Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law最新文献

{"title":"Regulating the Family: The Impact of Pro-Family Policy Making Assessments on Women and Non-Traditional Families","authors":"Robin S Maril","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3467018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3467018","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction 2I. \"Impact Assessments\" and Public Policy 4A. Environmental Risks 6B. Family Well-Being 7II. The Emergence of the New Right and \"Pro-Family\" Concerns .....9A. A Reversal of Fortune 11B. \"Pro-Family \" Policy and the Reagan Administration 13IV. Imposing a \"Pro-Family\" Lens on Federal Rulemaking 18A. Presidential Control of the Regulatory Process 19B. Executive Order 12,606-The Family 20C. Legislative Control and \"Pro-Family\" Rulemaking 24IV. The Family Impact Assessment in Practice 26A. The Silencing Effect of the Family Impact Statement 27B. Measuring Family Well-Being 32Conclusion 36IntroductionOn September 25, 1973, Dr. Margaret Mead testified before a Senate hearing on American Families: Trends and Pressures, 1973.' Along with other prominent witnesses, she urged Congress to support policies that prioritize the well-being of all families because \"as the family goes, so goes the nation.\" Senator Walter Mondale (D-MN) voiced the sentiment of many of the witnesses when he warned that \"[t]o envision a single model family or a single way to raise children would do great damage to the pluralism and diversity that makes our country strong.\"3 One of the most forward-looking recommendations to come out of the hearing was the development of a family impact statement that would analyze the impact of federal policies on American families in order to maximize the \"options and choices that families need to do their best job.\"4Despite the initial enthusiasm, it would be fourteen years before this recommendation would be implemented by President Reagan through Executive Order 12,606.5 By that time, much had changed in the national political landscape. The original proposal had been aimed at supporting the pluralism and diversity of American families, including dual-wage, single parent, and multigenerational families. According to Executive Order 12,606, however, these labels applied to problems, not families. The Executive Order adopted a \"pro-family\" perspective that, contrary to Senator Mondale's warning, envisioned a single-model family and a single way to raise children.6 It advocated a normative view of the \"traditional\" family and sought to strengthen \"the stability of the family,\" \"marital commitment,\" and \"personal responsibility.\"7 President Clinton rescinded the Executive Order in 1997,8 but in 1998, Congress enacted legislation requiring pro-family impact assessments for all rulemaking. The \"Family Policy Making Assessment\" remains in effect today, mandating a profamily lens for all federal rulemaking.10This Article examines the evolution of the family impact statement from a progressive template for inclusive policymaking to a \"pro-family\" values check designed to promote and protect the \"traditional\" American family.\" The normative switch that occurred corresponds with the larger cultural shifts of the period that saw the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution.'2 Originally proposed as a way to improve family well-being thro","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133834868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sexism, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, and the Schooling of Girls in Africa: A Case Study from Lusaka Province, Zambia","authors":"C. Bowman, Elizabeth Brundige","doi":"10.31228/osf.io/nc2z9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/nc2z9","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction 38I. Zambia: The Context 40II. Methodology 44III. Findings 48A. Sexism Within and Outside of the Classroom 49B. Sexual Violence 54C. Sexuality and Its Consequences 63Conclusions and recommendations 69IntroductionSince at least 1990, international organizations have identified the education of girls as a key indicator of economic development.1 This relationship can be understood in at least two ways. First, the elimination of illiteracy and other indicia of increased life skills count among the \"capabilities\" enumerated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum as the very definition of development itself.2 In this sense, education has come to be defined as a basic human right.3 Second, the education of girls has been seen as causally related to the process of economic development. Educated girls may themselves contribute to the life of the nation and the economy by expanding the pool of educated and skilled workers. Girlchild education also indirectly attacks a variety of obstacles to economic development in developing societies, such as overpopulation and health problems. Generally, educated girls marry later and have fewer children.4 Moreover, educated women can provide better health care and education to their families.5Cognizant of the benefits of education, and long deprived of it by colonial powers, newly independent African nations embraced universal education as one of their first goals. However, their understanding of the importance of educating girls came somewhat later.6 Along the way, nations encountered problems resulting from economic decline, increased debt, and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed as a condition of international credit and/or loan forgiveness, resulting in the imposition of user fees for education previously provided free of charge.7 More recently, African countries have made significant progress in expanding access to education and narrowing gender gaps in schooling that had once discriminated against girls.8 Yet, although their school enrollment and retention rates have significantly improved, African girls seeking an education face important obstacles not shared by their male peers.This article explores three primary obstacles identified during interviews with 105 schoolgirls undertaken in May 2012 in the Lusaka province of Zambia: the persistence of sex discriminatory attitudes, sexual violence directed at girl students, and problems posed by sexuality in general. Our goal is not only to give a lively sense of these obstacles but also to discuss what legal or policy changes might address them. Part I describes the context in which these issues are encountered, and Part II explains the methodology of our empirical study. In Part III, we discuss persistent obstacles described by the girls in their responses to our interview questions: (1) discriminatory treatment of girls within and outside the classroom; (2) sexual violence and the fear of sexual violence; and (3) issues of sexuality involving pr","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132689565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Security, Gender and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The Need for a “Woman Question” When Engaging in Reconstruction","authors":"Isaac Kfir","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2132671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2132671","url":null,"abstract":"In the field of post-conflict reconstruction, gender-related issues are mostly analyzed through a legal or a development paradigm. These conditions, coupled with a general disinclination by the international community — the industrialized, western countries — to challenge cultural norms, whether real or imagined, allows for a security-first and/or a security-development nexus to take precedence regarding post-conflict reconstruction. This paper advances the argument that by viewing gender issues as existential to the security of a state transitioning out of conflict, as opposed to viewing gender as a development or a legal issue, makes it possible to engage in real reconstruction, which means addressing the gender bias that dominates many societies.","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123916858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marriage and Law Reform: Lessons from the Nineteenth Century Michigan Married Women’s Property Acts","authors":"E. Dannin","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1591844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1591844","url":null,"abstract":"Even though fought for as restoring to married women the property rights they had as single women, the early Married Women’s Property Acts more accurately created \"a new era of quasi coverture\", that made incremental changes in married women’s status and rights. But if they did not give married women the rights of all free men and free single women, then why were they enacted? The two most common theories into the late 1970's was that they were enacted as (1) women's rights or protective legislation or (2) debtor relief, allowing an indebted husband to place his property beyond the reach of his creditors by conveying it to his wife. This is the first empirical study to examine Michigan’s Married Women’s Property Acts. It attempts to shed light on the nature and effects of the Michigan MWPA by examining Washtenaw County, Michigan deeds from 1840 through 1865, a period that begins four years before the first Michigan MWPA was enacted and extended through the Civil War. The original purpose of the study was to test whether the law was feminist legislation or debtor protection. If the Act was feminist legislation, then conveyances to and from married women should be found after the MWPA was passed – but not before. If the MWPA was debtor relief, then not only should the number of married women grantees rise, but there should also be conveyances from husbands to wives in order to place property out of the reach of creditors, including, potentially, deeds with nominal consideration. Those predictions were far from the mark. (1) Married women appeared as grantors throughout the study, including in the years before they had a legal right to own or convey property; (2) there were virtually no women grantees until the very last years of the study; and (3) there were no conveyances from husbands to wives; and (4) there were but minor changes in conveyancing patterns as to married women over the decades studied. Knowing what a law does not do, however, does not explain why it was enacted. We can say with certainty that a law that changes fundamental relationships and rights is not passed without support and effort. It may be that the Michigan MWPA was intended to be debtor legislation but was not used for that purpose because people did not feel comfortable giving wives property. Unfortunately, it is now more than a century too late to do survey research on mid-nineteenth century opinions on using the MWPA. It may be that the best explanation is that any law that affects fundamental rights is the product of many motives. We should also not discount the effect judicial interpretation can have on laws, even, at times, wholly transforming the law in the process of adjudication. This does not mean the answer is \"all of the above\". This article examines the traditional explanations for the enactment of the Michigan Married Women’s Property Act and its operation (1) Debtor relief and (2) Women’s rights legislation, as well as other viable theories, including that ","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"89 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131549984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Annoyingly Indeterminate Effect of Sex Differences","authors":"Deborah M. Weiss","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1355585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1355585","url":null,"abstract":"At present, men and women have different distributions of certain aptitudes and personality traits. A growing body of research suggests that some of these differences have some biological basis, although these distribution differences do not always conform neatly to traditional stereotypes and cultural factors also contribute. A heritable basis for difference, however, has frustratingly indeterminate implications. It suggests that some occupational segregation is not caused by discrimination. At the same time, a statistical aptitude or temperament difference will almost inevitably cause discrimination in professions that make use of that aptitude or temperament. This implication is supported by empirical evidence about the continued existence of discrimination from disparate sources, including labor market data and experimental laboratory studies in both economics and psychology. The offsetting effects of difference and statistical discrimination make it extremely difficult to predict the degree of occupational segregation in a non-discriminatory world. To complicate matters further, there is no simple relation between the size of ability differences and the efficient degree of occupational segregation. The principle of comparative advantage suggests that even small ability differences might produce large degrees of occupational segregation. Conversely, high demand in a sector using skills that favor one sex may draw the other sex into sectors in which they have an absolute disadvantage. Ability distribution differences create tremendous challenges for anti-discrimination policy. Liability rules based on current labor market representation are of minimal use, since the labor market reflects existing discrimination. Though perhaps useful in the short term, long-term numerical targets are problematic: target goals are extremely difficult to set, and would need to become a permanent institution. Moreover, numerical targets may create unintended problems for women. Men have historically dominated even fields in which women have an advantage. A target goal of equal representation would prevent women from attaining majority status in these fields. Closer scrutiny of employer practices holds promise as an alternative to numerically based theories. Earlier versions of this paper were circulated with the title \"The Paradox of Statistical Discrimination\"","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116336697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Violence against Women as Sex Discrimination: Judging the Jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies","authors":"A. Edwards","doi":"10.4324/9781315094410-17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315094410-17","url":null,"abstract":"Violence against women is one of the greatest threats to women’s equality and equal enjoyment of human rights worldwide. Yet, there is no single treaty provision explicitly prohibiting violence against women within any of the eight ‘core’ international human rights treaties, nor a binding international treaty specifically on the issue. In the work of the UN human rights treaty bodies, one of the approaches to recognising violence against women as a violation of human rights has been to subsume it within the guarantees to equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex. This article examines the meanings given to these concepts and inquires into whether this inclusion approach to what is an obvious gap in the international human rights framework is effective.","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"171 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133376953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wily Patients, Welfare Queens, and the Reiteration of Race in the U.S","authors":"K. Bridges","doi":"10.1525/CALIFORNIA/9780520268944.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/CALIFORNIA/9780520268944.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"I. IntroductionThis paper is a product of eighteen months of anthropological fieldwork undertaken in the obstetrics clinic of Alpha Hospital - a large, public hospital in Manhattan. After finally receiving authorization to begin my fieldwork from all relevant Institutional Review Boards (\"IRB\"), well over a year after I began the approval process, I was eager to begin observation of the Alpha Hospital obstetrics clinic. Dr. Christina Smith - the Director of the Ambulatory Care Building that housed the obstetrics clinic, my initial contact with the hospital, the person who had been named as principal investigator of my study in the NYU IRB documents, and my direct supervisor in the hospital - suggested that I introduce my research and myself to the clinic staff at the clinic's monthly interdisciplinary meeting. Accordingly, my fieldwork began with me describing my project (within the five minutes allotted to me) to a motley assemblage of nurses, medical doctors,1 midwives, and administrative assistants that drifted in and out of the classroom over the course of the meeting.Subsequent to my brief talk, the executive director of Alpha Hospital gave a presentation, entitled \"The Alpha Hospital Mission and Vision.\" In it, she described \"the unanimous sentiment\" felt by Alpha employees that working at Alpha was a challenging endeavor. The presentation continued with a relatively grim portrait of the hospital. She depicted a hostile state of affairs in which the categories of the players in the clinic were positioned in oppositional relationships to one another: hospital and clinic administrators against providers,2 providers against ancillary staff,3 and ancillary staff against patients. After the director concluded, Dr. Smith commented that, with regard to the acrimonious relationship between ancillary staff and patients, her personal observations supported those of the director. She offered that she received a consequential number of complaints from patients who were dissatisfied with and angered by the way that they were treated by staff persons. Indeed, over the course of the eighteen months during which I observed and worked in the Alpha obstetrics clinic, my field notes became filled with descriptions of outrageously hostile interactions between the frontline staff and patients. These displays of antagonism became a banality - an eventuality that I could observe on any given day that I was in the clinic. It was the ordinariness of these contentious interactions that compelled me to inquire into their significance, their causes, and their effects.Belligerent confrontations between staff and patients, I believe, are the consequence of a phenomenon whereby patients are largely viewed by Alpha Hospital ancillary staff as uneducated and unintelligent, yet somehow incredibly shrewd manipulators of the Alpha \"system.\" The intersection of these contradictions in the fantasy of the patient seeking healthcare from Alpha produces a figure that I call the \"w","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114979291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Accommodation Subverted: The Future of Work/family Initiatives in a \"Me, Inc.\" World","authors":"Rachel S. Arnow-Richman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.440000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.440000","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the viability of mandated employer accommodation of family caregiving in a work culture that prizes employee mobility and independence. Extant accommodation mandates, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family Medical Leave Act, have been only moderately successful in deconstructing discriminatory work structures that operate to exclude underrepresented workers. Court decisions interpreting those laws frequently invoke equality principles to limit their reach and preserve employer discretion, while decisions favorable to disadvantaged plaintiffs have often occasioned popular backlash. These circumstances call into question the efficacy of accommodation as a vehicle for achieving results-based equality for caregivers. Such difficulties must be analyzed against the development of what I call a “Me, Inc.” work culture, an environment typified by worker assumption of responsibility for training and education, increased employer demand for “extra-role” behavior, significant worker mobility and a corresponding decline in long-term employment relationships. The emerging view of workers as autonomous companies is in direct tension with society’s historical designation of the employer as the party primarily responsible for accommodating the “life-cycle” needs of its workforce. On a practical level, changes in the nature and duration of work relationships mean that employers will have limited ability to absorb costs associated with accommodation, and, more significantly, that any judicial interpretation or popular conception of the employer’s duty to accommodate will be constrained by the expectation of employee self-reliance. The article therefore cautions that expansive efforts to mandate employer accommodation of caregiving risk internalizing the norms they reject and are unlikely to succeed on their own in establishing a wholly new work ethic more inclusive of family caregiving. It proposes instead a preliminary three-part approach to redressing caregiver disadvantage that corresponds to the three pre-existing channels of federal employment regulation: vigorous pursuit of class-based discrimination claims, reinvigoration of collective bargaining, and the creation of a government-administered system of wage replacement that incentivizes employer-initiated programs to assist caregivers.","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122300139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gendered Workers/Market Equality","authors":"D. Greenwood","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.757306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.757306","url":null,"abstract":"Decades of feminism have freed women from many longstanding gender roles - less so, however, men. Women now wear pants, but men still do not wear dresses. Mothers of young children overwhelmingly work outside of the home, but male housewives remain rare. Tomboys have achieved some acceptance, but boys are still expected to be boys. Actresses needn't be sultry to be sexy, but actors are still taller, stronger and more silent than their sexual partners - except for Woody Allen. Perversely, the confluence of women's entry into the workplace with the death of social democracy resulted in recreating the American worker as a gendered, unencumbered bachelor. Women have been freed to be men, and men have been freed to be single. But someone has to wear the dresses, someone has to raise the children, someone has to go to work, someone has to take care of the old folks, and someone has to keep up the social calendar. So long as men are gendered into or out of some of these roles, women will be stuck with the rest, on overload. The next step of gender equality requires limiting market equality in order to loosen male gender roles.","PeriodicalId":344781,"journal":{"name":"Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121836558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}