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Gender and the Law Research Guide

This guide covers gender and the law, legal feminism and feminist jurisprudence.

Introduction

Black's Law Dictionary defines feminist jurisprudence as "[a] branch of jurisprudence that examines the relationship between women and law, including the history of legal and social biases against women, the elimination of those biases in modern law, and the enhancement of women's legal rights and recognition in society."

In his book Postmodern Legal Movements author Gary Minda posits that the first published use of the phrase "feminist jurisprudence" occurred in Ann Scales's article "Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence" in 1978.

However, feminist jurisprudence has expanded in the intervening decades to include issues related to gender in the broader sense, including sexuality and LGTBQ rights.

Research in the area of gender and the law usually includes, to some extent, multidisciplinary resources. Because of this, it can be necessary to use materials accessed outside of the standard legal databases.  This guide will direct you to the non-law resources that are available to you through Williams Library, as well as Lauinger Library.

Some sections of this guide have been broken down into broad topic areas for the sake of organization.

Getting Started

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Created by: (YM)
Updated 5/23 (MK)