Women's Studies 2260 Chapter Notes - Chapter Conaghan: Feminist Legal Theory, Feminist Theory, Shared Experience

• School: Western University
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: Women's Studies 2260
• Professor: Tugce Ellialti Kose

Document Summary

Feminism appears increasingly irrelevant to those struggling to advance women"s interests. Feminism gains its legitimacy through its ability visibly to bring about political change. Feminist legal scholars seek to highlight and explore the gendered content of law and to probe characterizations positing themselves as neutral and, more specifically, ungendered. They are part of a cross-disciplinary feminist effort to challenge traditional understandings of the social, legal, cultural, and epistemological order by placing women, their individual and shared experiences, at the center of their scholarship. Feminist legal scholars seek to track and expose law"s implication in women"s disadvantage with a view to bringing about transformative social and political change. Feminist legal scholarship sets out to show how gender is both ignored and enshrined in legal theory and practice by highlighting the ways in which it is replicated and constructed in legal discourse. One approach involves analysis of how women are disadvantaged by rules formally complying with the rule of law.