Gender and the Law Blog

The Differences in Formal and Informal Faculty Mentoring by Gender and Race

Gina Scutelnicu Todoran, "The Contribution of Formal and Informal Mentorship to Faculty Productivity: Views of Faculty in Public Affairs Programs," Journal of Public Affairs Education 29(4), 404-420

This study examines how mentorship opportunities contribute to the productivity and career growth of public affairs faculty, stratified by gender and race. The study uses primary data coming from an original survey administered at two different points in time (2017 and 2021) to faculty who are part of NASPAA member schools. Results indicate that women and faculty from racially under-represented groups are more likely to receive formal mentoring whereas men and white faculty are more likely to benefit from informal mentoring. Additionally, results show that the relationship between mentoring approaches and research effort differed by the faculty’s member gender and race with formal mentoring contributing to the research effort of men and white faculty across all academic ranks and university types, and informal mentoring contributing to the research effort of mid-career faculty of all genders and races. This study aims to inform individuals and universities about mentoring trends and contributions.

CFP 150th Anniversary of Minor v Happersett and Women's Second Class Citizenship

The 150th Anniversary of Minor v. Happersett: The Past and Future of Women's Rights

Washington University School of Law

September 27, 2024

Call for Papers

Abstract Submission Deadline: June 14

The Washington University School of Law and the Washington University Law Review will host a Symposium centered on the 150th anniversary of the historic St. Louis case, Minor v. Happersett, on September 27, 2024. (The 150th anniversary will align with the subsequent publishing of the Law Review's Symposium edition as Volume 6 of Issue 102 the following spring.)

In 1872, Virginia Minor challenged a St. Louis registrar's decision to block her from registering to vote. Minor argued the Fourteenth Amendment conferred upon her the right to vote as a "privilege" of American citizenship. In 1875, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Minor's assertion, ruling that voting was not a right of national citizenship. Despite the rejection of Minor's claim, this case remains an important historical moment in both American women's suffrage and the feminist movement at large.

This Symposium will bring together scholars across many fields of law, including feminist studies, voting rights and election law, and related fields. Submissions having no direct relation to the Minor case are welcome. Papers might address topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• The history and evolution of women's rights
• Past or present voting rights and election law
• Ballot initiatives post-Dobbs

The Symposium will consist of approximately 3-4 panels over the course of one day, with the panels being created by the Law Review based on relatedness of subject matters across selected pieces. Participants will attend and serve on the panels, and will be asked to read up to a dozen papers (with special attention paid to the papers of others on their panel). The papers circulated for the Symposium are drafts, and the discussion on September 27 will include feedback.

The Symposium will include a dinner the night before. There is no conference fee, and Washington University will host all of the meals on the conference date. Funding will be available to assist with travel expenses-each participant is eligible for up to $1,000 to reimburse hotel and economy-class airfare expenses.

To apply, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to [email protected] by June 14, 2024. Submissions will be vetted by a committee of students from the Law Review, supervised by faculty advisors (listed below). Selection will be based on the originality of the abstract as well as its capacity to engage with other papers in a collaborative dialogue.

Participants will also be invited to submit a paper for publication in the Washington University Law Review's Symposium edition (Issue 6 of Volume 102). The publication cycle for this edition will begin in February 2025, with publication estimated to be in the late summer of 2025. If you are interested in publishing a paper (10,000-15,000 words), please indicate your interest when you submit your abstract.

Participants will be notified of their selection by early July. Drafts for distribution at the Symposium will be due on September 6. We look forward to your submissions and participation. Questions can be directed to the organizing Law Review members and their faculty advisors via the [email protected] address.

Thank you!

Hannah Keidan

Chief Diversity Editor (Law Review lead on the Symposium)

Washington University Law Review

[email protected]

Kaitlyn Salyer

Editor-in-Chief

Washington University Law Review

[email protected]

Susan Frelich Appleton

Lemma Barkeloo & Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law

Washington University School of Law

[email protected]

Travis Crum

Associate Professor of Law

Washington University School of Law

[email protected]

Book Review, Not Everything is About Gender, Reviewing Judith Butler's New Book

Katha Pollitt, Books: Not Everything is About Gender, Atlantic

udith butler, for many years a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC Berkeley, might be among the most influential intellectuals alive today. Even if you have never heard of them (Butler identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns), you are living in their world, in which babies are “assigned” male or female at birth, and performativity is, at least on campus, an ordinary English word. Butler’s breakout 1990 book, Gender Trouble, argued that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. The book is required reading in just about every women’s-, gender-, or sexuality-studies department. Butler has won a raft of international honors and been burned in effigy as a witch in Brazil. How many thinkers can say as much? ***

The central idea of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is that fascism is gaining strength around the world, and that its weapon is what Butler calls the “phantasm of gender,” which they describe as a confused and irrational bundle of fears that displaces real dangers onto imaginary ones. Instead of facing up to the problems of, for example, war, declining living standards, environmental damage, and climate change, right-wing leaders whip up hysteria about threats to patriarchy, traditional families, and heterosexuality. And it works, Butler argues: “Circulating the phantasm of ‘gender’ is also one way for existing powers—states, churches, political movements—to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship, and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities.” ***

In the United States, this politicized use of the word gender itself has not caught on as it has in much of the world, where, as an English word for which many languages have no equivalent, it is often used to attack feminism and LGBTQ rights as foreign imports. Still, as Butler notes, America’s Christian fundamentalists and far-right Republicans are fervently in the anti-gender vanguard, whether or not these groups actually use the word gender.

Book Review, Not Everything is About Gender, Reviewing Judith Butler's New Book

Katha Pollitt, Books: Not Everything is About Gender, Atlantic

udith butler, for many years a professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at UC Berkeley, might be among the most influential intellectuals alive today. Even if you have never heard of them (Butler identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns), you are living in their world, in which babies are “assigned” male or female at birth, and performativity is, at least on campus, an ordinary English word. Butler’s breakout 1990 book, Gender Trouble, argued that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. The book is required reading in just about every women’s-, gender-, or sexuality-studies department. Butler has won a raft of international honors and been burned in effigy as a witch in Brazil. How many thinkers can say as much? ***

The central idea of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is that fascism is gaining strength around the world, and that its weapon is what Butler calls the “phantasm of gender,” which they describe as a confused and irrational bundle of fears that displaces real dangers onto imaginary ones. Instead of facing up to the problems of, for example, war, declining living standards, environmental damage, and climate change, right-wing leaders whip up hysteria about threats to patriarchy, traditional families, and heterosexuality. And it works, Butler argues: “Circulating the phantasm of ‘gender’ is also one way for existing powers—states, churches, political movements—to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship, and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities.” ***

In the United States, this politicized use of the word gender itself has not caught on as it has in much of the world, where, as an English word for which many languages have no equivalent, it is often used to attack feminism and LGBTQ rights as foreign imports. Still, as Butler notes, America’s Christian fundamentalists and far-right Republicans are fervently in the anti-gender vanguard, whether or not these groups actually use the word gender.

New Book, Social Movements and the Law--Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo

Lolita Buckner Innis & Bridget Crawford, Social Movements and the Law: Talking About Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, 
University of California Press (forthcoming 2024)

Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are two of the most prominent social movements of the U.S. in the twenty-first century. On the ground and on social media, in reality and virtuality, more people have taken an active stance in support of either or both movements than almost any other in the country’s history. Social Movements and the Law brings together the voices of twelve scholars and public intellectuals to explore how Black Lives Matter and #MeToo unfolded—separately and together—and how they enrich, inform, and complicate each other. Structured in dialogues, this book shows—rather than tells—how people with different perspectives can engage with open minds and a generosity of spirit. Each chapter begins with an introduction from the editors and includes informative text boxes, illustrations, and discussion questions. This accessible guide to this increasingly influential area of the law centers a rich intersectional analysis of the two social movements and aids readers in further reflection and conversation. It is especially timely given the heightened public attention—both negative and positive—to the broader scholarly study of human social behavior and interaction.

The dialogue participants are Lolita Buckner Inniss, Bridget J. Crawford, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, Bennett I. Capers, Linda S. Greene, Aya Gruber, Osamudia James, Keisha Lindsay, Ruthann Robson, Kathryn M. Stanchi, and Lua Kamál Yuille.

Included here are a short abstract, the table of contents for the book, and the editors’ introductory chapter. The book will be available for pre-order from the University of California Press in April, 2024.

Jordi Goodman on "Ms. Attribution: How Authorship Credit Contributes to the Gender Gap"

Brian Frye's podcast, Ipse Dixit, featured Jordi Goodman talking about a recent article titled Ms. Attribution: How Authorship Credit Contributes to the Gender Gap.  The abstract on SSRN is excerpted here: 

Misattribution plagues the practice of law in the United States. Seasoned practitioners and legislators alike will often claim full credit for joint work and, in some cases, for the entirety of a junior associate’s writing. The powerful over-credit themselves on legislation, opinions, and other legal works to the detriment of junior staff and associates. The ingrained and expected practice of leveraging junior attorneys as ghost-writers has been criticized in the literature as unethical. This practice presents a distinct concern that others have yet to interrogate: misattribution disparately impacts underrepresented members of the legal profession.

 

This Article fills that space by offering a quantitative and theoretical analysis of gendered disparate impact of normative authorship omissions in law. Using patent practitioner signatures from patent applications and office action responses, which include a national identification number correlated to the time of patent bar admission, this work demonstrates how women’s names are disproportionately concealed from the record when the senior most legal team member signs on behalf of the team. This work illustrates that, when women reach equivalent levels of seniority, they do not overexert their power to claim credit to the same extent as their male peers. This parallels sociological findings that competence-based perception, accent bias, and perceived status differentiation between male and female colleagues can manifest in adverse and disparate attribution for women. The gender gap in the legal profession is exacerbated through this practice by falsely implying that women do less work, are more junior, and do not deserve as much credit as their male colleagues.

 

Addressing the failure of current practices requires cultural changes and regulatory action to ensure proper and equitable attribution in scholarship and industry. Legal obligations to maintain the integrity of the legal profession must include these affirmative steps to remedy de facto and de jure discrimination.

 

 

New Book, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words

Jenni Nuttall, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words (Viking 2023)

An enlightening linguistic journey through a thousand years of feminist language--and what we can learn from the vivid vocabulary that English once had for women's bodies, experiences, and sexuality

So many of the words that we use to chronicle women's lives feel awkward or alien. Medical terms are scrupulously accurate but antiseptic. Slang and obscenities have shock value, yet they perpetuate taboos. Where are the plain, honest words for women's daily lives?Mother Tongue is a historical investigation of feminist language and thought, from the dawn of Old English to the present day. Dr. Jenni Nuttall guides readers through the evolution of words that we have used to describe female bodies, menstruation, women's sexuality, the consequences of male violence, childbirth, women's paid and unpaid work, and gender. Along the way, she challenges our modern language's ability to insightfully articulate women's shared experiences by examining the long-forgotten words once used in English for female sexual and reproductive organs. Nuttall also tells the story of words like womb and breast, whose meanings have changed over time, as well as how anatomical words such as hysteria and hysterical came to have such loaded legacies. Inspired by today's heated debates about words like womxn and menstruators--and by more personal conversations with her teenage daughter--Nuttall describes the profound transformations of the English language. In the process, she unearths some surprisingly progressive thinking that challenges our assumptions about the past--and, in some cases, puts our twenty-first-century society to shame. Mother Tongue is a rich, provocative book for anyone who loves language--and for feminists who want to look to the past in order to move forward.

Kirkus Book Review here. 

Book Feminist Judgments Rewriting Decisions of Corporate Law

Anne M. Choike, Usha R. Rodrigues, Kelli Alces Williams, eds., Feminist Judgments: Corporate Law Rewritten (Cambridge U. Press 2023)

Corporate law has traditionally assumed that men organize business, men profit from it, and men bring cases in front of male judges when disputes arise. It overlooks or forgets that women are dealmakers, shareholders, stakeholders, and businesspeople too. This lack of inclusivity in corporate law has profound effects on all of society, not only on women's lives and livelihoods. This volume takes up the challenge to imagine how corporate law might look if we valued not only women and other marginalized groups, but also a feminist perspective emphasizing the importance of power dynamics, equity, community, and diversity in corporate law. Prominent lawyers and legal scholars rewrite foundational corporate law cases, and also provide accompanying commentary that situates each opinion in context, explains the feminist theories applied, and explores the impact the rewritten opinion might have had on the development of corporate law, business, and society.

Dispute Resolution in a Feminist Voice

Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Dispute Resolution in a Feminist Voice, 10 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 151 (Fall 2022)

The presence of women in the law has changed the law’s substance, practice, and process. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, whose scholarship centers on this theme, is one such revolutionary woman.

Professor Menkel-Meadow, who I am proud to call my colleague, co-author, and friend (hereinafter referred to as Carrie), began her career in 1977 with a series of simple questions that sparked a breathtaking body of work. Carrie probed the depth of male domination in the realm of law and wondered what changes female representation might engender. In particular, she focused her inquiry on the value orientation each respective gender might bring to the law: "To what extent are the legal institutions we deal with male-dominated, both in the values they reflect and the manner or means used to express those values? To what extent might the expression of feminine or female values, principles and qualities both in the ends desired and the means used to express those ends alter our legal institutions? How does the increased participation of women in these legal institutions move us toward or away from the realization of feminine values in the law?"

Over 40 years, Carrie elaborated on these questions to develop a thorough and wide-ranging feminist jurisprudence. This Essay attempts to do justice to her work. Part II recapitulates her account of the feminization of the law: the way that feminine values affect the substance of the law; the way that we practice and learn law; and the process of law, especially in the area of Carrie’s other love—dispute resolution. In particular, Carrie used a key narrative to illustrate competing approaches to problem-solving. Spurred by Carol Gilligan’s reanalysis of psychology studies, Carrie dove into the moral dilemmas used in psychology and recast the story of Amy and Jake (where they wrestle over the dilemma of whether to steal drugs to save a life) as a lesson in problem-solving. Throughout her writings, Carrie advocated for a feminine ethic of care to have equal footing with the more traditional (masculine) ethic of justice that has been hallowed in law.

Part III of this Essay uses a different narrative from Carrie’s scholarship to illustrate the application of the feminization of the law. In the case of Ziba—a hypothetical mediation between an underage bride and her controlling husband, Ahmed—we see how Carrie’s own passions for feminism and dispute resolution collide in the mediation process she typically champions. Ultimately, Carrie’s treatment of the case puts into practice the ethic of care developed within her feminist jurisprudence.

Call for Submissions: Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award: Call for Submissions

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to announce the competition for its annual Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  This paper competition is open to all having with five (5) or fewer years of full-time law teaching experience as of July 1, 2023. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2023.

The purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship related to gender and the law.  The work chosen for the Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award should make a substantial contribution to legal literature and reflect original research and/or major developments in previously reported research.

Papers will be reviewed on a blind basis by a committee comprised of members of the Haub Law faculty with expertise in this area.  The winner of the competition will be invited to present the paper to selected students and faculty at Haub Law (located in White Plains, NY) during the 2023-2024 academic year, with reasonable travel expenses from within the continental U.S. paid, or via Zoom, as circumstances permit and by mutual agreement.

ELIGIBILITY:

·         All persons who have held full-time teaching positions for five (5) or fewer full academic years as of July 1, 2023 are eligible for consideration. One does not have to be on the tenure-track or tenured to be eligible. Time as a VAP or Fellow does not "count against" the five (5) year clock.

·         There is no subject-matter limitation for submissions, as long as the paper relates in some way to gender and the law.

·         Jointly authored papers are accepted as long as each author independently meets the eligibility requirements.

PUBLICATION COMMITMENTS/LIMITATIONS:

·         There is no publication commitment associated with the competition. 

·         Papers are eligible regardless of whether they were published prior to submission date, are scheduled to be published after the submission date, or are not yet under submission.

·         Each applicant is limited to one (1) entry.

·         Papers considered in prior years' competitions are eligible for resubmission.

·         There are no page-length or word-count limitations.

·         All publications (including scholarly articles, book chapters, legal briefs and other writings) are eligible for consideration.

SUBMISSION:

·         We will accept submissions for the Emerging Scholar Award from May 10, 2023, through July 1, 2023. The winner will be announced by August 30, 2023.

·         To participate, please email your work, redacted as necessary to preserve anonymity (for the blind judging process), as a portable data file (PDF) to Judy Jaeger, Senior Staff Associate, at [email protected] with the subject line "Emerging Scholar Award."

·      Please include in the body of the email your name, institutional affiliation and confirmation that you meet the eligibility requirements.

·      Unredacted or late papers will not be considered.

Information on Emerging Scholar Award and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to host an annual paper competition for its Women, Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  The law school at Pace University is one of a small number of schools in the United States named after a woman, and we are proud of our school's long-standing commitment to gender justice.

Since the establishment of the Women's Justice Center in 1991, Haub Law has made gender justice a priority.  Students have the ability to pursue a path to practice in Women, Gender & the Law, through which they develop skills and strategies for effective representation and advocacy for women and gender justice, regardless of what career they pursue.  The Haub Law faculty includes nationally recognized academic experts and advocates for women and gender justice. Our faculty teach, research and write about gender equality and justice as it relates to constitutional law, corporate law, criminal law, education, environmental law, estate planning, juvenile justice, legal theory, poverty, public health, social media, and taxation, to name just a few areas.  An important hallmark of Haub Law is that in addition to our specialty classes that focus on gender, issues involving gender are also integrated into a wide range of other courses.

 

Prior Winners

 

2020 – Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Contraceptive Equity: Curing the Sex Discrimination in the ACA's Mandate, 71 Ala. L. Rev. 499 (2019).

 

2021 – Marie Amélie George, Exploring Identity, 54 Fam. L.Q. 1 (2021)

CFP Gender, Health and the Constitution

Gender, Health & the Constitution

Constitutional Law Conference

The Center for Constitutional Law at Akron

Friday, October 13, 2023

The Center for Constitutional Law at Akron seeks proposals for its annual Constitutional Law Conference.  The Center is one of four national centers established by Congress in 1986 on the bicentennial of the Constitution for legal research and public education on constitutional law.  Past presenters at the Center have included Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justice Arthur Goldberg, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, Professor Reva Siegel, Professor Lawrence Solum, Professor Maggie Blackhawk, Professor Katie Eyer, Professor Ernest Young, Professor Julie Suk, and Professor Paula Monopoli, among many others.

The 2023 Conference brings together scholars to explore the constitutional questions at the intersection of gender and health.  The daily news features issues of gender and health, whether related to Covid, abortion, transgender treatment, or maternal health.  Bodily autonomy and health rights raise questions about balancing against the interests of the state and third parties.  And individuals struggle to seek justice for their own lived reality.  This conference invites papers and presentations on any and all aspects related broadly to the theme.  Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Covid: mandates, illness, and gendered differences
• Abortion and reproductive justice
• Transgender school and medical treatment bans
• Maternal health, pregnancy, and surrogacy
• Medical malpractice, including gaslighting of women patients
• Exclusion of women and gendered treatment in medical research
• Barriers in access to healthcare
• Gendered aspects of aging
• Biology as a basis for sex discrimination
• Rights related to gender-affirming care
• Gendered implications of medical conscientious objections

The Conference will be held live, in person on Friday, October 13, 2023, at the University of Akron School of Law.  Presenters may also participate virtually to facilitate participation by all who are interested in joining.  Unfortunately, we are not able to pay for travel expenses, and hope that speakers can be reimbursed from their home institutions.

Papers will then be published in a Winter 2024 Symposium Edition of the Center for Constitutional Law’s open-access journal, ConLawNOW (also indexed in Westlaw, Lexis, and Hein).  Papers are typically shorter essays of 10,000 words.  Publication is expedited within four to six weeks of final paper submission.  The journal is designed to put issues of constitutional import into debate in a timely manner for an opportunity to impact discussion and decision.

Those interested in participating in the 2023 Constitutional Law Conference should send an abstract and CV to Professor Tracy Thomas, Director of the Center for Constitutional Law, at [email protected] by August 15, 2023.   

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.

Study Shows Hierarchy, Race and Gender Impact Scholarly Networks and Who is Helped on Their Legal Academic Path

Keerthana Nunna, W. Nicholson Price II & Jonathan Tietz, Hierarchy Race and Gender in Legal Scholarly Networks, 75 Stanford Law Review 71 (Feb. 2023)

A potent myth of legal academic scholarship is that it is mostly meritocratic and mostly solitary. Reality is more complicated. In this Article, we plumb the networks of knowledge co-production in legal academia by analyzing the star footnotes that appear at the beginning of most law review articles. Acknowledgments paint a rich picture of both the currency of scholarly credit and the relationships among scholars. Building on others’ prior work characterizing the potent impact of hierarchy, race, and gender in legal academia more generally, we examine the patterns of scholarly networks and probe the effects of those factors. The landscape we illustrate is depressingly unsurprising in basic contours but awash in details. Hierarchy, race, and gender all have substantial effects on who gets acknowledged and how, what networks of knowledge co-production get formed, and who is helped on their path through the legal academic world.

Webinar, Advice from Gender and Law Journal Editors, Tips for Prospective Authors

Advice from Gender & Law Journal Editors: Tips for Prospective Authors

Live Zoom Webinar

January 20, 2023 2 pm Eastern/11am Pacific

Advance (free) registration required:  https://pace.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iUMHoSY7TNiUby920O9cSA

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) and Kathryn M. Stanchi (UNLV)

Participating Editors: Renée Mihail, Yale Law ’24; Hannah Mezzacapa, Michigan Law ’23; Addie Davies, Harvard Law ‘23

This webinar is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the US Feminist Judgments Project and 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.

How Gender Bias Worsened the Academic Peer Review Crisis

Chronicle of Higher Ed, How Gender Bias Worsened the Peer Review Crisis

Mounting evidence suggests the peer-review crisis in academic publishing was worsened, in part, by a system that favors male scholars and discourages women.

A new study of nearly 50 journals in the British Medical Journals Publishing Group found that women accounted for less than one in three peer reviewers — scholars who are experts in their field and are critical to vetting new research before it’s published in academic journals. The proportion of female peer reviewers grew by only 2.9 percentage points between 2009 and 2020. ***

At a time when journal editors across fields and publishing houses say finding peer reviewers is harder than ever, why aren’t more tapping into the pool of female professors and researchers?

Ana-Catarina Pinho-Gomes, an academic clinical lecturer at the University College London who researches biases against women in medical research, said the gap can be traced back to how editors select reviewers.

In the early days of peer review, journal editors, who were predominantly white men, would mine their own professional networks — also comprised of mostly white men — to find reviewers. Today, most journals use search engines, like PubMed or Google Scholar, and internal databases to identify, track, and make requests of reviewers. In theory, this system would cut down on individual editor bias. But in practice, Pinho-Gomes said, it carries forward biases from earlier in the pipeline of academic research.

Scholars with more published work are more likely to come up in databases and search engines as potential reviewers, Pinho-Gomes said. For decades, research has shown that women have published less frequently than men in part because women still take on the lion’s share of child and elder care for their families, leaving less time for career advancement and research pursuits. Thus, more-published scholars tend to be men

Gender is One of the Top Topics Legal Scholars are Writing About in 2022

What Legal Scholars are Writing About: 2022 Edition

As 2022 comes to a close, it’s prime time to catch up on the latest legal scholarship published this year — and there’s no shortage of content to explore!

Are you wondering what topics scholars have been focusing on?

Last year, Scholastica dug into our law review data (anonymized and aggregated) to look at some of the most popular keywords added to law review submissions and shared a list of 25 that stood out with examples of related articles. Since interest was high, we decided to keep it going in 2022.

In this blog post, we highlight the 25 most-used keywords for articles accepted via Scholastica from January 1st, 2022, to present and some notable pieces related to those topics. This list is not meant to be interpreted as a ranking of any kind. It is simply intended to provide a window into what legal scholars have been writing about this year. The keywords appear in no apparent order.

Gender is among the most common topics among articles submitted in the recent submission season.  This strikes me as particularly relevant given the historic discounting of  law professors writing about "niche" issues like gender.

Martha Fineman's Feminist Legal Theory Project Historical Archive at Risk of Being Lost

Preserving Our Legacy: An Important Piece of Feminist History is at Risk of Being Lost

One of these women was Martha Albertson Fineman, who in the early 1980s launched the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at University of Wisconsin Law School. For decades, the project has brought together scholars and activists from the U.S. and abroad to explore the most pressing contemporary legal issues affecting women. In multiple-day sessions, organized around specific, evolving sets of issues, feminists presented working papers and debated women’s legal rights. Fineman recorded and preserved these groundbreaking conversations, as well as the working papers and other written material prepared for these sessions.

Fineman is now struggling to convince librarians more accustomed to collecting individuals’ or organizations’ papers of the importance of this historic trove of audio, visual and written materials documenting the collective development of feminist concepts, aspirations and theory.***

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.

“Feminism teaches us that the best ideas come from working together in inclusive, supportive groups,” said Fineman. “Feminism has grown through consciousness raising and the sharing of experience. The best ideas and the best politics emerge from collective engagements and processes.”***

“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.***

After speaking with people at women’s history archives, Fineman is concerned about how decisions to preserve women’s history are made. “Who makes the determination about what and who in the past matters? How and why they make such decisions ultimately shapes what will constitute women’s or feminist history,” said Fineman. “An important piece of feminist history is at risk of being lost or isolated and sidelined.

CFP Book Chapters, Women and Conflicts of Law

CFP Call for Chapter Proposals: Women and Conflicts of Law

Call for Book Chapters:

 Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women and Conflicts of Law:

Global Perspectives, 1815-Present

EXTENDED DEADLINE AND BROADENED FOCUS

We invite chapter submission for inclusion in an edited collection on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women and Conflicts of Law.

The volume discusses the consequences for women when law systems clashed--between independent nations, colonizers and colonized, majority and minority religions, or between secular and religious laws. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw industrial nations draw more and more of the globe into the orbit of their law systems, and these were also the centuries in which women contested their legal positions vigorously. Thus, this period offers an ideal forum for studying the effects of legal differences across the globe. Conflicts of law were inevitable whenever people crossed borders, converted to different religions, or married/divorced someone of a different class, religion, or locality. Women were often harmed by conflicts of law, but this was not inevitable. In other words, these clashes offered both a challenge and an opportunity.

This volume has no geographical limitations; we welcome proposals from historians of all parts of the world. The most important factor for selection will be the authors’ ability to highlight women’s experiences when law systems clashed. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Conflicts between criminal and civil law
• Conflicts over differing national laws of marriage, divorce, and child custody
• Women in imperial law systems
• The interaction between gender and other factors such as race, class, and sexual orientation in the law courts
• Conflict between secular and religious courts
• The consequences of the lack of legal recognition for lesbian and transgender families
• The regulation and criminalization of sex work across national borders
• Women as actors in the international legal community
• Feminist efforts to eliminate women’s disabilities caused by conflicts of law
• Disputes over nationality, dual nationality, and statelessness in peace and war

The proposed schedule is as follows:

January 15, 2023 – Proposals due; these should be of no more than 300 words, accompanied by a one-page C.V.

February 15, 2023 – Authors receive notice of editorial decision.

November 15, 2023 – Full manuscripts due to the editor. Manuscripts should be standard length for journal articles, approximately 7,500-8,500 words (including notes).

Those interested in contributing should direct all correspondence to the volume editor, Dr. Ginger Frost at: [email protected]

CFP AALS Annual Meeting Emerging Voices in Feminist Theory

The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education invites submissions for its program Emerging Voices in Feminist Theory at the 2023 AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego, California (January 3-6, 2023).

This works-in-progress session will give scholars writing on any topic concerning feminist theory the opportunity for engagement on a current project with others in the field. Each selected scholar will present a work-in-progress and receive comments from an assigned commentator, as well as from other participants. The session will provide selected scholars with a supportive environment in which to receive constructive feedback.

Full-time faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools are eligible to submit works-in-progress. Visiting faculty (not full-time on a different faculty) and fellows are eligible to apply to present at this session. We especially encourage submissions from members of groups who are underrepresented in the academy, including people with disabilities.

Please submit an abstract (500 words or less). Scholarship may be at any stage of the writing process from early stage  to almost-completed article, but cannot yet be accepted for publication at the time of abstract submission. Each potential speaker may submit only one abstract for consideration.

To be considered, abstracts should be emailed to Professor Danielle C. Jefferis, University of Nebraska College of Law, at [email protected] by Friday, September 16, 2022.

Submission review, selection, conference attendance: Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the Section's Works-in-Progress subcommittee, which also includes Katherine Macfarlane, Southern University Law School, Suzanne Kim, Rutgers Law School, and Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia School of Law. Selected presenters will be announced by October 1, 2022. The Call for Paper presenters will be responsible for paying their own AALS registration fee, hotel, and travel expenses. If paper presenters want anything beyond their abstracts discussed at the AALS session, then papers must be submitted by Dec. 15, 2022, to ensure distribution.

Book Review, Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality 1920-2020

Book Review, Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality, 1920-2020

This snapshot illustrates the merits of Elisabeth Griffith’s engaging, relevant and sweeping chronicle of women’s fight for equality in the United States — and by examining 100 years of history through a feminist lens, a pattern emerges: Each blow from the patriarchy is countered by a well-aimed and calculated retaliation from American women.

 

Books of true feminist history are rare. Rarer still are these histories intersectional; feminist history tends to be synonymous with white women’s history. Not this book. Griffith delivers a multiracial, inclusive timeline of the struggles and triumphs of both Black and white women in America. “Historically, the white press has not covered the activism of Black women,” she writes. (Her previous book centered on the life of Cady Stanton.) Despite difficult-to-find archival sources, Griffith says, “I’ve named as many women as possible.”

 

A profoundly illuminating tour de force, Griffith’s book begins with Susan B. Anthony and unfolds chronologically, sorted into chapters that track a “pink” timeline of history. “Fifty years ago, when women’s history was struggling for legitimacy in academia,” Griffith explains, “feminists divided American history into ‘blue’ and ‘pink’ timelines. Conference panels debated whether Zachary Taylor’s presidency was more relevant to women’s lives than the invention of the tin can, or whether Jacksonian democracy deserved a chapter when the suffrage campaign did not.”

 

“Formidable” is organized around major fights: voting rights, working conditions, education access, health care, racial violence, reproductive rights, race and gender discrimination, the wage gap, electoral office.