Full Description
This title was first published in 2001. In the Nordic countries women are considered equal to men. Advanced social and economic rights are often given as the explanation for the equality. In this volume, Nordic feminist legal scholars give a more contradictory image of gender equality. The gendered construction of the legal subject and the legal understanding of gender have a two-pronged potential, both to change and to reproduce gender relations. Nordic women have been considered responsible for upholding the gendered social system - as "responsible selves" rather than as individuals engaged in rights discourse. The authors claim, with examples, that the belief in equality has made certain discriminative practices difficult to recognize and conceptualize. Also a transformation of the social welfare system puts the collective equality policies to the test.
Contents
Contributors, Preface, 1. Introductory Remarks on Nordic Law and Gender Identities, Part I:Constructing Equality and Identity, 2. Transformative Nordic Welfarism: Liberal and Communitarian Trends in Family and Market Law, 3. Sex Equality: Changes in Politics, Jurisprudence and Feminist Legal Studies, 4. The Responsible Self: Relational Gender Construction in the History of Finnish Law, Part II: Welfare and Care, 5. The Changing Position of the Individual in Danish Welfare Law, 6. From Marriage Contract to Labour Contract: Effects on Care Duties and Care Rights, 7. The Autonomous Taxpayer and the Dependent Caregiver: The Effects of the Division Between Tax Law and Social Law, Part III: Constructions of Gender in Labour Law, 8. Collective and Individual Strategies: Women's and Men's Wages, 9. The Enforcement of EU Sex Discrimination Law in Scandinavia, 10. Doctors and Nurses: The Gendered Right to Practise, 11. The ECJ's Conditional Release of Women, Part IV: Integrity and its Violations, 12. Criminal Law or Social Policy as Protection Against Violence, 13. The "Good Battered Woman": A Silenced Defendant, 14. The Unbounded Body of the Law of Rape: The Intrusive Criterion of Non-Consent, 15. Women's Peace: A Criminal Law Reform in Sweden
