A Feminist Perspective on Contract Theories from Law and Economics

This article offers a feminist perspective on contract theories in law,economics and law-and-economics. It identifies masculine traits presentcontract theories in all three disciplines. It then describes andassesses some developments that appear to be feminising: Therecognition of the importance of social norms in contract theory andtheories of contract as relationship. The article's main claim is that amasculine model of decision-making persists even within the less overtlymasculine models of contract. The problem of sexually transmitted debtresulting from a surety contract is analysed in detail as a specificexample supporting the article's general argument. The article concludesthat the way forward is to be found in a recognition of other ways ofmaking decisions.     

Gender and ethnicity in the Soviet Muslim peripheries: a feminist postcolonial geography of women’s work in the Tajik SSR (1950–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the articulation and experience of Soviet gendered ideology regarding work in the Tajik SSR, one of the Muslim Soviet peripheries, during the post-war period ending with Perestroika. Central Asian women’s work was used for economic purposes, as well as being a key driver for fulfilling the ideological objective of emancipating Central Asian women from religion and tradition. Through a feminist postcolonial geography approach, attentive to questions of discourse and material lived experiences, this article explores the ways in which gender and ethnicity were co-produced by Soviet ideology. Analysis of scientific publications produced by Tajikistani female researchers, and of women’s magazines from the 1950s, is contrasted with ethnographic data on workers from various collective farms and semi-urban places, including ‘work heroines’ (peshqadam). Our findings illustrate the hybrid nature of the Soviet regime, advancing theoretical debates on the use of postcolonial theory in Soviet Central Asia.     

从全球女性主义到跨国女性主义--兼论跨国女性主义的知识生产

当前,全球化正以摧枯拉朽之势,冲破民族国家的疆界,迅速改写着地方、国家和地区的意义。对妇女而言,全球化的发展,一方面使超越国家边界的妇女问题迅速攀升,如贫困的女性化,女性移民人口的增长,等等;另一方面也增强了妇女运动在全球范围里的连接,比如联合国的世界妇女大会,跨国NGO妇女组织和因特网。为界定这些全球化的新发展,推动全球范围内妇女运动的发展,自上世纪后期,“全球女性主义”,“跨国女性主义”的概念先后出现。本文将以上世纪70年代之后历次联合国世界妇女大会的实践为开端,进而转入对全球女性主义的思想理念——全球姐妹情谊(globalsisterhood)的分析,然后通过对跨国女性主义的实践和理论的介绍,进一步考察跨国女性主义的知识生产过程的特点。     

戊戌妇女运动:中国批判性别本质主义的先驱--兼驳中国妇女运动比西方落后的偏见

戊戌妇女运动一开始就对性别本质主义进行了与西方早期女权运动同样的批判,即用"男女差异教育形成论"抨击"男智女愚天生论",因而成为中国批判性别本质主义的先驱.中西早期妇女运动对性别本质主义的批判只是详略程度不同,没有本质的差距.这就说明至少中西早期妇女运动的水平不分轩轾,西方学术界笼统地认为中国妇女运动远比西方落后是一种偏见.     

From Mrs. Burns To Mrs. Oxley: Do Co-habiting Women (Still) Need Marriage Law?

Following the U.K. Labour government commitment to marriage in the 1998 Green Paper ‘Supporting Families’, Barlow and Duncan produced a robust critique calling for ‘realism’ in recognising that many couples are now choosing not to marry, that too many do not make informed decisions as to whether to marry or not and that, on the basis of their survey, over 40% of respondents believed that some form of family law protection would be available to them, despite their lack of marital status. When added to a concern that economically vulnerable cohabiting women do not receive adequate protection in property law, it seemed all too obvious that the government commitment to marriage should be challenged. In fact, government policy does seem to have shifted somewhat when, partly as a tactical manoeuvre to help the passage of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 and specifically recognising concerns with the needs of economically vulnerable parties, the issue was referred to the Law Commission for England and Wales. This places the ‘realism’ arguments firmly within the reform agenda. However, this article argues that there is a need to look more closely at the arguments used by the ‘realists’, in particular at the evocation of the figure of Mrs. Burns. The more contemporary case of Oxley v. Hiscock is used to both raise questions about the socio-economic profiles of cohabitants, as well to question the presentation of property law as failing women (and family law as offering the protection they need). I argue that feminists should take a cautious approach in relation to the seemingly compelling argument that cohabitants will benefit from the extension of aspects of marriage law to cover property issues at the end of a relationship.     

Hunger strikes,detainee protest,and the relationality of political subjectivization

This paper attends to the relationships and spatialities through which immigration detention centers, though isolating and constraining spaces, are shaped by detainees. I approach the problematic of detainee resistance and agency through both Critical Citizenship Studies and feminist relational frameworks. I do so through a case study of one particular rupture – the 2014 hunger strikes at the Northwest Detention Center. My analysis of the 2014 hunger strikes at the NWDC directs me to conceptualize detainee activism as a process of political subjectivization, though one that is fraught with physical and political risk to both detainees and the order of sovereignty and citizenship. This process is undergirded by and productive of a series of interpersonal and political relations that mediate detainee actions and statements, and constitute them as a rupture in the order of sovereignty and citizenship.     

Women's Resolutions of Lawes Reconsidered: Epistemic Shifts and the Emergence of the Feminist Legal Discourse

This paper has arisen from my interest in questions ofsubjectivity of primary concern to contemporaryfeminist jurisprudence. Rather than side with anyparticular view represented in the debates surroundingthese questions, I have used Foucault's concept ofepisteme to explore the tradition of feministlegal thought. By focusing upon seventeenth-centurywomen's writings in which the earliest statementslinking law to women's oppression are to be found, thepaper argues that knowledge claims about law'sassociation with women's oppression are predicated notupon the positing of a sovereign feministconsciousness, but upon the specific positivities ofknowledge which existed at the time. Theunderstanding of the birth of the feminist legaldiscourse in terms of the specific conditions of itspossibility, although historically contextualised,raises questions about the hitherto seeminglyunassailable adherence to subjectivist epistemologywhich the current feminist engagement with lawmaintains.     

社会主义女权主义及其对法律理论的贡献

社会主义女权主义是被女权主义法学研究者忽视的美国女权主义理论的重要分支.时至2016年,鲍曼教授开始提醒女权主义法学研究者重拾社会主义女权主义.事实上,作为第二波女权主义浪潮的智识成果,双系统理论已使研究者意识到法律在公私领域的不统一,进而批判资本主义婚姻家庭制度,并关注就业领域的性别歧视.视角理论对识别出法律的男性气...     

A “Quick and Dirty” Approach to Women’s Emancipation and Human Rights?<Superscript>1</Superscript>

During the past decade, women’s and human rights ‘language’ has moved from the margins to the ‘mainstream’ of international law and politics. In this paper, the author argues that while feminists and human rights activists criticise the ‘mainstream’s interpretation of women’s and human rights, ‘we’ do not question what becoming part of the mainstream and the cosmopolitan classes has meant for us. Drawing on examples of how women’s and human rights arguments have been used in the post-conflict state-building process in Afghanistan, the author attempts to show how international women’s rights and human rights advocacy campaigns planned by well-meaning humanitarians in Western capitals can backfire when implemented in politically complex environments. Dr. Sari Kouvo is a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is also affiliated with the Center for Global Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Dr. Kouvo has several years experience of working with human rights and gender issues in Afghanistan. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent opinions of the organisations she has worked for or is working with.