Women's Access to Justice: Texts and Contexts

Abstract

Law can be the site through which women's dignity and equality can be expressed and pursued. Speaking the language of rights translates one's needs from private interests to public claims through words and concepts that the community – local, national and/or international – have already validated. Law can therefore offer a medium to confront the injustices and unfairness built into other systems of political, social and economic ordering. Women's rights advocates have won significant victories through law and have generated gains for women's dignity and equality. However, law can also be a place where women's rights are not only silenced but where social, economic and political power structures are replicated and work against women's rights. This paper argues that effective rule of law programming focused on women's rights and democratic governance must begin with a clear definition of the rule of law, a careful analysis of the causes of women's inequality and the context in which it is perpetuated and sustained, coupled with an ability and desire to harness law as an instrument of social change that is tempered by a sober understanding that law is unpredictable and complex in its results.This paper proceeds in several parts. First, it identifies the key issues relating to women's democratic governance, women's rights and the rule of law. The second part identifies the importance of normativity and power relations for feminist theorizing around the rule of law. Feminist conceptions of the rule of law recognize that law is shot throughout with social and economic power and that harnessing women's emancipation to law is fraught with uncertainties and complications. At the same time, feminist theorizing around the rule of law also recognizes the importance of using law to speak truth to power and to gain access to the sites in which social relations are defined, evaluated and consolidated. The final sections of this paper discuss the different barriers to access to justice that face elite and marginalized women, the possible roles that NGOs can play in the realization of women's rights, and the possible mutually interdependent and reinforcing roles that women in various positions of power can play in promoting women's rights more generally. The very last section sets out areas for further research and analysis. While scholars and advocates have significantly advanced the thinking about and harnessing of law in support of women's needs and interests, much conceptualization, implementation and assessment or evaluation work remains to be done.