The Challenges of Teaching Gender Equality in a World of Reproductive Gendercide

Abstract

Stemming from ancient practices of female infanticide, the system of eliminating females is not decreasing with time and understanding, or with contemporary notions of post-modern gender equality. Rather, gendercide reflects the low status of female people around the world, and is increasing with advances in reproductive technology. Further complicating these gender equality concerns is the fact that gendercide is mostly accomplished by women. This essay deals directly with teaching, case books and curriculum in legal education in the context of reproductive rights and gender equality. Because the global problem of gender discrimination is advancing based on reproductive liberty, legal educators and scholars must be prepared to do something about it. This piece offers suggestions for scholarship, curriculum, and casebooks that will make a great deal of difference for furthering gender equality. Particularly in feminist discourse reproductive rights are inherent to gender equality, an idea also generally prevalent in legal education. When gender equality’s foundation relies on unregulated reproductive rights, and those rights work to the actual diminishment and severe detriment of females, gender equality is turned against itself, even cannibalized, resulting in a sabotage of women in the colliding legal ideals of liberty and equality. This phenomenon in legal education undermines the ability to honestly discuss the conflict – undercutting gender equality at its foundation – making gender equality all the more challenging to achieve. This essay takes that challenge, considering reproductive sex selective technology, examining how it fosters gender inequality through both numbers and theory, and discussing what legal scholars and educators can do about it. It offers suggestions for solid scholarship, various appropriate casebook enhancements, and suggestions for teaching a curriculum of gender equality with justifiable incorporation of the impact of gendercide on gender equality.