An Uneasy Alliance? The Relationship Between Feminist Legal Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Law

Abstract

The relationship between feminist legal studies and the field of LGS needs to be considered on the level of research, teaching and policy making. Across all three levels the language of gender and sexuality has become the dominant discourse. A few examples will suffice. Courses on women and law have generally been refashioned as courses on equality or gender, sexuality and law. Women’s Studies degrees have declined in popularity, and some feminists have argued that the practice of teaching women’s studies in separate degree programmes should be reconsidered (Brown 2008, p. 34). The shift to the language of gender is also apparent in government and policy making. The Women’s Unit created by New Labour in 1997 quickly became the Women and Equalities Unit and is now the Government Equalities Office. 1 The creation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission can be seen as part of this move towards a more broad-based and intersectional approach. Given that the category ‘woman’ is a hallmark of feminism, how is the relationship between the field of LGS and feminist legal studies to be negotiated? The connection between feminism and gender, particularly in the academic sphere, is explored in Scott’s (1986) seminal article on gender as a historical category. Scott describes how the term ‘gender’ was adopted by many feminists to describe ‘‘the social organization of the relationship between the sexes’’ (1986, p. 1053). She explains that some historians used the term ‘gender’ as a synonym for ‘women’ and she notes that: In these instances, the use of ‘gender’ is meant to denote the scholarly seriousness of a work, for ‘gender’ has a more neutral and objective sound than does ‘women’. ‘Gender’ seems to fit within the scientific terminology of