International Socio-Legal Feminisms -- FemLaw

An international collaborative research network of the Law and Society Association

About the CRN

This collaborative research network has been formed for the purpose of accelerating the exchange of interdisciplinary feminist research on how domestic, transnational, and international law, economic policies, and governance practices affect women. Although many policy issues affecting women are embedded in specific domestic social contexts and legal regimes, gendered patterns of power have remained deeply entrenched over time and place.

Feminist collaborations across national and political boundaries can quickly expand understanding of fundamental problems, options for strategic transformations, and impact assessment. The aim is to promote cross-national and multi-disciplinary reflective knowledge about the way women's and men's opportunities are shaped by society, including the gendered conditions associated with family structures, labour markets, governance structures, fiscal and other economic policies, and other institutions. The aim is also to over-bridge the reality gap in feminist theory by placing different methods of research in the interactive context of theory and practice over time.

Members of this international collaborative research network are actively engaged in cross- and multi-disciplinary feminist socio-legal scholarship in the areas of violence, health, family relations, tax and budget policies, equality strategies, sports, intersectional analysis, economic policy, and women's histories, and are interested in expanding the range of collaboration.

History of this CRN

Many of the members of this international collaborative research network were involved in the Law and Society Association joint annual conferences in Berlin (2007) and Montreal (2008), either organizing panels under the general headings of gender and sexuality, family, or justice, for example, or in presenting individual papers on topics ranging from criminality to tax law. After the Law and Society Association approved the formation of this CRN in 2010, organizers presented the inaugural panel on international socio-legal feminisms at the Law and Society Association annual conference in San Francisco in 2011, and began planning for a full program for the joint Law and Society Association annual conference to be held in Hawaii in June 2012.

Each of these rounds of engagement at LSA joint meetings has grown out of or supported the organization of additional international socio-legal feminist working sessions.

In 2006 and 2008, workshops on feminist issues were organized by the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at the University of British Columbia, and transnational sessions revolving around critical feminist legal issues were offered at the 2007 Berlin Law and Society Association meeting and the 2008 joint LSA meeting in Montreal.
In 2009, Feminist Legal Studies Queen's organized a workshop on interdisciplinary gender analysis was held at Queen's University Faculty of Law, with the edited papers later published in the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (vol 22, no. 1, pp 1-267).
In 2009, an international interdisciplinary conference on feminist policy analysis, including taxation and related policies, was held at the IIJC in Onati Spain, with proceedings being published by Hart Publishing (Brooks et at., Challenging Inequality (2011)).
In 2010, the first International Socio-Legal Feminisms conference was held in Barbados, and the Centre for Gender Excellence, Umeå University workshop on gender and law was held in Athens. As the result of these last two events, it was decided to pursue formal recognition of an IRC for purposes of the 2011-2012 LSA cycle and beyond.
In 2010-11 further regional meetings were held at the University Complutense Dept. of Economics in Madrid, Tromso University Faculty of Law in Norway, Queen Mary School of Law, London University in the UK.
The first annual LSA program was presented by the CRN at the San Francisco conference in 2011, featuring leading international feminist socio-legal scholars from Shanghai, Australia, the UK, and Canada.

LSA Hawaii 2012

Contact us:

Margaret Denike
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada
+1 902 494 6298
m.denike@dal.ca

Asa Gunnarsson
Professor
Department of Law
Umeå University
Umeå Sweden
+46 90 7865931
asa.gunnarsson@jus.umu.se

Ann Mumford
Senior Lecturer
Queen Mary School of Law
University of London
London UK
+44 207 882 7040
a.c.mumford@qmul.ac.uk

Kathleen Lahey
Professor
Faculty of Law
Queen's University
Kingston Ont. Canada
+1 613 545 0828
kal2@queensu.ca

Members

Under construction