Gender and the Law Blog

Bibliography of Research on Mothering and Care Work

Care Work--Gender & Society

GENDER & SOCIETY IN THE CLASSROOM: CARE WORK

Organized by: Adrienne L. Riegle, PhD Candidate, Iowa State University
Updated by: Erielle Jones, University of Illinois – Chicago

This list offers a diverse yet inclusive selection of articles relating to care work published in Gender & Society, between 2000 and 2013. While each uniquely contributes to the growing scholarship on care work, taken together, these articles represent a broad conceptualization of care work in a global context. This literature also illustrates lingering nature of caregiving constructed as women’s work. In order to reduce the number of articles resulting from searching with the terms “care work” on the Gender & Society web page, I have included neither book reviews nor less-relevant articles in this list. The more recent research included draws on previous literature in the study of care work. Instructors are encouraged to peruse the references of these articles for interesting scholarship published in Gender & Society that precedes the most recent decade. Additionally, classes are encouraged to give particular attention to the special issue (vol. 17, issue 2) dedicated to care work in April 2003.

Ireland Announces Referendum for Constitutional Amendment for Gender Equality

Taoiseach and Minister O’Gorman announce holding of referendum on gender equality

The Taoiseach said:

For too long, women and girls have carried a disproportionate share of caring responsibilities, been discriminated against at home and in the workplace, objectified or lived in fear of domestic or gender-based violence.

"I am pleased to announce that the government plans to hold a Referendum this November to amend our Constitution to enshrine gender equality and to remove the outmoded reference to ‘women in the home’, in line with the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality.

h/t Prof. Julie Suk

Virginia Judge Cites 19th Century Slavery Law in Holding Frozen Embryos are Chattel

Judge Richard Gardiner, a Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge, has made national headlines by ruling that frozen embryos are legal chattel. 

The preliminary opinion by a Fairfax county circuit court judge, Richard Gardiner, which he delivered in a long-running dispute between a divorced husband and wife, is being criticized by some for wrongly and unnecessarily delving into a time in Virginia history when it was legal to own human beings.

 

Solomon Ashby, president of the Old Dominion Bar Association, a professional organization made up primarily of African American lawyers, called Gardiner’s ruling troubling.

 

“I would like to think that the bench and the bar would be seeking more modern precedent,” he said.

 

Gardiner did not return a call to his chambers on Wednesday. His decision, issued last month, is not final: he has not yet ruled on other arguments in the case involving Honeyhline and Jason Heidemann, a divorced couple fighting over two frozen embryos that remain in storage.

Here is a link to the full opinion. The ruling file format does not allow for pasting into this blog, however, the reasoning on pages 7-8 is worth a read.

Resolving the Interstate Conflict of Emerging Abortion Laws by Borrowing a Model from Family Law

Susan Frelich Appleton, Out of Bounds?: Abortion, Choice of Law, and a Modest Role for Congress  
35 J. Am. Acad. Matrim. Law._____ (2023)

This invited contribution to a symposium on the multiple intersections of family law and constitutional law grapples with the emerging problems of jurisdictional competition and choice of law in interstate abortion situations in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—as abortion-hostile states seek to impose restrictions beyond their borders and welcoming states seek to become havens for abortion patients, regardless of their domicile. Grounded in a conflict-of-laws perspective, the essay lays out the interstate abortion chaos invited by Dobbs and the threat to our federal system that it presents, given Congress’s failure to codify a national right to abortion in the Women’s Health Protection Act or other proposals. The essay then examines the promise, shortcomings, and uncertainties of relevant provisions of the U.S. Constitution as potential solutions to the problems. With no magic constitutional bullet available, new tools are needed to address this looming “war between the states.” The essay proceeds to propose one, borrowing a model from family law’s existing toolkit, specifically, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA).

Enacted under Congress’s power to implement the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the PKPA’s intervention is modest, and it walks the fine line that that clause requires—recognizing each state’s sovereignty while commanding respect for other states’ prerogatives, aspiring to achieve national unity and harmony. Accordingly, the PKPA does not address the merits of an underlying child custody controversy or impose substantive custody-law requirements on the states. Instead, it allocates authority over child custody matters among the states and then ensures respect elsewhere for such authority lawfully exercised.

The recent enactment of the Respect for Marriage Act bodes well for this approach in a Congress that must bridge sharp divisions in order to legislate at all. It too allocates authority and ensures respect elsewhere, without codifying a right to celebrate same-sex and interracial marriages throughout the country.

Of course, how to allocate authority over abortion presents vexing challenges. What concessions would be worth making to have the certain knowledge that abortion-friendly states really are safe havens? Even if Congress cannot codify reproductive rights, can a majority of the House and at least 60 members of the Senate fulfill their responsibility under the Full Faith and Credit Clause so that the “laboratory of the states” can survive as a single nation?

OK Judge Denies Lesbian Partner Martial Presumption of Parenthood

OK Judge Transferred a Lesbian Mom's Parental Rights to her Son's Sperm Donor

Kris Williams is a lesbian, and that means she won’t be seeing her son anytime soon. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. On Monday, Oklahoma County District Judge Lynne McGuire ruled that Williams had failed to adopt her son and had forfeited her parenting rights to his sperm donor. 

Advocates say Williams’ case may test the bounds of equal marriage laws in Oklahoma and beyond. According to Williams, she and her ex-partner Rebekah Wilson planned to have their son and found sperm donor Harlan Vaughn on a paternity website together. The two married while Wilson was pregnant. 

In most states, married couples are presumed parents of children born within those unions. Williams said she and Wilson raised W. (whose name has been excluded to protect his identity) for two years. But the couple split bitterly in 2021, and Wilson moved in with Vaughn, taking W. with her. She argued that Williams was not W.’s mom. 

McGuire agreed and retroactively removed Williams from W.’s birth certificate last May. 

“I don’t feel like we should have to adopt our own children,” Williams told the 19th. “If I was a man, then nobody could come back and you know, question whether that child was mine or not, after they’re the age of two.” 

McGuire reinstated Williams on the birth certificate in June, and Williams’ name remains. But the issue of Williams’ parental rights was still undecided until February 13, when McGuire ruled that Oklahoma’s parentage act predated marriage equality and therefore didn’t apply to Williams and Wilson.***

Legal experts warn that the case could have substantial implications for marriage equality nationwide. Advocates battled a number of cases to enshrine same-sex marriage protections after the Supreme Court granted those rights nationwide in 2015. Among those fights was the right of parentage. The 2015 Supreme Court case Pavan v. Smith found that it was unconstitutional to treat queer couples differently than heterosexual couples when it came to presuming parentage. If married heterosexual couples were presumed to be parents of children born during their marriage, the same must be true for LGBTQ+ couples. 

However, laws vary state to state. 

 

The European Court of Human Rights' Decisions Attaching Increasing Importance to Paternal Care and Substantive Gender Equality

Alice Margaria, Another Side of Gender Equality: Fatherhood in the ECtHR Jurisprudence,  
I. Motoc, I. Jelic, S. Suteu and E. Brodeala (eds), Women's Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century: Developments and Challenges under International and European Law (Forthcoming)

This paper sheds light on a central, yet rarely discussed, contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to advancing women's rights and substantive gender equality: that is the increased importance attached to paternal care in its jurisprudence pertaining to fatherhood under Article 8 alone and in conjunction with Article 14. It is argued that this case-law gives us plenty of signs that the Court is taking some promising step towards creating a right to substantive gender equality. In particular, what appears to be the most promising is not – or at least not just – the extension of legal protection to a wider range of ‘unconventional’ fathers, but the way in which this extension has materialised: namely, by acknowledging the central value of care thus advancing, rather than overshadowing, women’s quest for equality. That being said, the same case-law poses also some limitations and risks from a substantive gender equality perspective. Firstly, paternal care is attached different meanings, ranging from actual caregiving to mere caring potential, entailing the risk of 'sentimentalising' care and fatherhood. Secondly, paternal care tends to be given ‘only’ conditional importance: expressions of paternal care are generally taken into consideration if expressed in an otherwise conventional context (eg, genetics, marriage, heteronormativity), rather than being decisive on its own. This assimilationist logic has, in turn, translated into a lower level of protection accorded to same-sex and trans fathers, thus calling for some critical reflections and (more) cautious interpretation of the Court’s reconstruction of fatherhood.

The Implications of Dobbs for the Right of Contraception

Martha Minow, The Unraveling: What Dobbs May Mean for Contraception, Liberty, and Constitutionalism" 
Lee Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, eds., Roe v. Dobbs: The Past, Present and Future of a Constitutional Right to Abortion, Forthcoming

This chapter explores the implications of the Supreme Court’s revocation of pregnant person’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy; specifically, it explores implications for individuals’ right to choose to prevent a pregnancy through the purchase and use of contraceptives. Examining what the justices explicitly stated about the impact of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on access to contraception, what they did not discuss, and what are likely and possible effects of the discussion, the chapter explores immediately and grave uncertainty and heightened risk not only of unwanted pregnancies but also of job and wage insecurity for many people who can become pregnant as well as jeopardy to public confidence in the courts and law.

New NY Child Custody Law Protects Rights of Unmarried Fathers

A New Law Co-Drafted by Christine Gottlieb Protects Custody Rights for Unmarried Fathers 

On December 30, 2022, Governor Kathy Holchul signed the Parental Equity Act, which amended decades-old legislation to provide unwed fathers a full and fair opportunity to maintain custody of their child. The new law was written by Christine Gottlieb ’97, director of NYU Law’s Family Defense Clinic, and Amy Mulzer, a senior attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services and a former Family Defense Clinic fellow.

Gottlieb and Mulzer drafted the bill with two goals in mind: to reunite children with parents whenever safely possible, and to deconstruct the gender stereotypes that they say the previous law perpetuated. 

In this Q&A, Gottlieb talks about her 20 years in the Family Defense Clinic, the court case that inspired the Parental Equity Act, and the work that went into getting the bill to the governor’s desk.

The Equality Problems with Erasing Gestation as an Important Feature of Constitutional Parenthood

Katharine K. Baker, Equality, Gestational Erasure and the Constitutional Law of Parenthood,  
35 J of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers 501 (2022)

This article calls into question the abundance of academic writing that criticizes, as inconsistent with equality principles, the constitutional law of parenthood. Some of this criticism, concerned with gender stereotypes, argues that the current doctrine’s preferential treatment of gestational mothers inexcusably discriminates against fathers. Other critics focus on how the Supreme Court’s approach to gestational investment excludes same sex partners from parental rights. Both of these critiques argue that the work of gestation has been overvalued. They both endorse a kind of gestational erasure, but they differ sharply on where they root the essence of parenthood. Those concerned about equal treatment for fathers root parenthood in genetics. Those concerned about equal treatment for same sex partners root parenthood in parental investment. This article highlights the tension between these positions and challenges those willing to erase the relevance of gestation at both a normative and practical level. It explains how discounting the relevance of gestation will have serious consequences for the law of abortion, adoption and custody, placing already vulnerable women at more risk of being controlled by men they want to escape. Further, this article argues that the current constitutional doctrine, which recognizes the salience of gestation, necessarily incorporates what LGBTQ advocates argue must be incorporated into decisions about parenthood: parental investment. What is inconsistent with LGBTQ equality in parenthood is not a regime that recognizes gestational investment, but one that reifies the genetic essentialism on which the gender-stereotype critique relies.

Members of the Military will Now Get 12 Weeks of Parental Leave

Military Members Will Now Get 12 Weeks of Parental Leave

Members of the military will now get 12 weeks of parental leave, doubling the previous amount, after a memorandum from the Department of Defense went into effect Wednesday.

The 12 weeks are for both birthing and non-birthing parents, which includes parents of recently adopted children and members who use surrogates, and applies to parents of children born or adopted after Dec. 27, 2022.

Eligible members must be in active or reserve duty for at least 12 months.

Parents giving birth will also receive a period of convalescence to recover from labor "if such leave is specifically recommended, in writing, by the health care provider of the birth parent to address a diagnosed medical condition and is approved by the unit commander," the memo states.

Senate Passes Protections for Pregnant Workers and New Mothers

Senate Passes Protections for Pregnant Workers and New Mothers

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support on Thursday as amendments to the omnibus spending package.

Why it matters: It's a major milestone for women's workplace civil rights. Advocates have pushed for protections for pregnant workers for over a decade, arguing that thousands of women lose their jobs each year — either fired or placed on unpaid leave — because employers are under no obligation to offer pregnant workers reasonable accommodations.

• Those would include things like extra bathroom breaks, the ability to sit while working a cash register or restrictions on how much weight they can lift.

Patrice Ruane Publishes Article on Women's Employment from the Great Depression to the Great Recesssion

Patrice Ruane has published From Pin Workers to Essential Workers: Lessons About Women's Employment and the Covid-19 Pandemic from the Great Depression and the Great Recession in volume 29 of the UCLA Journal of Gender and the Law. The abstract is here: 

This Article argues that inaccurate ideas about women and work during economic downturns, including misconceptions about which women work and how they work, lead to inadequate policy responses and ultimately hurt working women. New Deal-era federal women’s aid programs, designed around an artificial picture of the average working woman, did not provide the same robust level of jobs support that men’s programs provided. Similarly, the major federal stimulus package during the Great Recession invested in male-majority industries but failed to invest in industries dependent upon women’s labor, in part because of the misconception that working women were already “winning” the jobs race. Framing the average working woman during the pandemic recession as a remote worker in a two-income household has the potential to steer federal policy away from avenues that would help the majority of women workers who are not remote workers in two-income households. Recovery efforts during the Great Depression and the Great Recession were gender-informed and effective, but biased toward men. These recovery efforts were concentrated in male-majority industries and consequently led to men’s employment recovering long before women’s employment did. Because pandemic-related job losses have been so unevenly borne by women, gender-informed recovery policies are not only justifiable, but necessary to achieve equitable recovery.

 

This Article also questions the speculation, articulated in an influential paper by a group of economists, that the COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate changing social norms and lead to greater gender parity by increasing the number of people who are accustomed to working remotely and driving men to take on additional childcare responsibilities. The conditions following the Great Depression and the Great Recession were more conducive to changing gender norms and expectations because both events disrupted traditional male-breadwinner models of the family and resulted in large numbers of families in which the woman was employed and the man unemployed. But neither resulted in lasting improvements in gender equity in the home or at work. Both events were followed by a reactionary impulse to return to a traditionally gendered view of the organization of labor. The pandemic recession does not present the opportunity to disrupt gender norms by creating more households headed by women breadwinners, yet the risk of a conservative reversion to more traditionally gendered norms is still present.

 

The Respect for Marriage Act Doesn't Codify the Fundamental Right of Same-Sex Marriage But Requires Interstate Recognition of Marriages

The 19th, Why The Respect for Marriage Act Doesn't Codify Same-Sex Marriage Rights

The U.S. House approved legislation Thursday to shore up marriage rights for LGBTQ+ couples. The Respect for Marriage Act has been hailed by lawmakers as a landmark law that will protect queer Americans for generations to come. 

The Senate advanced the bill last month, and President Joe Biden is expected to sign it. 

But the bill doesn’t codify the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that granted LGBTQ+ couples the right to marry. Instead, it forces states without marriage equality laws to recognize LGBTQ+ marriages from other states. 

It also declares all legal marriages in the United States must be recognized, even across state lines. That means if a marriage is recognized in Maine, it must be recognized in Texas. That part is seen as critical so that queer families can cross state lines to get married even if their home states don’t offer those rights. It also means that married couples can travel without having to worry that a hospital in another state won’t recognize their marriage in the event that one spouse has an emergency and another needs to visit or make medical decisions on their behalf. The same would be true for interracial couples, who the bill also protects — although the justices have not indicated that interracial marriage rights should be reconsidered.

Bill to Protect Same Sex Marriage Rights Clears Congress

The legislation repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and allows states to refuse to honor same-sex marriages performed in other states. It prohibits states from denying the validity of an out-of-state marriage based on sex, race or ethnicity.

But in a condition that Republican backers insisted upon, it would guarantee that religious organizations would not be required to provide any goods or services for the celebration of any marriage, and could not lose tax-exempt status or other benefits for refusing to recognize same-sex unions.

Same Sex Marriage Bill Clears Critical Hurdle in Congress

NYT, Same-Sex Marriage Rights Bill Clears a Crucial Senate Hurdle

The Senate on Wednesday took a crucial step toward passing landmark legislation to provide federal protections for same-sex marriages, as 12 Republicans joined Democrats to advance the Respect for Marriage Act, putting it on track to become law in the twilight of the Democratic-held Congress.

The 62-to-37 vote, which came only days after the midterm elections in which Democrats retained control of the Senate but lost the House to Republicans, was a rare and notable last gasp of bipartisanship by a lame duck Congress as lawmakers looked toward an era of political gridlock.

It also signaled a remarkable shift in American politics and culture, demonstrating how same-sex marriage, once a divisive issue, has been so widely accepted that a law to protect the rights of same-sex couples across the country could gain decisive, bipartisan majorities in both the Senate and the House. Last summer, 47 House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a version of the bill.

New Book Invisible Mothers, Unseen Yet Hypervisible After Incarceration

New Book, Invisible Mothers: Unseen Yet Hypervisible After Incarceration (UC Press)

Author Book Talk, Q&A With Janet Garcia-Hallett, Author of Invisible Mothers

Mothering is work. Yet, as I mention in my book, not all motherwork is equally visible, validated, or respected by the general public. This is especially true for mothers in the criminal legal system. Their experiences are unique because of the competing demands they face in oppressive carceral systems. Still, they did motherwork through varying housing arrangements, in noncustodial circumstances, while recovering from substance use, with low pay, during unemployment, and while not in contact with their children. All things considered, they did motherwork that was realistic for them and their circumstances post-incarceration – even if this went unnoticed or was undervalued by outsiders.

 

A Majority of State Constitutions Have Gender Equality Provisions

Brennan Center for Justice, State-Level Equal Rights Amendments: A Majority of State Constitutions have Gender Equality Provisions

In the United States, the fight for a federal Equal Rights Amendment has been a century in the making.

Meanwhile, state-level equivalents abound. Some are comprehensive provisions of state constitutions that guarantee equal rights regardless of an individual’s gender, and others are provisions that prohibit gender-based discrimination in specific circumstances.

State courts and constitutions are becoming increasingly important in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as well as federal courts’ growing hostility to many forms of civil rights protection. In the coming months and years, litigants may increasingly turn to state-level Equal Rights Amendments. 

What follows is a summary of the protections afforded in the 50 states. It is not intended to be exhaustive and may change and evolve in real time.

Neoshia Roemer Positions Haaland v. Brackeen in Reproductive Justice Framework

Neoshia Roemer published a robust summary of the upcoming Haaland v. Brackeen case to be argued before the Supreme Court on November 9th. This recent Gender Policy Report featuring Professor Roemer powerfully connects the Haaland case to issues of reproductive justice. 

The reproductive justice rights framework posits that all human beings possess three rights: the right to not have a child, the right to have a child, and the right to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment. Reproductive justice requires intersectional frameworks that respond to the needs of individuals who experience challenges to reproductive autonomy in a variety of ways.

As many have noted, feminist advocacy has often focused on the right to not have a child, or access to contraception and abortion. By focusing on the right to not have a child, the feminist movement did not always speak to the concerns of American Indian women and people. A reproductive justice framework applied to American Indians recognizes that Indian families deserve to have children and exist in safe and healthy environments. 

Summarizing the case, Professor Roemer writes:

In Haaland v. Brackeen, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the claims of three sets of adoptive parents, a biological parent, three states, four Indian tribes, and the federal government.  The Court will determine whether ICWA is unconstitutional on potentially three grounds that include arguments such as states’ rights to regulate families, Congress’ ability to pass legislation like ICWA, and whether ICWA is an impermissible race-based statute. The impetus for the Plaintiffs in the original lawsuit is simple and two-fold. Some prospective parents wanted to adopt Indian children and claim that the ICWA is “outdated”, while some states believe that they should not have to implement ICWA at the behest of the federal government. The crux of the argument here is that the USA does not need a law that would protect the reproductive rights and sovereignty of American Indians.

Abortion Bans Preventing Access to Cancer Care

During Summer 2022, while I was taking a break from blogging for health reasons, I published this Op. Ed. with NBC News. I cautioned that abortion bans would quickly create a tale of two healthcare systems for pregnant women far beyond abortion access, focusing on my own experiences with breast cancer as I moved employment from Kentucky to Virginia. 

The ACLU of Ohio has now submitted affidavits in court documenting this occurrence along with many other harms to pregnant persons. The filing describes a woman with stage III melanoma who was was forced to suspend cancer care until she terminated her pregnancy, which she could not do legally in Ohio. 

An Article published by Katherine Van Loom, MD, and Jordyn Silverstein, MD, in JAMA Oncology (August 2022) reports that 

Approximately 1 in 1,000 pregnancies are affected by a concurrent cancer diagnosis. The most common cancers include breast cancer, cervical cancer, lymphoma, ovarian cancer, leukemia, colorectal cancer and melanoma. Termination of the pregnancy occurs in 9% to 28% of cases, with many occurring in the first trimester.

The 19th reported on this issue in its article Abortion Bans are Preventing Cancer Patients from Getting Chemotherapy. Shefali Luthra, writing for The 19th on October 7th explained the complexities: 

Those are often emotionally fraught conversations . . .  particularly for patients who intended to become pregnant and did not know about their cancer. If the disease is still in its early stages, some may attempt to surgically remove it, then wait for the pregnancy to reach its second trimester. If needed, they can begin chemotherapy at that point, hoping that the cancer has not progressed too far in the meanwhile. 

 

But others, particularly those whose cancer is already more advanced, may need to get an abortion, begin chemotherapy and then try to become pregnant after, once they have completed treatment. There are even further complications there since chemotherapy can damage someone’s fertility. 

 

In those cases, telling patients that they cannot receive an abortion in state becomes even more difficult. * * * “And then you have to say, ‘By the way, the state of Tennessee doesn’t think you’re dying enough, so for you to get the care you need now that you’ve made this tough decision, you have to go to an abortion clinic out of state.”

Remote Work as Reinforcing Gender Inequality and the Difficulty of Work-Life Balance

Tammy Katsabian, The Work-Life Virus: Working from Home and its Implications for the Gender Gap and Questions of Intersectionality, Forthcoming in the Oklahoma Law Review

Work–life balance is considered to be the top challenge for working women globally. The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed a worldwide experiment regarding the various components of this challenge and its possible solutions. Because the pandemic forced numerous workers to shift their working lives from the office to their private homes, it created the largest global experiment in remote work in human history, with implications for women’s equality.

As this article wishes to show, the phenomenon of remote work illuminates gender inequality and the difficulty of work–life balance. Since remote work is mainly conducted from the personal residence of the employee, it generates a hybrid private–professional site and brings to the workplace context the private characteristics of the employee. Thus, remote work exposes how women’s traditional role in the private sphere—caregivers—influences their ability to progress at work. The ubiquity of the trend of remote work during the pandemic also revealed what third-wave feminism argued long ago: the feminine experience is not unitary; different women must cope with different difficulties. The pandemic showed that the ability to shift to remote work and successfully balance work with familial duties is not uniform among women. Questions of financial and marital status are also part of this equation.

It appears that working from a distance with the help of technology will become the most prominent way to conduct work in the future. Unless different regulatory models are developed, the current massive telecommuting trend has the potential to strengthen gendered and socioeconomic inequalities in U.S. society. Against this background, this article suggests a model for a solution that considers private–professional hybridity and both employers and governmental authorities. In this way, the article offers broad systemic solutions intended to diminish the effect of an employee’s familial and socioeconomic background on her ability to shift to telework on an equal basis with others and, in doing so, participate equally in the digitalized labor market of the future. 

Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harm

Donna Coker, Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harm, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, Vol. 36, No. 5, 2021

The last several years have seen a dramatic increased interest in the U.S. for the use of Restorative Justice (RJ) responses to intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual harm. This change is most apparent in sectors of the mainstream feminist anti-violence movement and is reflected (unevenly) in public policies. I have described this shift as a “reimagined movement to end gender violence.” This reimagining project encompasses not only a less carceral response to harm, but a greater focus on changes in the social conditions that create and maintain violence. It is focused on economic and racial justice, on better responses to trauma, and on violence interruption that relies less on the state and more on community. Additional changes in the RJ movement and the anti-mass incarceration movement have converged to create a moment of opportunity for significantly transforming responses to IPV and sexual harm. These movements and policy trends provide an opportunity for less punitive and non-carceral responses to IPV and sexual harm, including RJ, and simultaneously for RJ responses that are intentionally gender- and race-conscious, attending to both individual and system change.

The most common understanding of RJ practice is that in response to a specific harm, the stakeholders affected come together address the harm. The harm or injustice sought to be addressed may be interpersonal and regard recent events or it may be a historical harm or involve institutional responsibility. For cases involving contemporary harm, the common conception of RJ is a process that involves what I have termed matched dialogue—that is, a dialogue that, at a minimum, includes the person(s) who caused harm and the person(s) they harmed.

While matched dialogue describes a significant amount of RJ programming, it is an incomplete description. There are practices and programs centered on responses to specific contemporary harms that do not involve matched dialogue and there are restorative practices that are not centered on a response to harm, but rather on community-building, prevention, education, and empowerment.

I provide an overview of this broader understanding of restorative justice as it relates to responses to and prevention of IPV and sexual harm. I include descriptions of three distinct processes and describe some of the benefits of matched dialogue restorative responses to IPV and sexual harm, concluding with some cautions. I also describe the growing number of RJ programs that are community-based prevention, education, and community building.

 

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