Virtual Library

In this article, we offer a critical examination of the tendency to segregate discussion of surgical alterations to the male and female genitals into separate compartments- the first known as circumcision, the second as genital mutilation. We argue that this fundamental problem of definition underlies the considerable controversy surrounding these procedures when carried out on minors, and that it hinders objective discussion of the alleged benefits, harms, and risks. We explore the variable effects of male and female genital surgeries, and we propose a scale of damage for male circumcision to complement the World Health Organization's categorization of female genital mutilation. The origins of the double standard identified are placed in historical perspective, and in a brief conclusion we make a plea for greater gender neutrality in the approach to this contentious issue.

Using ethnographic data, this article explores how Muslim women teachers from low-income Pakistani communities employ the notion of “wisdom” to construct and perform their educated subjectivity in a transnational women’s education project. Through Butler’s performativity framework, I demonstrate how local and global discourses overlap to shape narratives that define individual rights as well as family honor as part of the educated subjectivity of Pakistani Muslim women.

This article examines the troubling status of poor migrant wome political actors in the denationalized space of Ciudad Juárez. Subaltern women's labors have served the state as a stabilizing force amidst the economic and political crises of the neo-liberal regime in ways that both promote and delimit new forms of female agency in the border region. The acute rise in armed social conflict in Juárez, much of it targeted at young women and girls, requires that we examine how the denationalized subjectivity that has occupied recent scholarship on globalization and citizenship is itself produced through state failure and state violence. The impunity of violent crime necessarily devalues both citizenship and citizens: it produces a climate where sociality is defined less by national belonging than by the more atomizing force of collective fear. If globalization has in fact encouraged the disarticulation of citizenship rights from membership to a single national community, as many analysts maintain, it is nevertheless unclear whether subaltern Mexican women can make substantive claims to the global civil society that the Juárez industries have helped to produce. 

The development of feminist jurisprudence in recent years has made a rich and fruitful contribution to legal theory. Few areas of domestic law have avoided the scrutiny of feminist writers, who have exposed the gender bias of apparently neutral systems of rules. A central feature of many western theories about law is that the law is an autonomous entity, distinct from the society it regulates. A legal system is regarded as different from a political or economic system, for example, because it operates on the basis of abstract rationality, and is thus universally applicable and capable of achieving neutrality and objectivity. These attributes are held to give the law its special authority. More radical theories have challenged this abstract rationalism, arguing that legal analysis cannot be separated from the political, economic, historical, and cultural context in which people live. Some theorists argue that the law functions as a system of beliefs that make social, political, and economic inequalities appear natural. Feminist jurisprudence builds on certain aspects of this critical strain in legal thought. It is much more focused and concrete, however, and derives its theoretical force from immediate experience of the role of the legal system in creating and perpetuating the unequal position of women.

The international campaign to eliminate female genital cutting (FGC) has, since the early 1990s, actively attempted to divorce itself from a health framework, adopting instead a human rights framework to justify intervention. Several key questions emerge regarding the prominent placement of FGC in the international human rights movement: What are the ramifications of framing FGC as a human rights violation? What actions are mandated by a human rights approach? What perils and pitfalls potentially arise from the adoption of a rights-based framework, and how might they be avoided? In exploring these questions it becomes clear that, although a human rights approach is promising, careful deliberation is required to develop action strategies that offer both protection and respect for the culture and autonomy of those women and families concerned.

Gender and legal scholars argue that law enforcement personnel govern gendered violence by selectively protecting “good victims” and imposing social control. This article shows why these theories are not universally applicable. Using 26 months of participant observation and interview data with law enforcement personnel in the state of West Bengal, India, this article identifies an alternate set of governmental practices termed incorporation. Law enforcement personnel incorporated women by reassigning casework and encouraging extralegal repossessions and punishment. This governmental model rewarded women with organizational connections, not women who were “good victims.” And instead of expanding state control, it delegated authority to civilians. These findings underscore how low enforcement capacity and political mobilization influence the way law enforcement governs gendered violence in a postcolonial, developing context.

Much of what is known about how the law operates is based on the criminal justice process. What is less understood is whether legal, extra-legal, and organizational attributes matter for non-criminal justice processes, such as discrimination and employment disputes. It is this general issue that we examine in this paper. We also incorporate how the development of the legal construct of sexual harassment affects case settlement. Our study attempts to overcome the underutilization of theoretical understandings from the sociology of law to study sexual harassment complaints. We examine 267 sexual harassment complaints against corporate respondents or employing organizations handled by the Canadian Human Rights Commission between 1978–1993 to see what factors influence whether a complaint will be dismissed or settled. Our results show that legal, extra-legal, and case processing factors matter for the resolution of complaints. We also find that the development of sexual harassment as a legal concept is central to understanding the settlement of complaints over time. Finally, we conclude that research on civil and human rights processes should incorporate insights from research on criminal justice processes

In this essay, Mohanty argues that Western feminist scholarship has reduced all women of the third world into a single, collective other. She critiques the approach to feminism and third-world women, arguing for more nuanced scholarship from Western scholars.

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society, and when she falls for no-account Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves.

In 1982, Evelyn's daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband's drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.

Jackie's son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn't survive the storm. Fresh out of a four-month stint for drug charges, T.C. decides to start over--until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal.

For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.