, which is not mandatory, but it forces us to stop and reflect. It forces the Judiciary to stop and reflect on itself”.
Read the complete Medium UN Women article (May 14, 2021) here and Brasil de Fato piece here (April 11, 2022).
-PS
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Osgoode’s IFLS is accepting fellowship applications for the 2022-23 academic year.
This fellowship supports the work of young and mid-career scholars from around the world by providing an intellectual community, shared physical space (for those candidates who choose to visit Osgoode in-person), academic engagement with research presentations, access to York libraries, and under certain circumstances modest financial support for very specific research projects conducted during the fellowship stint. Such financial support requires a separate application during the fellowship. Fellowship time is flexible, ranging from a month to a full semester and could be virtual or in-person depending on the candidates’ preference.
The fellowship is open to scholars working in the areas of law, feminism and public policy, broadly interpreted. Fellows are expected to finish or make significant progress on an existing research project toward publication and make an academic presentation during their time at Osgoode. Fellows are also expected to participate actively in the Institute’s events. Researchers interested in feminism and disability and women and property are particularly encouraged to apply.
Application deadline is July 15, 2022 and the form could be found HERE. Questions may be directed to Ms. Lielle Gonsalves at lgonsalves@osgoode.yorku.ca.
The North American Menopause Society has updated its official position on hormone therapy for menopause (also known as hormone replacement therapy or menopause hormone therapy). Here is the abstract:
“The 2022 Hormone Therapy Position Statement of The North American Menopause Society” (NAMS) updates “The 2017 Hormone Therapy Position Statement of The North American Menopause Society” and identifies future research needs. An Advisory Panel of clinicians and researchers expert in the field of women’s health and menopause was recruited by NAMS to review the 2017 Position Statement, evaluate new literature, assess the evidence, and reach consensus on recommendations, using the level of evidence to identify the strength of recommendations and the quality of the evidence. The Advisory Panel’s recommendations were reviewed and approved by the NAMS Board of Trustees.
Hormone therapy remains the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms (VMS) and the genitourinary syndrome of menopause and has been shown to prevent bone loss and fracture. The risks of hormone therapy differ depending on type, dose, duration of use, route of administration, timing of initiation, and whether a progestogen is used. Treatment should be individualized using the best available evidence to maximize benefits and minimize risks, with periodic reevaluation of the benefits and risks of continuing therapy.
For women aged younger than 60 years or who are within 10 years of menopause onset and have no contraindications, the benefit-risk ratio is favorable for treatment of bothersome VMS and prevention of bone loss. For women who initiate hormone therapy more than 10 years from menopause onset or who are aged older than 60 years, the benefit-risk ratio appears less favorable because of the greater absolute risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, venous thromboembolism, and dementia. Longer durations of therapy should be for documented indications such as persistent VMS, with shared decision-making and periodic reevaluation. For bothersome genitourinary syndrome of menopause symptoms not relieved with over-the-counter therapies in women without indications for use of systemic hormone therapy, low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy or other therapies (eg, vaginal dehydroepiandrosterone or oral ospemifene) are recommended.
Read the full paper here: 29 Menopause: J. of the N. Am. Menopause Soc’y 767 (2022), DOI: 10.1097/GME.0000000000002028
Read journalist Linda Villarosa’s New York Times piece, “The Long Shadow of Eugenics in America” (June 8, 2022) to learn the story of the forced sterilization of the Welf sisters, as well as thousands of other victims of the deep-rooted history of reproductive violence at the hands of the government. Here is an excerpt:
In the summer of 1973, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice were taken from their home in Montgomery, cut open and sterilized against their will and without the informed consent of their parents by a physician working in a federally funded clinic. The Relf case would change the course of history: A lawsuit filed on their behalf, Relf v. Weinberger, helped reveal that more than 100,000 mostly Black, Latina and Indigenous women were sterilized under U.S. government programs over decades. It also officially ended this practice and forced doctors to obtain informed consent before performing sterilization procedures — though as it would turn out, forced sterilizations by state governments would continue into the 21st century.
Read more excerpts after the fold and the full article here.
-PS
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Amid a post-Roe political and healthcare landscape, University of Connecticut School of Law Professor Carleen Zubrzycki’s is considering the repercussions of misleadingly naming states abortion “safe havens” without addressing the presence of pre-existing inter-state medical records in her recently published draft, “Abortion’s Interoperability Trap: How the Law of Medical Records Will Facilitate Interstate Persecution of Contested Medical Procedures, and What to Do about It” (June 27, 2022). The piece will be featured in a forthcoming Yale Law Journal Forum.
Read the abstract for more information below:
There’s a gaping hole in blue states’ efforts to create abortion “safe havens” for the new post-Roe world. Medical care procured out-of-state increasingly leaves a digital trail that will easily make its way back to patients’ home states. In the context of abortion—and other politically controversial forms of care, like gender-affirming treatments—, this means that cutting-edge legislative protections for medical records do not go far enough. Anticipating the fall of Roe, legislatures have begun to bar in-state providers from directly handing over records for use in out-of-state lawsuits or prosecutions. But these laws fail to recognize that, thanks to increasing interoperability and new regulations designed to improve the flow of medical information, patient records are now widely shared across state lines in the ordinary course of business—and nothing will protect those records once in the hands of out-of-state providers. To wit: Under current law, a Connecticut practice that shared records of a patient’s abortion with a doctor in Louisiana, even over the patient’s objection or knowing that the record would likely be used to persecute the patient, would not be violating any privacy law—and a doctor who withheld the records, in many situations, would be! Lawmakers must act now to address this “interoperability trap.” And even if they don’t, clinics and providers should prepare to adopt policies well beyond what is legally required to protect their patients’ records.
Read the complete draft here. Comments should be directed to Professor Zubrzycki.
-PS
Read New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow’s comparison of the racial manifestations of both abortion and prohibition in the U.S in his piece, “Abortion, Like Prohibition, Has a Clear Racial Dimension,” (July 3, 2022).
Read excerpts from Blow’s piece below:
Frum was writing about the interconnectedness of restrictive impulses — and how one can be a gateway for others. Restrictions, he seemed to imply, can be complicated. Bigotry is a close cousin of prudence.
Prohibition, in particular, had a complicated racial history. Enslavers used alcohol for years as a weapon to subdue the enslaved in this country.
Many of the people who crusaded for abolishing slavery later embraced the temperance movement and lobbied for Prohibition, with many Black people supporting restrictions on alcohol because it had long been used to keep them in bondage.
Now abortion is being restricted in much the same way alcohol once was. There are many reasons for what’s happening; some of the most fervent proponents of the abortion bans can claim religious objections, and others are merely angling for a political advantage or catering to the basest instincts of the American electorate, hoping to force more white women to have children in order to prevent white people from losing their majority status. The reasons for Prohibition were just as numerous and complicated, a mess of interlocking moral and political allegiances.”
Read the complete article here.
-PS
Read and witness the chilling testimonies of loved ones of victims of femicide and transfemicide in NPR writer Estefania Mitre’s photo story, “Families of murdered women and trans Argentinians ensure their voices are not silenced,” (Jun 30, 2022).
Read Mitre’s introductory framing below:
“ATRAVESADXS” (transversed in Spanish, the “x” is for language inclusivity) is a visual project that documents the testimonies of relatives, siblings, parents and friends of victims of gender-based crimes in Argentina. Eleonora Ghioldi has collected more than 70 testimonies from people who’ve lost a family member in a femicide. “ATRAVESADXS” is part of one of her visual projects that shed light on issues that affect women in Latin America and the United States.
” ‘ATRAVESADXS’ shows that, unfortunately, the violence does not end with femicide but continues in many other forms,” Ghioldi said. “From the media — violence that not only re-victimizes and blames the victims but also the families — to the justice system that not only is not present in the prevention of violence but also does not accompany the families in the process of requesting justice.”
“These are not individual, but collective experiences. Through political organization, these families can continue their fight to demand justice — by these women and also by their children that many of them leave behind,” she added.
View the complete piece here.
-PS
Writer Ruth Etiesit Samuel has a fantastic piece at HuffPost, “The Resurgence of American Girl Doll-Core.”
Here is an excerpt:
The brand, now owned by Mattel, has not only expanded over the years but also has continued to be a mainstay in the memories of middle-class American girls’ childhoods. ***
Instead, in the last year— from Ziwe Fumudoh’s late-night skits about the dolls to TikTok influencers dining at the American Girl doll cafe — the AG franchise has reentered the zeitgeist in a whole new way. Millennials and Gen Z women who have grown out of their doll phase have found community in the meme pages taking over Instagram and Twitter. The dolls have become a rallying cry, both for the nostalgia of our childhoods and as a protest against the series of unfortunate historical events we’ve been living through.
Read the full piece here.
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