Knowledge Interfaces and Practices of Negotiation: Cases from a Women's Group in Bolivia and an Oil Refinery in Wales

This chapter examines encounters between international institutions that frame their objectives through a global policy language, and people whose lives are the focus for change heralded by these institutions. It explores how a global policy language, which seeks consensus and equality, can be at odds with local understandings, conflict and intentions.

Recovering lost lives: researching women in legal history

Drawing on the research I undertook into the life of Gwyneth Bebb, who in 1913 challenged the Law Society of England and Wales for their refusal to admit women to the solicitors’ profession, this article focuses on the range of sources one might use to explore the lives of women in law, about whom there might be a few public records but little else, and on the ways in which sources, even official ones, might be imaginatively used. It traces the research process from the case that inspired the research (Bebb v The Law Society [1914] 1 Ch 286) through to the creation of an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and what this means for women’s history, emphasising the importance of asking the ‘woman question’ and seeking out the broader significance of a woman’s life in the context of her times.

Early women law students at Cambridge and Oxford

This article examines the hitherto neglected history of the twelve women who studied law at Cambridge and Oxford in the years up to 1900. It concludes that the reason why so little has been written about them is, first, because women's experience has been routinely ignored in accounts of legal education ( and in history generally) and, second, because their entry to the university law schools was accomplished with very little fuss or opposition. This in turn was due not only to the fact that the law professors were generally sympathetic to higher education for women but also because the women themselves did not challenge university traditions or the men's curriculum.

Juror stereotypes and blame attribution in rape cases involving intoxicants - The findings of a pilot study

Prior to recent legislative changes, sexual offences were contained in a combination of statutory provisions and common law that was criticized as being ill-equipped to tackle the intricacies of modern sexual (mis)behaviour. This pilot study explored the capacity of these provisions to address the complexities of drug-assisted rape using focus groups and a trial simulation to identify factors which influenced jurors in rape trials involving intoxicants. The findings revealed that jurors considered numerous extra-legal factors when reaching a decision: rape myths, misconceptions about the impact of intoxicants and factors such as the motivation of the defendant in administering an intoxicant. This paper draws upon these findings, focusing in particular on the interaction between juror attributions of blame and stereotypical conceptions about intoxication, sexual consent and drug-assisted rape. The findings of this pilot study form the basis for a larger-scale project (ESRC -funded, commenced January 2004) that examines this interaction in the context of new provisions under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Law and the power of feminism: how marriage lost its power to oppress women

In Feminism and the Power of Law Carol Smart argued that feminists should use non-legal strategies rather than looking to law to bring about women’s liberation. This article seeks to demonstrate that, as far as marriage is concerned, she was right. Statistics and contemporary commentary show how marriage, once the ultimate and only acceptable status for women, has declined in social significance to such an extent that today it is a mere lifestyle choice. This is due to many factors, including the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s, improved education and job opportunities for women, and divorce law reform, but the catalyst for change was the feminist critique that called for the abandonment (rather than the reform) of the institution and made the unmarried state possible for women. I conclude that this loss of significance has been more beneficial to British women in terms of the possibility of ‘liberation’ than appeals for legal change and recognition, and that we should continue to be wary of looking to law to solve women’s problems.

'Between slavery and freedom': the expulsion and enslavement of free women of colour in the US South before the Civil War

For free black women in the pre-Civil War American South, the status offered by ‘freedom’ was uncertain and malleable. The conceptualization of bondage and freedom as two diametrically opposed conditions therefore fails to make sense of the complexities of life for these women. Instead, notions of enslavement and freedom are better framed as a spectrum. This article develops this idea by exploring two of the ways in which some black women negotiated their status before the law—namely though petitioning for residency or for enslavement. While these petitions are atypical numerically, and often offer tantalizingly scant evidence, when used in conjunction with evidence from the US census, it becomes clear that these women were highly pragmatic. Prioritizing their spousal and broader familial affective relationships above their legal status, they rejected the often theoretical distinction between slavery and liberation. As such, the petitions can be used to reach broader conclusions about the attitudes of women who have left little written testimony.

Revolutionary insurgencies, paradigmatic cases

This essay will examine and compare the production of women's writing during and after the Nicaraguan and Cuban Revolutions, a corpus that includes novels, poetry, and testimonies, but also features considerable generic hybridity. Since both revolutions are separated by some twenty years, each must be understood in the context of the specific ideological conditions that framed women’s participation in culture and revolution, and must also be considered in light of evolving gender discourses, both national and international. As such, these texts respond to both local and transnational paradigms of feminine subjectivity, and highlight the particular problems that arise from women’s insertion into the revolution and its representation in literature. These writers also have to negotiate the evolving context of revolution itself, with its moments of euphoria and disenchantment – and it is here that the greatest contrasts can be found between the two revolutionary instances and their political features: whilst Cuba’s revolutionary process has somehow survived economic crisis and created a level of political stability and continuity (not without its own problems), the Nicaraguan case is characterised by ruptures and resentments which are clearly reflected in the work of writers before, during, and after the Sandinista revolution, and which continue to the present day. This chapter will address the work of the most prominent woman writer of the Nicaraguan revolution, Gioconda Belli, whose main work reflects her involvement in the Sandinista struggle; ex-commander Mónica Baltodano has recently compiled a four volume piece with testimonials of men and women who participated in the organization and actions led by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, former president of Nicaragua, who has recently co-authored an autobiography. There are other women poets to consider, especially under the auspices of the Asociación de Mujeres Nicaraguenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza, such as Vidaluz Meneses, Michele Najlis and Daisy Zamora. The testimonios compiled by Margaret Randall are also important pieces to consider for both Nicaragua and Cuba. The most important voices of the Cuban revolution still resident on the island are poet Nancy Morejón and writers Mirta Yáñez and Aida Bahr, with younger writers such as Adelaida Fernández de Juan and Marilyn Bobes representing a more recent generation.

New legal texts from the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana

Several previously unnoticed texts concerning ancient lawcourts can be found in the Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, a set of bilingual dialogues composed for language learners during the Roman empire. The texts describe court cases, both criminal and civil; their writers probably taught in law schools between the second and fourth centuries ad. Editions, translations, and summary information about these texts are provided.