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Cherkasova (Borodina) Anna
Faculty member, Department of Sociology and Political Science, School on Women and Gender Studies, Tver State University;
Faculty member, Department of Civil Law and Civil Law Procedures, Tver Institute of Environment and Law
Address:
1-5 Volnogo Novgoroda st.
Tver, 170000, Russia
Tel.: (7-0822) 332886, (7-0822) 331131
Fax.: (7-0822) 339080 (pos restante Anna Borodina)
E-mail: tpost@dol.ru (for Anna Borodina), vladmb@cps.tver.ru
Gender and Law
Course Syllabus (draft)
University: Tver State University, Department of Sociology and Political Science, School on Women and Gender Studies; Tver Institute of Ecology and Law, Tver, Russia, 1998 Fall Semester, 1999 Spring Semester.
Instructor: Anna Cherkasova (Borodina)
Credits: depend upon the university requirements
Course Content and Requirements
Aim of the Course: The purpose of this course is to give a brief idea of gender relations within the legal discourse. In its theoretical part the course will cover a wide range of legal topics from legal thought of the Past to particular modern fields of law. In its practical part the course aims at developing the critical attitude to the law and law making in gender discourse, and skills to analyse the current and draft legislation (international, federal, regional, local) from gender perspectives. The instructor offers both basic theoretical materials on Gender and Law (that will mainly go in a form of lectures, to be fixed in a Reader as well) and case study of texts of particular laws/codes. As offered for the Russian academic institutions, it will mainly focus on Russian legislation at the federal, regional and local levels and Russian translations of the international legal documents in comparative perspectives.
Students are encouraged to develop their own ideas and perspectives on related questions as well as to present and discuss them in the course.
Course Structure:
Course schedule depends upon the general university and department schedule and is supposed to be held twice a week for 1,5 hour (45+45). Each course unit usually consists of either instructor's lecture and class discussion on one of course topics, or case study of the particular legal text (in a form of workshop). If no special arrangements or requirements of the hosting institution appear, the lecture will be accompanied by a seminar (workshop) during one unit (90 minutes). First class meeting will be the lecture only (the introductory one), and every next meeting will make a pair of a seminar (on the topic of the previous lecture) and a lecture (on the next topic). The order of topics will probably remain the same as given in the list. The «pairs» will be defined later according to the principle of coherence/correspondence: each theoretical topic will be accompanied by a discussion on this topic and related issues using various materials from books/essays, mass media and Internet, while every topic on the concrete field of law will be followed by a workshop on the corresponding legal document(s). The order of lectures and seminars will also depend upon students' interest and suggestions.
The students are expected to use the background lectures and Readers/handouts while preparing for the classes as most of course materials are not available at university and city libraries. The feedback during the lecture is encouraged. The students will also be expected to make short presentations on related topics up to their choice, a mid-term 20-minute presentation is a mandatory. It may be developed into a course paper/project (up to 10 double-spaced pages) to be presented at the class conference in the end of the semester.
The students are encouraged to contact the instructor during the office hours and after the classes.
Course Requirements:
1) class participation –– forty percent (40%) of the grade will be based on comments and involvement into class discussions and short presentations on a selected topic made by students up to their choice.
2) mid-term presentation –– twenty percent (20%) of the grade will be based on the approximately 20-minutes presentation on a selected course related topic (to be negotiated with the instructor).
3) research paper/project –– forty percent (40%) of the grade will be based on a final research paper or a project (up to 10 double-spaced pages or written by hand) related to the course and supervised by the instructor. In the end of the semester there will be a class conference: students are expected to make a brief 10-minutes presentation of their papers/projects before their classmates and guests (interested faculty members and students). The most successful papers may be published in the Tver State University Work Papers (Sbornik Nauchnykh Trudov Tverskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta) and be presented at the Tver State University annual student research conference.
Course Topics:
This is a general list of topics to be covered in a form of lectures.
1. Lectures
- 1) Introduction.
- - «Gender» and «Law» –– definitions and concepts. Connection between two discourses. - Women's Studies, Men's Studies, Gender Studies and Law - interdisciplinary links.
- - Who/What is making the law.
- - Women and law: using it and changing it.
- 2) Men and women in legal thought (summary).
- 3) Sociology of law.
- - The character of law and legal discourse: reflecting the existing categories and constructing new ones.
- - Foucault and law. Feminist critique of Foucault.
- 4) The «legal» language (language of legal documents) and gender.
- - «Neutral» constructions like «a reasonable person», «every citizen», «everyone», «a child».
- - The textual and contextual representation of various target groups in legal documents.
- - Male and female representation: the ways of constructing the categories of «woman» and «man» in legal documents.
- 5) Women about law.
- - Women in law: access to legal profession.
- - Feminist jurisprudence: definitions and concepts (summary) .
- - Feminist legal theory: main problems and discussions (summary) .
- - Introduction to the debates/discussions existing between different groups/schools/waves of feminism.
- - «Equality debate»: «sameness» and «difference» arguments, their criticisms.
- - «Public» and «private» debate as it appears in the U.S. and Russia.
- - «Equal pay» debate: comparative perspectives .
- - Affirmative action: different approaches and comparative perspectives .
- - Pornography: feminist and legal approaches .
- 6) Law about women.
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- A. Constitutional Law.
- - Sexual/gender equality principle in terms of the constitution (main law) of the Russian Federation.
- - Particular constitutional rights and basic freedoms in terms of gender equality .
- B. Civil Law.
- - Gender and civil law relations.
- - Ownership and right to property in gender discourse: comparative perspectives.
- - Gender and market.
- C. Social welfare law and family planning.
- - Reproductive health and reproductive rights.
- - Social welfare law and «patriarchy» debates.
- - Family planning and state's legal policy.
- - Abortion: its legal history and present day situation (comparative perspectives).
- - Pregnancy and mother/father leave in terms of legislation.
- D. Labour law.
- - Women and men as employers and employees: gender perspectives.
- - Discrimination matters.
- - Sexual harassment.
- E. Family law.
- - Different types of family. Family and marriage .
- - Women and men in family law: marriage, divorce, motherhood and fatherhood, child adoption, property rights and property suits .
- - Rights of the child: the status of boys and girls in a family and community.
- - Gender and legal aspects of inheritance .
- - Domestic violence.
- F. Criminal law.
- - Criminological concepts in gender perspectives.
- - Sexuality before the law: comparative historical perspectives .
- - Types of «sexual abuse»: sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape.
- - Self-defence and «necessary defence» issues .
- - Venereal diseases, AIDS and HIV in terms of legislation: gender aspects.
- - Prostitution and trafficking women.
- G. Gender and the court
- - Gender and civil trial.
- - Gender and criminal trial.
- - Gender and jury
- H. Gender and penal law.
- - Women and men in prison.
- - Girls and boys in prison.
- 7) Gender and international law.
- - Sexual discrimination/sexism and gender discrimination.
- - Gender and citizenship.
- - Women's human rights .
- - CEDAW: its legal history and impact: international perspectives .
- - Rights of the child: rights of boys and rights of girls (comparative perspectives).
- - The impact of international legal documents on Russian women, men and children in the fields of national legislation.
- 8) Law making process and gender issues.
- - Lobbying and lobbyists. The experience of different countries. League of Women Voters (U.S.A.) and others.
- - The institution of ombudsperson. International experience and Russian attempts .
- - Gender Expertise. Basic ideas and concepts .
- - NGOs and women's legal coalitions. Their role in law making process.
- 9) Conclusions.
- - Recognising our rights and mechanisms of their advocacy .
- - Law clinics, crisis centres and legal aid .
2. Case Study Workshops
A tentative scheme for analysing the legal documents:
- A brief legal history of the document (to be possibly made in a form of short presentation by the students). The aim of this document and the reason of its adoption.
- Dates of its adoption and entering into force. The «back force» of this law (if any).
- A subject (target group) of this law.
- In which way this group is specified (whether it is constructed in «neutral» terms or gender distinction is made).
- What are the rights (benefits) of the group according to this law (if any)? Do they differ from the previous scope of rights for the same group? If yes, in which way?
- What are the duties (obligations) of the group according to this law (if any)? Do they differ from the previous duties of the same group? If yes, in which way? What is the remedy (if any) for neglecting/breach of those duties?
- Are the rights and duties connected with gender of the target group member? If yes, in which way? Can this connection be exposed explicitly or implicitly?
- How are those rights (benefits) guaranteed? What are the means of rights advocacy according to this law? Who/what is responsible for safe enjoying and protection of them?
- What is the mechanism of claiming the rights by this law? What steps/grades does it consist on? Does this law provide a new mechanism/means of rights advocacy?
- An impact of this law –– a point for discussion
Course Materials:
Course materials will be based on the course bibliography, some books/essays/papers in Russian and texts of particular laws/codes as well as Internet resources. Besides, course related information from the mass media and Internet may be used both by instructor and students in a form of short middle term presentation and/or when writing the final paper/project. The instructor will make up the texts of lectures and the Reader basing on course bibliography and, probably, some of the Internet materials, as well as sources in Russian. As the university and city libraries (including personal libraries) usually have only single copies of books on the course topics, students are expected to use the texts of background lectures as a complementary sourse.
A. Course Bibliography
The books and essays listed below are represented at CEU Library. They are to be used by instructor while preparing course materials at CEU and not for students' use as these books (with very few exceptions) are not available at hosting institutions. The instructor will make extracts and xerocopies of essential pages (with translation into Russian if necessary) to make up Reader(s) and distribute them within the class members (one copy will go to the library of hosting institution and one more is for CEP archives). The bibliography is not yet specified for each of course topics but it is given in a general list. This list may be changed during the preparation period and some changes may come upon the students' requests.
- Ana's Land. Sisterhood in Eastern Europe (ed. by Tanya Penne), Westview Press, 1997.
- Attwood, Lynne. The New Soviet Man and Woman. Sex-Role Socialization in the USSR, Indiana University Press, 1990.
- de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex (translated and edited by H.M.Parshley), Picador, 1988.
- Bodyguards. The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiquity (ed. by Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub), Routledge, 1991.
- Bridger, Sue, Kay, Rebecca and Pinnick, Kathryn. No More Heroines? Russia, Women, and the Market, Routledge, 1996.
- Brittan, Arthur. Masculinity and Power, Basil Blackwell, 1989.
- Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. On the «Discursive» Limits of «Sex», Routledge, 1993.
- Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1990.
- Connel, R.W. Gender and Power. Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Polity Press, 1996.
- Connel, R.W. Masculinities, University of California Press, 1995.
- Christian, Harry. The Making of Anti-Sexist Men, Routledge, 1994.
- Daughters, Wives and Widows. Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500-1640 (ed. by Joan Larsen Klein), University of Illinois Press, 1992.
- Dissenting Opinions: Feminist Explorations in Law and Society (ed. by Regina Graycar), Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990.
- Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs. Women in Law (second edition), University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1993.
- Family, Women and Employment in Central-Eastern Europe (ed. by Barbara Lobodzinska), Greenwood Press, 1995.
- Feminist Legal Theory (ed, by Frances Olsen), Volumes 1-2, Dartmouth, Aldershot, Hants, England, 1995.
- Feminist Legal Theory. Readings in Law and Gender (ed. by Katharine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy), Westview Press, 1991.
- Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volumes 1-3, Penguin Books, London, 1990-1992.
- From Basic Needs to Basic Rights. Women's Claim to Human Rights (ed. by Margaret A. Schuler), Women. Law and Development International, Washington D.C., 1995.
- Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Harvard University Press, 1982.
- Glendon, Mary Ann. The Transformation of Family Law. State, Law and Family in the United States and Western Europe, The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
- Horrocks, Roger. Male Myths and Icons. Masculinity in Popular Culture (Consultant Editor Jo Campling), Macmillan Press Ltd., St.Martin's Press Inc., 1995.
- Human Rights of Women. National and International Perspectives (ed. by Rebecca J. Cook), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
- Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Harvard University Press, 1992.
- Lips, Hilary M. Sex and Gender. Introduction (3d edition), Mayfield publishing company, 1996.
- MacKinnon, Catharine A . Feminism Unmodified. Discourses on Life and Law, Harvard University Press, 1987.
- MacKinnon, Catharine A. Sexual Harassment of Working Women: a Case of Sexual Discrimination, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979.
- MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press, 1989.
- Maternity and Gender Policies. Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s (ed. by Gisela Bock and Pat Thane), Routledge, 1991.
- McNay, Lois. Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1993.
- Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons (ed. by Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz and Roslyn McCullagh), Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
- Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender and the Family, Basic Books, 1989.
- Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (ed. by David Miller and Michael Walzer), Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Post-Soviet Women: from the Baltic to Central Asia (ed. by Mary Buckley), Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- Prechal, S. and Burrows, N. Gender Discrimination Law in the European Community, Dartmouth, 1990.
- Saxonhouse, Arlene W. Women in the History of Political Thought. Ancient Greece to Machiavelli. Women and Politics, general editors: Rita Mae Kelly and Ruth B. Mandel, Praeger Publishers, 1985.
- Segrave, Kerry. The Sexual Harassment of Women in the Workplace, 1600 to 1993, McFarland and Company, Inc. Publishers, 1994.
- Seidler, Victor J. Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language and Sexuality, Routledge, 1989.
- Sexual Equality. Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor (ed. by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson), University of Toronto Press, 1994.
- Sexual Meanings. The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality (ed. by Sherry B.Ortner and Harriet Whitehead), Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, Princeton University Press, 1993.
- Smart, Carol. Feminism and the Power of Law, Routledge, 1989.
- Smart, Carol. Law, Crime and Sexuality. Essays in Feminism, SAGE Publications, 1995.
- Tilly, Lois A., Scott, Joan W. Women, Work, and Family, Routledge, 1989.
- Up Against Foucault. Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism (ed. by Caroline Ramazanoglu), Routledge, 1993.
- Williams, A, Susan. Women and Childbirth in the Twentieth Century. A History of the National Birthday Trust Fund 1928-1993, Sutton Publishing, 1997.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women (ed. by Mary Warnock), J.M.Tent Ltd., London, Charles E.Tuttle Co. Inc., Rutland, Vermont, 1985.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Political Writings, Oxford University Press, 1984.
- Women and Russia (ed. by Tatyana Mamonova with the assistance of Sarah Matilsky; translated by Rebecca Park and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick), Basil Blackwell, 1984.
- Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England (ed. by Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker), UCL Press, 1994.
- Women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (ed. by Tova Yedlin), Praeger Publishers, 1980.
- Women in Russia (ed. by Dorothy Atkinson, Alexander Dallin and Gail Warshofsky Lapidus), Stanford University Press, 1977.
- Women in Russia. A New Era in Russian Feminism (ed. by Anastasia Posadskaya and Others at the Moscow Gender Centre; translated by Kate Clark; originated by Ruth Steele), VERSO, 1994.
- Women's Human Rights Step by Step (ed. by Margaret A. Schuler and Dorothy Q. Thomas), Women, Law and Development International, Washington D.C., 1997.
- Women's Rights Human Rights. International Feminist Perspectives (ed. by Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper), Routledge, 1995.
- Women, the Family and Freedom. The debate in documents. Volume One, 1750-1880. Volume Two, 1880-1950 (ed. by Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen), Stanford University Press, 1983.
B. Texts for Case Study
- Russian Federal and National Legislation
- Constitution of the Russian Federation (in Russian)
- Civil Code of the Russian Federation (in Russian)
- Labour Code of the Russian Federation (in Russian)
- Code on Administrative Delinquencies of the Russian Federation
- Family Code of the Russian Federation (in Russian)
- Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (in Russian)
- Code on Procedures at Civil Trial of the Russian Federation
- Code on Procedures at Criminal Trial of the Russian Federation
- Penal Code of the Russian Federation
- Tver Regional/Local Legislation
- To be selected when in Russia
- International Documents –– to be used in Russian (and English in some cases)
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- European Convention of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms
- Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
- Convention on the Political Rights of Women
- Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict
- Declaration of the Rights of the Child
- Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Declaration on Social and Legal Principles Relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally
- Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages
- Recommendation on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age and Registration of Marriage
- International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families
- Convention on the Nationality of Married Women
C. Internet Resources
The instructor will use URLs and the information from the electronic conferences when preparing a course and later on, during the classes. The Internet resources for the class may be roughly divided into two parts. On one hand, the basic human rights documents (and other legal documents) may be seen at and downloaded from the Net, on the other hand there is a lot of gender and law related information on the Internet (which can also make a good topic for the student's research/final paper). Students are encouraged to use Internet resources if available.
Tver State University is included in the OSI Internet project, so hopefully, there may be an access to the Internet within the University.
Besides, there are computers at Women's Club «Women's Light» and the Association of Independent Women Initiatives offices which make possible the access to the e-mail and subscription to some mailing lists (like Network of East-West Women –– NEWW On-Line).
We expect the computers to be set at the Tver Regional Commission on Human Rights Office, so some Russian Human Rights related and other legal data-bases may be available in near future.
Students are strongly encouraged for their own Internet serfing, although a list of some basic gender related electronic conferences (mailing lists) and/or their URLs will be provided .
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