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Women Workers: Is Equality Enough?
Get PDFThis is the text of an Open Lecture delivered by Professor Judy Fudge at the University of Kent on 16 January 2013. By focusing on the patterns of change and continuity in women’s work the lecture traces the profound transformations in national and transnational labour markets that have been driven by global capitalism, while questioning the normative goal of women’s claims for equality in employment. The lecture aims to historicize the narrative of the expansion of the legal definition of equality and women’s employment – to recontexutalise and re-interpret this progressive narrative in light of changes in the labour market and political discourse. Women’s claims to equality in employment have become more nuanced and complex as the contours of the gender order have been redrawn to reflect the growing diversity between women and a deterioration in what has been the normative or standard employment relationship for men. Using Canada and the United Kingdom to illustrate the changes in the labour market and gender order, the lecture calls into question the potential of equality norms, however expansive, to solve the problems women workers face in the wake of global austerity
Social Reproduction of Human Beings: A Feminist Perspective
No full textThis lecture draws on classical political economy to explore the present capitalist tension between production, rent and profit on the one hand and social reproduction on the other. Far from glorifying care and domestic labour as the expression of women's self-sacrifice, feminist theorising on social reproduction is central to struggles over the re-definition of life and its 'common' sense
Introduction: Gender Equality and Othering in the Swedish Welfare State
Get PDFThe papers in this special section of feminists@law represent an attempt to acquaint an English speaking audience with some of the key issues currently occupying Swedish feminist legal scholars. The idea is to allow the reader to catch some revealing glimpses of the workings of the Swedish feminist legal mind in the context of gender equality law. It aims to promote an understanding of specifics of the feminist engagement with and critique of Swedish gender equality law and policy through contributors’ discussions of major themes of western feminism - motherhood, labour, immigration, disability and sexual exploitation
Constructions of Normality and the Boundaries of Social Citizenship – Solo Mothers in the Swedish Welfare Model
Get PDFDiscussions concerning the welfare of individuals today largely have a liberal profile: participation, independence, and free choice are discursively articulated in Swedish and European debates. The point of departure in this article is that gender equality needs to be seen as a question of substantive equality that is, becoming equal in the material sense; it cannot only be seen in the formal sense as a question of equal rights and protection against discrimination. As an analytical tool, ‘solo mothers’ is here used to disturb the different discourses that over time have led to the Swedish welfare model as well as the present Europeanising ones. Solo mothers offer a tool for interrogating critically the manner in which gender equality and social rights discursively link to each other over time and thus show how the social practices of gender are constructed, re-constructed and transformed in the Swedish welfare model in time and space. The conclusion is that gender neutrality in law, based on the liberal notion of an active citizen being primarily a wage-earner, that does not recognise and acknowledge gendered difference and diversity among citizens, runs the risk of reproducing solo mothers as defective family formations and second-rate citizens
Immigrant Women Facing Male Partner Violence – Gender, Race and Power in Swedish Alien and Criminal Law
Get PDFThis article deals with the ways in which gender and race are recognized and addressed in Swedish criminal and alien law with reference to men’s violence against women with insecure residency. It offers an analysis of Swedish preparatory works and case law which seeks to unmask and problematize intersecting power structures and discourses in law. The analysis shows that a perspective on men’s violence against women as related to gender and power to some extent has been implemented in and had significant effects on criminal law, while the significance of race and racism has not been properly acknowledged. Swedish alien law is blatantly lacking in an understanding both in terms of gender power relations and of the ways in which men’s violence against women can be racialized or culturalized. The main conclusion is that there are significant processes of ‘othering’ abused women in both legal areas, but especially in alien law where abused migrant women are constructed as unwanted in the Swedish society when no longer fulfilling their function as men’s partners. The author argues that the notions that men’s violence against women always harms women and is about the assertion of power and control over women should be placed at the centre of an intersectional approach to law and policy. Such an approach will hopefully contribute to counteract current Swedish problems associated with a simplified approach to gender, race and men’s violence against women
Persecution on Account of One’s Gender: Refugee Status or Status Quo?
Get PDFThe subject of this paper is women experiencing male partner violence and the determination of refugee status. My central point of departure is the changes that were made in the Swedish Aliens Act in 2006 concerning the definition of ‘refugee’, which inter alia states that persecution on account of a person’s gender should be included within the definition. The changes came into force at the same time as the new Aliens Act which was introduced in order to strengthen the ‘rule of law’ in migration matters. The objective of this article is to analyse the premises for these changes. The conclusion is that the changes are gender biased and marked by ‘othering’ mechanisms and underlying racism. The conclusion is also that many of these women, as a consequence of the constructions in the legislation, are exposed by the Swedish migration authorities to such institutionalized violence ‘on account of gender’ that would have been a basis for refugee status if it had been the authorities in their homeland that had exposed them to it. The reason for this is that the ‘special’ character of migration law rests upon demands other than those usually required by the ‘rule of law’, limiting the possibilities for change. However, maintaining the ‘rule of law’ also means exclusion for women seeking asylum. With or without the rule of law, it seems ongoing exclusion is the keyword for women in this branch of law
Persons, Property, and Community
Get PDFThe terms ‘persons’ and ‘property’, and the connections between them, have been analysed very thoroughly in several disciplines, including law, philosophy, cultural studies, and anthropology. Like many technical terms, the legal concepts of persons and property are embedded in social practice and reflect its gendered discourse and practices. There is often cross-fertilisation of ‘legal’ and ‘everyday’ or social meanings, as well as a certain productive tension between them. This article introduces and reviews the person-property problematic, and considers how the discourse surrounding these terms and their relationship is changing under increased pressures from a more community-focused (and less individualistic) ethos, influenced in part by feminist thinking about relationality. The article is divided into three parts. First, I introduce some of the difficulties with the concepts of persons and property, and consider what they refer to, and how they are used. Second, I explain what I see as the relationship between these two ideas – how they are supposed to be diametrically opposed, and how they are in fact inextricably linked. Up to this point the article essentially draws pertinent points from a mountainous literature on the topic. The third and more substantial part of the paper takes the matter in a new direction. Here I try to capture new ways of thinking about property which in some ways loosen the property-person nexus, without breaking it altogether. In essence, these new approaches introduce values associated with the community, the environment, and our material futures into our thinking
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