妇女平等权的立法保护与性别预算——基于国际和国内比较的视角

妇女享有与男子同等的地位与权利是实现两性平等以及妇女自身充分发展的必要条件。将妇女平等权纳入宪法及法律成为世界发展的潮流。本文基于国际和国内比较的视角,对中国妇女平等权的立法保护进行了梳理,继而分析了"性别立法"和"性别预算"等促进妇女平等权的新政策工具在中国的开展和实施,以期进一步推动男女平等在中国的真正实现。     

Between Conciseness and Transparency: Presuppositions in Legislative Texts

Presupposition is the semantic-pragmatic phenomenon whereby a statement contains an implicit precondition that must be taken for granted (presupposed) for that statement to be felicitous. This article discusses the role of presupposition in legislative texts, using examples from Swiss constitutional and administrative law. It illustrates (a) how presuppositions are triggered in these texts and (b) what functions they come to serve, placing special emphasis on their constitutive power. It also demonstrates (c) how legislative drafters can distinguish between “good” presuppositions and “bad” presuppositions by weighing their main advantage, conciseness, against their main flaw, reduced transparency. The present study argues that, if employed carefully, presuppositions can be a useful stylistic means to keep legislative texts free from unnecessary clutter that merely elaborates on the obvious; however, it also suggests that, if applied wrongly, presuppositions can camouflage the duties and obligations placed on the subjects of a law and thus impede its accessibility and its efficient and effective implementation.     

刑事立法语言之技术特点

刑事立法语言具有立法语言的一般共性 ,要求准确、明确、通俗、简约、庄重及严谨。但刑事立法语言又具有自己的特殊性 ,其区别于其它立法语言的技术特点是 :第一 ,刑事立法语言突出表现罪刑关系 ;第二 ,刑事立法语言以明确性为主 ,兼顾弹力性 ;第三 ,刑法用语的专门性、专业性 ;最后 ,刑事立法语言中句式的特定性。     

Do Women Representatives Regender Legislative Bureaucracy? Assessing the Effect of Representative Sex on Women's Presence among US Congressional Staff

Achieving greater female presence in influential positions is a commonly discussed strategy for gender reform in institutions such as the US Congress. Using theory adapted from research on gender in the workplace, this study examines whether women representatives, as ‘managers’ of congressional offices, alter patterns of gender representation in Congress by hiring and promoting more women staffers compared with men representatives. Cross-sectional logistic regression analyses of staffer sex during the 110th and 111th Congresses (2007–10) reveal a positive relationship between women representatives and female presence on congressional staffs. However, the relationship does not hold with respect to the most influential staff positions. These findings provide only limited support for theories that women representatives act as ‘change agents’ by directly facilitating opportunities for women, and highlight the importance of exploring alternative strategies for empowering women and regendering legislative institutions.     

Conversational Implicatures and Legal Texts

Legal texts are often given interpretations that deviate from their literal meanings. While legal concerns often motivate these interpretations, others can be traced to linguistic phenomena. This paper argues that systematicities of language usage, captured by certain theories of conversational implicature, can sometimes explain why the meanings given to legal texts by judges differ from the literal meanings of the texts. Paul Grice's account of conversational implicature is controversial, and scholars have offered a variety of ways to conceptualize implicatures and Grice's maxims of conversation. Approaches that emphasize the systematic nature of implicatures can provide explanatory accounts of the gap between literal meaning and the meaning communicated in the text. For example, a theory of scalar implicature, a type of generalized conversational implicature, can account for the application of the interpretive principle known as ejusdem generis, which narrows the scope of “catch‐all” clauses located at the end of lists of items. Despite the availability of such theories, some scholars have argued that conversational implicatures are not applicable to legislation. The arguments, based primarily on the uniqueness of the legislative context and its noncooperative nature, though, do not establish the inapplicability of conversational implicatures to legislation.     

WHEN A WOMAN NEEDS TO BE SEEN, HEARD AND WRITTEN AS A WOMAN: RAPE, LAW AND AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE*

While moves towards gender neutral language may seem to be desirable for reducing sexism and discrimination, this paper argues that at least in the case of rape␣such gender neutrality is not appropriate. A recent Australian appeal is examined to show that despite significant ‘verbal hygiene’, [D. Cameron, Verbal Hygiene (London: Routledge, 1995)] traces of discrimination against women are still linguistically discernable. This suggests that simply changing language will not change attitudes. Rather, for women to be treated well in rape cases, their voices and experiences need to be represented appropriately. I would like to thank Dr. Clare McManus for the title inspiration.     

Beyond Formal Equality: Closing the Gender Gap in a Changing Labour Market – A Study of Legislative Solutions Adopted in Canada

This article looks at the position of women in the Canadian labour market and at the legislative measures adopted to address their segregation in terms of occupation, wages and working conditions. Federal and provincial legislators have, with relative success, attempted through a series of measures to respond directly to the issue of discrimination against women in the workplace and in the labour market. They have, however, remained relatively insensitive to other factors that make the situation of working women precarious, such as the rise of ‘non-standard’ work. These inequalities are not peculiar to Canada and legislative responses to these questions vary according to specific national realities and legal traditions. A study of the legislative evolution in Canada serves to illustrate some of the challenges faced to redress this gender gap.     

民事法律立法语言失范问题检讨

民事法律立法语言失范是指民事制定法的语言表述违反语言科学规律和相应规则,造成语法错误、语义分歧、逻辑失恰、分类混乱、风格失调、混合交叉等多种谬误。立法语言失范的根本原因在于对立法表达技术的轻视和立法程序设计的不足。立法语言失范降低了制定法的质量,给立法活动、司法实践、法学教育、普法工作带来现实的困难与危害,损害了制定法的庄严性和权威性,同时对语言科学的发展造成破坏。立法机关应当设立立法语言审查机构,清理失范的立法语言,为新法制定设计立法语言前置审查程序,在每一部法律草案提交审议前先行作出立法语言审查,保证提交审议的法律文本语言正确,能够充分表达立法意图。     

Will She Stay or Will She Go? Career Ceilings and Women's Retirement from the U.S. Congress

This article offers the first broad‐based, systematic, times‐series assessment of the gender dynamics underlying congressional retirement. We extend the body of work on gender and representation by using the congressional retirement literature to develop an argument that accounts for the gender gap in the average length of congressional service. Our results indicate that women are less willing than men to remain in Congress when their ability to influence the legislative agenda stalls. Because of women's relatively early departures from the House of Representatives, our analysis suggests that prospects for women's representation are less promising than the conventional wisdom suggests.     

刑法立法语言的明确化

作为罪刑法定主义的实质侧面，明确性是刑法规范对立法语言的基本要求，这就使得刑法的立法语言具有准确清晰、简洁通俗、庄重严谨等鲜明风格，然而，我国《刑法》的立法语言则存在着语义不清、累赘重复、罪状表述含糊、法定刑幅度过大等突出问题。为此，从宏观上来讲，需要制定一部规范立法语言文字的专门法律，并构建立法语言审查制度，以期实现我国《刑法》立法语言的明确化。     

Collateral damage: do gender quotas undermine party discipline?

Quotas are the most disputed instrument to promote equal representation of women. Today, political parties in more than 90 democracies apply them. Essentially, gender quotas are a manipulation of the electoral rules. Scholars of legislative politics have created an impressive knowledge of the effect of electoral rules on political behaviour. So far, this literature remains unconnected to the literature on gender quotas. Our study contributes to closing that research gap.     

立法语言：从模糊走向明确

立法语言的模糊性是必然的,其原因包括认识的局限性、语言本身的有限性、立法者的差异性以及立法技术的选择等因素。明确性的语言对于立法活动来说是一种追求和渐进实现的目标,因此,应该注重提高立法者的素质,本着简约、确定、谨慎的原则进行立法语言的选择,并通过法的解释促使立法语言从模糊走向明确。     

Do female legislators have different policy priorities than their male colleagues in an undemocratic/semi-democratic legislature? The case of Hong Kong

This article investigates the impacts of democratic transition on gender outcomes in Hong Kong, which has a unique path of transition. The author studies whether democratic transition in Hong Kong since the mid-1980s has brought positive gender outcomes. Specifically, this article examines the extent to which Hong Kong’s female legislators acted for women’s interests from 1970 to 2012. The study finds that after the introduction of legislative elections, female legislators were more likely to represent women’s interests than male legislators. Apart from gender, the study also finds that political orientation of a legislator significantly affected legislator policy priorities and/or gender outcome. Liberal legislators proposed significantly more motions related to women’s interests than conservative legislators. Finally, the study highlights that as the legislature was transited from an undemocratic to a semi-democratic body, legislators were significantly more likely to propose motions related to women’s interests.     

Language,gender and ‘reality’: Violence against women

This paper examines the theory behind and some examples of the relationships between gender, language, cognition and perception in the context of the criminal justice system. In particular, we consider the language of domestic violence and sexual assault and how words and communication styles can affect and are affected by what we think and believe to be ‘reality’. The paper illustrates how the language used to describe violence against women may operate to minimise these acts, and the dominant conversational style and female violence victims' genderlect may collide to produce evidentiary issues and a credibility gap. We argue that there is an inherent dilemma in engaging with legal constructs which continue to negate women's understandings of reality, and that the voices of female rape and domestic violence victims remain muted by the baritone ‘voice’ of the legal system.     

Detection of substitution-based linguistic steganography by relative frequency analysis

Linguistic steganography hides information in natural language texts. Because of the increasing in importance and quantity of natural language texts, linguistic steganography plays a more and more important role in Information Security (IS) area today. Substitution-based linguistic steganography is one of the most commonly used linguistic steganography methods, which is of considerable security and favorable simpleness. In this paper, we propose a straightforward method based on Relative Frequency Analysis (RFA), which makes use of the frequency characteristics of the testing texts (the texts being tested), to detect substitution-based linguistic steganography. We formally prove several properties about relative frequency which can be used in the detection process and propose a detection scheme. And then as an example, an existent synonym-substitution system T-Lex is examined and the detection experiment is carried out. In the experiment with pure literature texts, the accuracy, precision and recall of the detection are found to be as high as 98.64%, 97.77% and 99.55%, respectively, when the substitution count is 90, while in the experiment with balanced texts, the highest detection accuracy is 95%, which indicates that the detection scheme is promising.     

Mainstreaming Gender into European Family Law? The Case of International Child Abduction and Brussels II Revised

Gender mainstreaming is an EU policy tool encouraging equality between men and women by incorporating gender concerns into the formation of EU law. The EU has intervened in private international family law, an area where concerns over gender equality may be present. Child abduction, which is regulated by the Brussels II Revised Regulation, is an aspect of international family law where issues of gender have been highlighted. Women are predominantly the abductors of their children and may abduct a child to escape a violent relationship. These factors were in evidence in the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention and an effective gender mainstreaming strategy should promote discussion to address these concerns. By examining the proposals for Brussels II Revised, this article will demonstrate that the gendered nature of child abduction was not clearly addressed in the development of the legislation and questions how mainstreaming can be effective as an aspect of the legislative process.     

法律语言本质特征的批判性分析——准确性、模糊性抑或严谨性

关于法律语言特征已有相关著述,主要秉持两种观点：一种认为法律语言的本质特征是准确性,另一种认为是模糊性。这两种观点的论据均欠妥当。法律语言的本质特征集中体现在立法语言中,通观我国法律条文的语言表述,法律语言区别于其他语言的本质特征当为严谨性。从词、句和修辞等维度进一步论证,法律语言的本质特征也当为严谨性。     

Collisions at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Laws

This article explores the ramifications of the intersections of gender, race, and class ideologies for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws in the years immediately following their passage. Drawing from government documents and archival data, I argue that the notions of gender, race, and class that permeated the legislative debate contained significant incoherences and self-contradictions, and that many of the dilemmas surrounding the enforcement of the exclusion laws against Chinese women resulted from these collisions. Faced with conflicting mandates derived from, for example, racism and patriarchy, enforcement officers had to choose between equally powerful discourses. Their ad hoc and often pragmatic approach to such dilemmas contrasted sharply with a policy process that otherwise appeared to be driven by unquestioned—and unquestionable—moral mandates. In concluding, I note the implications for our understanding of the contingencies and instabilities of ideology and the legal practices of which it is part.     

Equal Application or Unequal Treatment

Abstract

Florida's community control program (CC) developed as a punitive alternative to prison. Characterized by intensive supervision and home confinement, the language and the guidelines assume gender equality, however, the model ignores the family responsibilities of controllees. Because women are more likely than men to be primary caregivers for their families, the issue has gender implications at the policy level. This study examines the background of CC legislation in relation to gender, and presents a case example of how the language of community control is applied at the local level. From interviews and observations, the authors show how officers and female controllees in a county program describe the tensions between caregiving and policy restrictions in their daily lives. They argue that caregiver status should be addressed at the policy level, and advocate the formation of “social families” as a way to help controllees meet CC requirements while caring for families.