Justice and Gender: Sex Discrimination and the Law [Paperback]

Deborah L. Rhode (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0674491017 | ISBN-13: 978-0674491014

This provides an investigation of gender and the law in the United States. The author describes legal developments over the past two centuries against a background of historical and sociological changes in women's activities and attitudes toward these new developments. She shows the way cultural perceptions of gender influence, and in turn are influenced by, legal constructions, and what this complicated interaction implies about the possibility - or impossibility - of using law as a tool of social change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Justice and Gender breaks the impasse created by legal and theoretical debates over 'sameness' and 'difference.' Deborah Rhode's brilliant analysis of gender and the law in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present argues persuasively for theories rooted in careful contextual analysis and for a legal emphasis on gender disadvantage rather than gender difference. This book offers a new vantage point from which to think about the role of law in building a just society.
--Sarah M. Evans, University of Minnesota

Rhode's work is impressive in its scholarship and its range...a compelling account.
--Josephine Shaw (International and Comparative Law Quarterly )

The definitive treatment of the American legal system's struggle to deal with issues pertaining to gender...The strength of Rhode's analysis, however, is not its historical aspect but its probing view of modern gender issues...The focus is always on the deeper forces that have led to gender disadvantage...There is much to be learned from reading this volume.
--Victoria J. Dodd (Bimonthly Review of Law Books )

A comprensive journey through the history of law and gender...The book is important in a number of ways...[It] paints in stark, irrefutable colors the irrational prejudices that have served to justify legal determinations limiting equality...[I]t has the audacity to ask the law to turn on itself and work more justly.
--Sheila James Kuehl (California Lawyer )

Encyclopedic.. . Thorough, carefully nuanced ... [Rhode] gives all sides their fair due on every issue she takes up... A valuable resource for many years to come.
--Susan 0kin (Law and Social Inquiry )

Review

Justice and Gender breaks the impasse created by legal and theoretical debates over 'sameness' and 'difference.' Deborah Rhode's brilliant analysis of gender and the law in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present argues persuasively for theories rooted in careful contextual analysis and for a legal emphasis on gender disadvantage rather than gender difference. This book offers a new vantage point from which to think about the role of law in building a just society. (Sarah M. Evans, University of Minnesota ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674491017
• ISBN-13: 978-0674491014
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,562,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and the Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She has a Yale BA and JD, and is a former law clerk of Justice Thurgood Marshall, a former president of the Association of American Law Schools, a former chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, and a former director of both Stanford's Center on Ethics and its Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is the author or coauthor of twenty books and over 200 articles, and is the nation's most cited scholar on professional responsibility.

Author Photo by David Weintraub, photographer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thorough overview of feminist jurisprudence.

, December 3, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Justice and Gender: Sex Discrimination and the Law (Paperback)

Deborah Rhode provides a historical overview of social
gender inequalities that have manifested in the law.
She assesses various feminist responses to these
inequalities and argues that the establishment of a
cohesive feminist philosophy of law, or feminist
jurisprudence, will be the most direct, effective way to
enacting legal reform addressing them. Her presentation
begins with a brief explication of the historical
framework prior to the contemporary women's rights
movement. Rhode discusses domestic expectations of and
restricted opportunities for women prior to the
mid-nineteenth century and illustrates how early feminist
developments, such as the writing of the Seneca Falls
Declaration of Sentiments and the suffrage movement,
helped loosen these social constraints.

With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920,
women gained a degree of political power they never had
before. Political power and greater access to the
legislature became a means to redressing social gender
inequalities in the law. The nascent women's movement
of the time played a major role in promoting reform,
and since then, has grown tremendously. Unfortunately,
despite having general common goals, such as expanded
employment and educational opportunities for women,
reproductive freedom, nonsexist portrayals of women in
the media, and revisions in criminal law and family
policy regarding marital support, domestic violence, and
rape, the women's movement in its present state is
largely fragmented. This state of fragmentation is not
conducive to promoting legal reform since each segment
of the women's movement conceives reform differently.

Rhode argues that fragmentation results from "false
dichotomies," or reductionist, binary notions of gender
and issues pertaining to gender inequalities that do not
capture the intricacies of such concepts. To build an
effective women's movement able to achieve lasting social
change, Rhode stresses the need to deconstruct simple,
dichotomous thinking and address social problems in
their full complexity. She maintains that feminists
must establish one feminist jurisprudence based upon the
manifest gender disadvantages that result from the
current practice of law. A united feminist jurisprudence
is essential if social change is the be enacted;
fragmentation of the women's movement is a major
setback. With one cohesive jurisprudence based on
observable, undeniable gender inequalities, not multiple
philosophies of law with diverse speculations regarding
essential similarities and differences between and
within gender groups, the women's movement would be in
a stronger position to advocate legal reform.

Justice and Gender represents a broad historical
synopsis of women's relation to the law. As a reference
book for a general overview of current women's issues,
trends in the legal treatment of women, theories
regarding treatment, and strategies for combating
inequalities, Rhode's book provides a solid foundation.
However, if one wants thorough analysis of specific
aspects of law, or a more comprehensive look at
specific sides of current debates, a more focused book
is in order. The weakness of Justice and Gender is
that it covers a lot of material and a wide time period
in a limited amount of space. For this reason, it cannot
be anything more than a brief overview of feminist
jurisprudence.

Countering the book's weakness is the way in which
Rhode presents the material. Her presentation is
thorough, and she spells out feminist arguments with
a high degree of clarity. More importantly, she is
even-handed in discussing the consequences of legal
reforms surrounding women's issues, assessing both the
benefits and drawbacks that different legal developments
have had for women. For example, in discussing equity
versus equality vis-à-vis exploitation in the workplace,
Rhode praises short-term legal protections for women
and restitution for past inequalities, but at the same
time, feels that such measures can foster long-term
dependence and perpetuate the stereotype of helpless
women in need of assistance from paternalistic legislators.
Taken collectively, Rhode's assessment of this and other
legal reforms illuminates that fact that reform usually
has both progressive and regressive aspects. In other
words, reform has the ability to expand opportunities for
women, but usually at the expense of long-term autonomy,
freedom, and true equality with men.

Rhode clearly sides with progressive reform, but
admirably, she carefully addresses other perspectives
without becoming polemical or rhetorical. Her work
attests to the importance of dealing directly and
thoroughly with issues surrounding women's legal reform
since it generates such a rich portrayal of the problems
facing women advocating change. Avoiding reductive
formulations of gender inequality and addressing social
problems in their full complexity is the only way to
promote serious discussion regarding women's relation to
the law. Such discussion is an important, but complex,
undertaking. It is not likely to end in the "quick-fix"
type of reform that simplistic, dichotomous thinking
produces. For this reason, resolutions are not
foreseeable in the immediate future. The process of
legal reform is a long one and has been going on for at
least 150 years. However, by addressing gender
inequality in a thorough manner, if and when the problem
is resolved, it will have a long-lived, radical effect
on society.