Women as outsiders of the law: A review of How many more women? Exposing how the law silences women

Abstract

Atkins, Hoggett, Thornton, Morgan, Graycar, Smart, Bartlett and Charlesworth, among many others, were and continue to be pioneers of their times. They offered a robust critique, in English-language scholarship, of domestic and international law’s failure to find a place for women, but also the tendency for law and legal systems to marginalise, exclude and discount women’s experiences. Decades have passed since some of this early scholarship, but the repetition of Audre Lorde’s caution that, ‘[T]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,’ at countless gatherings of feminist socio-legal scholars today, is an unnecessary reminder that women remain ‘sister outsiders’, the title of the 1984 book compiling Lorde’s essays and speeches. Perhaps more importantly, Lorde was on the cutting-edge of raising our consciousness about the compounded experiences of discrimination women face, within and beyond the law, based on their multiple identities. Today a plethora of researchers—and I count myself in that circle—continue to take up the baton to demonstrate that sadly little has changed when it comes to the institution of the law. Contributing to and amplifying this agenda, in How many more women? international lawyers Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida seek to depict law’s failure to listen to and to believe the stories of women victims of gender-based violence (GBV). In the words of scholar of gender, peace and security, Jacqui True, GBV ‘is one of the key struggles and