Susan B. Boyd

Challenging the Public/Private Divide: Feminism, Law, and Public Policy

Western thought has long been characterized by an ideological divide between public and private spheres. In the industrial era, the divide became highly gendered as men dominated the public spheres of politics and work, while women were closely associated with family and home. In the late twentieth century, social and legal policies have promoted equal opportunities in the labour force and shared responsibilities in the family. Despite this progress, inequalities are still evident for women in the labour force and in the family, and for some groups of women in relation to others. In this collection of original essays, feminist scholars in disciplines ranging from law to geography challenge the traditional notion of a public/private divide. The divide can represent boundaries between state and family, state and market, market and family, or state and community, which shift depending on location, social group, and historical time period. The contributors to this book examine the impact of the divide in respect to four themes: state intervention; the relationship between family, home, and work; the legal regulation of motherhood; and the challenges of privatization, restructuring, and globalization. They show that the impact of the divide varies according to factors such as race, class, (dis)ability, and sexual identity as they intersect with gender.

Family, Law, and Sexuality: Feminist Engagements

The author explores feminist frameworks within which questions of family, law and sexuality can best be explored, drawing on recent efforts to (re)establish materialist feminist theory. She suggests that in order to make the important link between questions of gender, sexuality, difference, desire, identity and subjectivity on the one hand, and problems of production and exploitation on the other, a materialist feminist theory must incorporate the strengths of Marxist feminism with those of postmodernist feminism. As a way of exploring the politics of current struggles for legal recognition of lesbian and gay relationships as ‘spousal’, she engages with the debate between Nancy Fraser and Judith Butler on the ‘recognition/redistribution’ dichotomy. She argues that neither theorist takes seriously enough the role of the family in the privatisation of the costs of social reproduction within capitalism. She concludes that the important lesbian/gay struggles for legal recognition of ‘spousal’ relationships, such as in the M v H lesbian spousal support case in Canada, should not be seen as sufficient to achieve social equality. Such legal struggles must be accompanied by trenchant critiques of the limits of such recognition in redistributing wealth and well-being.

Is There an Ideology of Motherhood in (Post) Modern Child Custody Law

The concept of the ideology of motherhood is crucial to much early feminist work on child custody law. This ideology of motherhood consisted of a set of “common-sense” expectations, described by the author. The ideology of motherhood assisted in understanding why a field where women (since the death of paternal custody) appeared to “succeed” -- statistically end up with custody of children more often then men -- could be problematic from a feminist perspective. The author reviews the ideology of motherhood in the context of child custody and access law and examines challenges to its utility in the analysis of women’s oppression. The author suggests ways in which the ideology of motherhood continues to resonate as a conceptual tool, despite documented shifts in its context and application in this legal field. Ways in which the shifting and enlarge concept of access produces disciplining effects on mothers are highlighted. The complexity of finding a strategy capable of challenging the numerous difficulties arising for modern mothers, without reinforcing essentialist gender roles, is reviewed

'Marriage is More than Just a Piece of Paper: Feminist Critiques of Same Sex Marriage

This article reviews feminist critiques of same sex marriage and analyzes how marriage as a socio-legal institution relates to inequality based on factors such as sex, race and class. The article first identifies how the legalization of same sex marriage can be viewed as a positive step in the quest for equality and recognition of lesbians and gay men. It then describes the legal and statistical trends in relation to marriage in Canada, as one of the first countries to legalize same sex marriage. The heart of the article discusses the key feminist critiques of both marriage and same sex marriage, drawing on an international survey of primarily English language literature. It considers why these critiques have been understated in the debates on same sex marriage and reviews empirical studies on the views of lesbians and gay men on marriage. While acknowledging that legal marriage can offer important rights to some couples, the conclusion suggests alternatives to placing marriage at the center of the lesbian and gay movement for equality and recognition.

Canadian Feminist Perspectives on Law

This paper provides an overview of Canadian feminist literature on law, starting with a brief chronology of the development of the scholarship from the time of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). The authors break the literature down into the five substantive areas most often written about: criminal law, family law, income redistribution, employment law, and legal education/legal profession. They also examine the major theoretical frameworks that feminists use: liberal (rule equality) feminism; result-equality/integrative feminism; radical feminism; and socialist feminism. In addition to providing an extensive bibliography of existing Canadian feminist legal scholarship, the authors identify significant themes and characteristics of the literature and illustrate how feminist scholarship can be differentiated from non-feminist scholarship. The authors conclude that Canadian feminist scholarship on law is gaining rapidly in abundance, depth, and diversity. They also conclude that it is innovative in developing feminist theoretical perspectives that recognize the significance of law and theories of equality that acknowledge womens specificities. Feminists writing on law are urged to utilize theoretical perspectives to a greater degree in order to facilitate the development of short term and long term strategies, and to explain apparent contradictions in the ways in that the legal system affects women.

What Work of Feminist Legal Scholarship Over the Past Twenty Years Has Been Influential or Important to You, and Why?

The call for paragraphs generated many different kinds of responses. It was atreat reading the different approaches and having an occasion to listen in asothers reflected on the question. In their own voices, here are a variety of theresponses.Parmi toute la recherche fe´ministe en droit produite au cours des dernie`resvingt anne´es, quel texte a e´te´ le plus important pour vous ou encore, lequel vousa le plus influence´, et pourquoi? L’invitation a` re´diger des paragraphes enre´ponse a` cette question a ge´ne´re´ une grande diversite´ de textes. Ce fut un re´elplaisir de lire les diffe´rents choix et d’avoir l’occasion d’eˆtre a` l’e´coute alors qued’autres re´fle´chissaient sur la question pose´e. Voici un e´ventail de ces re´ponses,re´dige´es chacune dans sa propre voix.I would have to say anything written by Ngaire Naffine, CarolSmart, and Laureen Snider, as their works are provocative, risky,and guaranteed to push your thinking about women, feminism, andthe law onto a whole new terrain.Elizabeth ComackSociology, University of Manitoba‘‘Oh well,’’ said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good natured superiority,‘‘women are used to worrying over trifles.’’—From Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers

Autonomous Motherhood?: A Socio-Legal Study of Choice and Constraint

Since the end of the Second World War, increasing numbers of women have decided to become mothers without intending the biological father or a partner to participate in parenting. Many conceive via donor insemination or adopt; others become pregnant after a brief sexual relationship and decide to parent alone. Using a feminist socio-legal framework, Autonomous Motherhood probes fundamental assumptions within the law about the nature of family and parenting. Drawing on a range of empirical evidence, including legislative history, case studies, and interviews with single mothers, the authors conclude that while women may now have the economic and social freedom to parent alone, they must still negotiate a socio-legal framework that suggests their choice goes against the interests of society, fatherhood, and children.

Corporatism and Legal Education in Canada

Until approximately the 1970s, Canadian law schools were primarily viewed as ‘trade schools’ whose main purpose was to provide a new generation of lawyers trained in a narrow way, without questioning the role of law or lawyers in relation to society and power. Further until the 1970s, few women, persons of colour, or Aboriginal people were admitted to Canadian law schools. Only more recently still did critical thinking made inroads on legal education and knowledge. The question is whether these innovations are already being unraveled, by conservative corporatist and commodifying trends. This article tracks the considerable extent to which these trends prevail in the Canadian context, and considers the related question of whether the period of challenging the paradigm of ‘legal education as training for hierarchy’ has ended. The author’s conclusion briefly identifies the contradictions tempering corporatist trends in Canada and perhaps providing space for struggle and resistance.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Feminist Legal Scholarship in SLS

This article offers a review of shifts in feminist legal theory since the early 1990s. We first use our respective histories and fields of expertise to provide a brief overview and highlight some key themes within feminist legal theory. We then examine Social & Legal Studies (SLS), asking whether it has met its key goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level. Our review suggests that SLS has offered many important contributions to feminist legal scholarship but has not fulfilled its lofty goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level of scholarship. It features feminist work quite consistently and some degree of mainstreaming is evident, as is the international reach of SLS. Too many articles fail, however, to incorporate or even mention feminist approaches. We end with thoughts about, and hopes for, the future of legal feminism, examining efforts to revitalize the field and suggesting possible directions for the future.

Law and Families

This co-edited volume highlights important classic and contemporary works by law and society scholars who analyze the complex and often highly political relationship between law and families. Featuring authors from Australia, Canada, England and the United States, the volume looks at how socio-legal scholars think about families and the law, how law shapes family practices, the capacity of family law to deliver social justice and how family disputes are resolved. Topics such as laws role in recognizing spousal and parental relationships or promoting responsible behaviour or equality norms are covered and the relationship between laws assumptions and the lived realities of families is problematized. [It includes an introductory chapter co-authored by Boyd and Rhoades].