Friday, September 25, 2009

Feminist Jurisprudence: More of the Same?

Feminist Jurisprudence is one of many movements within the feminist belief. It is similar to the others in that the goal of the movement is to have equality of both sexes in nearly every facet of society, similar in that it believes there is no inherent difference e between either sex and therefore both should be treated equally, and that gender is no more than what society constructs it to be, an assignment of certain roles and ideas to each sex based on what society mandates. However, the fundamental claim in Jurisprudence that makes it unique from all other facets of feminism is that it claims that this equality between sexes can never truly be achieved without a leveling of the legal playing field; that is, women are subjected differently to laws than men because of the way they were founded, formatted, and enforced.

This being said, these types of claims that the law is biased towards women held a lot more clout during the middle of the century; for example, since women gained the right to vote, it does not seem like any constitutional amendment or law subjects women to a different standard than men. There are no laws that come to mind that prohibit women from doing certain things that men cannot do, so the claim of Jurisprudence could be said rather to be this; that women need the law to be structured around promoting, if need be directly, the equality of men and women, and to do this, laws need to have no bias towards women, but rather, set out adequate remedies for women’s plight. However, if these” remedies” are designed for women, is the bias within the law truly gone, or has it just shifted sides?

4 comments:

  1. "There are no laws that come to mind that prohibit women from doing certain things that men cannot do..." When it comes to the military, women are still unable to join any ground combat units.

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  3. I agree. There is still bias within the legal system between genders. There may be few laws that prohibit women from doing certain things that men can do but gender inequality does not have to be as clear as black letter law. It can be exhibited in bias in judges, juries and attorneys and how they carry out a case based on their beliefs.

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  4. I don’t really think laws are bias personally I feel the way people interpret laws make them bias towards a gender or race. There aren’t any laws that stop women to live their life and find their purist of happiness. I think the law shift sides when it involves cases when society feels bad for the women and wants to punish the men.

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