Public Law - Engendering Equality

A special issue of Laws (ISSN 2075-471X). This special issue belongs to the section "Law and Gender Issues".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2014) | Viewed by 20014

Special Issue Editor

Concord Research Center, The College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS), 7 Yitzhak Rabin Blvd., Rishon LeZion 7502501, Israel and Chair of the UNHRC Working Group on Discrimination against Women
Interests: international human rights law; comparative constitutional law; religion and human rights; gender issues; labor law; union organization and collective rights

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue on public law and gender will explore the way in which public law regulates the access of women to policymaking positions in the political, economic, and religious spheres. The examination of public law will be multifaceted, and will look into international human rights, constitutional law, statutory law, and judge-made law.

Political life includes, in its widest sense, all policymaking institutions. Such institutions include international and regional bodies, national parliaments, local government, civil service, and civil society organizations. Economic governance takes place in the national and transnational worlds of corporations, financial institutions, and trade; such governance is a crucial determinant of the quality of life in modern societies. Religious institutions may influence policy in the public space in a variety of ways, either as state-recognized institutions that have autonomy in certain communities or as private institutions that exercise lobbying power in political or economic governance.

The contributors will address the ways in which public law is directly or indirectly discriminatory on the grounds of sex, marital status, parenthood, and sexual identity. They will explore the ways in which this discrimination obstructs equality of participation in public policy. They will discuss the role of public law in eliminating such discrimination and in requiring positive action to promote participation. Such actions may entail quota systems, reporting requirements or tax incentives. They will also examine facilitative measures that level the playing field for participation by persons with child care responsibilities.

Professor Frances Raday
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Laws is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • gender
  • women
  • discrimination
  • political
  • religion
  • economic
  • corporate
  • positive action
  • quotas

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

216 KiB  
Article
The Cosmopolitan Future: A Feminist Approach
by Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui
Laws 2016, 5(3), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5030034 - 19 Aug 2016
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 7508
Abstract
This study questions the “clash of civilizations” thesis. Referring to the cosmopolitanization process as defined by Beck and Sznaider (2010), I analyze the cosmopolitanization of feminism, that is, the gradual recognition of “the others’ others”, the women, through the evolution of their political [...] Read more.
This study questions the “clash of civilizations” thesis. Referring to the cosmopolitanization process as defined by Beck and Sznaider (2010), I analyze the cosmopolitanization of feminism, that is, the gradual recognition of “the others’ others”, the women, through the evolution of their political rights—the right to elect and be elected—at a global level. In this context, the descriptive representation of women, their substantive representation, and their voices within civil society in the North and the South highlight the fact that feminism is undergoing a process of cosmopolitanization, albeit in a slow and sporadic way. I present this argument from a postcolonial feminist perspective and base my research on NGOs’ data and on data provided by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN-Women. First, I analyze the cosmpolitanization process as applied to feminism. Then, following Beck and Sznaider (2010), I describe how this process is articulated ‘from above’ (top-down cosmopolitanization), referring to electoral data from around the world and to international law. Further, I relate to the cosmopolitanization of feminism ‘from below’, referring to feminist theories, cyberfeminism and the global civil/feminist society. In conclusion, I discuss the common future of feminism and cosmopolitanism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Law - Engendering Equality)
253 KiB  
Article
The Absence of the Right to Culture of Minorities within Minorities in Israel: A Tale of a Cultural Dissent Case
by Meital Pinto
Laws 2015, 4(3), 579-601; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4030579 - 01 Sep 2015
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2460
Abstract
The Israeli Plonit case concerns a Muslim woman who wished to be represented by a female arbitrator in a Shari’a Court. The Shari’a Court of Appeals denied her request and decided that Shari’a Law permits only men to serve as arbitrators. Plonit petitioned [...] Read more.
The Israeli Plonit case concerns a Muslim woman who wished to be represented by a female arbitrator in a Shari’a Court. The Shari’a Court of Appeals denied her request and decided that Shari’a Law permits only men to serve as arbitrators. Plonit petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, which accepted her petition and decided that the Shari’a Court of Appeals’ decision infringed her right to equality. While I support the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision, my paper sheds a light on a crucial matter that is absent in the decision; namely, the right to culture of Muslim women, who are a vulnerable members of a minority group in Israel, and therefore constitute a “minority within minority”. Analysing the case in terms of Plonit’s right to culture, in addition to her right to equality, has two advantages. First, it stresses the main issues at the heart of the legal debate, which are the minority culture’s norms and practices, and the right of the minority within the minority to influence and shape them as much as the majority within the minority. Second, when the minority within the minority’s claim is put in terms of the right to culture, and not only in terms of the right to equality, they are not necessarily perceived by other minority members as claims that try to enforce external norms on the minority culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Law - Engendering Equality)
347 KiB  
Article
The Political Contingency of Sex Discrimination Legislation: The Case of Australia
by Margaret Thornton
Laws 2015, 4(3), 314-334; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4030314 - 24 Jun 2015
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3847
Abstract
There has been a marked shift away from social liberalism in many parts of the world which has profound ramifications for women, whose status remains contingent on the good graces of public institutions that remain resolutely masculinist. Neoliberalism, with its focus on the [...] Read more.
There has been a marked shift away from social liberalism in many parts of the world which has profound ramifications for women, whose status remains contingent on the good graces of public institutions that remain resolutely masculinist. Neoliberalism, with its focus on the privatisation of public goods and promotion of the self within the market has become the dominant political ideology everywhere and is further undermining the interests of the majority of women. This essay will address the changing fortunes of sex discrimination legislation as a specific example of an initiative designed to improve the status of women. Australia will be used as a case study because of its passionate embrace of, first, social liberalism, and then, neoliberalism. Issues pertaining to affirmative action (positive action), intersection with human rights instruments, reporting requirements and incentives will also be addressed. Although Australia is a multi-jurisdictional federation, the essay will focus primarily on the federal arena in terms of legislative initiatives, policy and jurisprudence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Law - Engendering Equality)
246 KiB  
Article
Why Workers’ Rights Are Not Women’s Rights
by Heidi Gottfried
Laws 2015, 4(2), 139-163; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4020139 - 30 Apr 2015
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5853
Abstract
“Why workers’ rights are not women’s rights” is an argument whose purpose is to make clear why workers’ rights rest on a masculine embodiment of the labor subject and it is this masculine embodiment which is at the center of employment contracts and [...] Read more.
“Why workers’ rights are not women’s rights” is an argument whose purpose is to make clear why workers’ rights rest on a masculine embodiment of the labor subject and it is this masculine embodiment which is at the center of employment contracts and employment relations systems. By excavating the gender subjects implicit to and explicit in regulations of labor, the paper reveals the opposition of paired terms, masculinity and femininity privileging production over reproduction and naturalizing gender-based power relations. The paper identifies various laboring activities associated with differential rights and responsibilities. An examination of the treatment of part-time employment and waged caring labor, framed in labor, welfare, immigration, and citizenship policies and practices, locates exclusions from labor standards and exemptions from entitlements due to eligibility requirements and thresholds that assume the masculine embodiment of the worker-citizen. Gendering the analysis illustrates how contemporary labor laws and conventions grant rights on the basis of, and to, a rather abstract conception of the prototypical worker-citizen. Its origins lie in what classical political economy labeled a capitalist logic, as well as the historical practices in which free class agents entered into contracts for continuous, full-time work free of care responsibilities outside of the wage/labor nexus. Thus, it is this particular abstract construction of the proto-typical worker which instantiates the separation of “rights to” from “responsibilities for”, and it is this separation that allows the masculine embodiment of the labor subject. Modes of regulation privileging rights over responsibilities will valorize the masculine worker-citizen whose rights derive from their participation in wage labor and simultaneously devalue the feminine worker who is directly connected to caring labor. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Law - Engendering Equality)
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