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FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE

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I - INTRODUCTION

1. What is feminism?
   Need for feminist jurisprudence
2. Construction of 'person' is law
3. Construction of patriarchy
   • Male dominance
   • Paternalism
   • Discrimination
   • Stereo types
   • Division of labour
   • Criticism of natural law and positivism

II - FEMINIST THEORIES AND THEIR CRITIQUE

1. Liberal Feminism
   • what is liberalism, liberal feminism and the concepts flowing from it - for e.g. equality. State and Rule of law, Rights, liberty, public & private divide.
   • Relation to the Indian constitution and different laws.
   • Critique of liberalism and liberal feminism
   • Substantive equality
   • Sameness and difference debate

2. Marxist Feminism
   • Engels thesis on the origin of family, property and state
   • Causal linkage between women's oppression class society
   • How women's oppression assists capitalism
   • It relieves capital of "costs" of reproduction of labour power, since women perform tasks like children rearing, cooking, care of aged and sick without wages.
   • Work at home by women frees male workers for longer hours and enables capitalist to generate surplus value.
   • Women emerge as consumption specialists to be exploited by capitalist growth.
   • Women also provide a surplus labour market which is exploited for law wages.
   • Marxist strategies for overcoming women's oppression.
   • A general transformation of mode of production from capitalism to socialism will end most problems of women's oppression.
   • Specific steps Unionization and organization of all working women.
   • Equality in employment at work site.
   • Linkages to family law - unremunerative work leads to maintenances.
   • Linkages to labour law - traditional unionization has never taken place and this results in radical Feminism.
   • Critique

3. Radical Feminism
   • Patriarchy is perceived as a total male control over female bodies - right over body, sexuality, reproductive rights.
   • Criticism of Public Private divide 'personal is political'
   • Critique of state and law as being based on legitimizing and reinforcing patriarchal domination.
   • Violence against women
     1. Family domestic violence, marital rape, abortion.
     2. State - custodial rape and murder, forced sterilization
     3. Society - sexual harassment, rape, female feticide, sex determination, amniocetitesis.
     4. Market - Indecent Representation, Immoral trafficking, Obscenity, pornography.
   • Critique of Radical Feminism
     1. A historical
     2. Constitutes women as a class, ignoring, Caste race, religion, ethnicity, culture, heterogeneity.
     3. Biological Essentialism
     4. Confrontational Approach and anti-men
     5. Unidimensional Approach

4. Socialist Feminism
   • Marxist conception of state
   • Marxist conception of "labour" does not include procreative labours hence class struggle does not included on agenda of women's emancipation from patriarchy.
   • Difficulties in Marxian theory in conceptualizing women as a "class"
   • Struggle to control productive resources of a Society have always included a struggle to control the reproductive capacity of women.
   • Organisation of procreation forms, therefore, a part of the economic foundation of society.
   • Therefore, the public/private distinction overlooks the mutual interdependence of sexuality, politics and economy.
   • Strategies for transformation.
   • How internationalized repression of women should be eliminated.
   • State and Law should recognize the full value of procreational and household labour.
   • Struggle against de-professionalisation and proletarinization women's work.
   • Forging political unity among oppressed groups
   • Demand for participatory democracy.
   • Setting up crèches, maternity - paternity leaves.
   • Critique

5. Feminism in Indian Context
   • Establishing interconnection between class and gender
   • Law reforms, reservation, Affirmative action
   • Dalit Feminist Consciousness
   • Ecofeminism
   • Subaltern

6. Some contemporary debates on feminism
   • Gender, trade and globalization e.g. WTO, sex tourism, violence against women, trafficking. (Use of case laws and convention)
   • CEDAW
   • Post colonial debates and post modern debates