Feminist Legal Studies Queen's - March 2-3, 2012  

Women, the Charter, and CEDAW in the 21st Century: Taking Stock and Moving Forward , Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s conference, March 2-3, 2012, Kingston, Ontario

Topic: Students may choose any 2-hour session from this conference as their ‘fourth’ lecture, and treat that session as if it were a speaker event.

Dates:  Mar. 2 (after first plenary, which ends Fri. 3 pm) through Sunday afternoon

The Charter sex equality provisions were drafted in 1981, the same year Canada signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).  This conference addresses how women have fared as these human rights guarantees have come into effect over the last thirty years, what accomplishments can now be counted on, and what challenges remain. See the conference program for further information.

Schedule of events:  tba

Asa Gunnarsson, Professor, Department of Law, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umea University, and Lecturer in Tax and Social Security Law, Uppsala and Gothenburg Universities

Topic: Women and Equality: Why Taxation, Social Transfers, and Government Budgets Matter

Date: Fri., Mar. 2, 2012, 1 to 2.30 pm (lunch included) – This lecture is also the first plenary session of the FLSQ Mar. 2-4 conference on equality strategies

Professor Åsa Gunnarsson is a member of the Department of Law, Faculty of Social Studies, Umea University, and also lectures at Uppsala and Gothenburg Universities in Sweden. She has served in a variety of administrative positions, including Deputy Chair and Chair of the Research Board for the Department of Law and Deputy chair for the National Gender Graduate School, Umea University. Dr. Gunnarsson has played a key role in establishing an international research network on law, gender, and society studies linked to the Umea Centre for Gender Studies, which is designated as a Centre of Gender Excellence by the Swedish Research Council and funded by the Swedish National Bank and the European Union. She has also established a new research environment, Feminist Studies in Taxation and Budgeting (FemTax), which brings together interdisciplinary faculty, graduate students, and research fellows working in this area from across the EU and from Canada, the US, Australia, and elsewhere. Dr. Gunnarsson’s published scholarship has been pathbreaking for its interdisciplinarity, critical perspectives, and interest to readers from all legal traditions. Her book,Exploiting the Limits of Law: Swedish Feminism and the Challenge to Pessimism, ed. with Svensson and Davies (Ashgate 2007), draws on both European and Commonwealth legal traditions in exploring fundamental jurisprudential issues of concern to women, and her chapter in that work, ‘Gender Equality and the Diversity of Rights and Obligations in Swedish Social Citizenship,’ provides concrete insights into Swedish equality strategies. Other works focus on social spending, taxation, family law, and equality and range from global to regional Nordic comparative studies. Her most recent publication is Challenging Gender Inequality  in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives, ed. With Brooks, Philipps, and Wersig (Hart, 2011).

 Background reading:  tba