The Feminist Jurisprudence

CONCEPTION OF THE CONCEPT

George Bernard Shaw (Everybody’s Political What’s What) who said:

“The apparent multiplication of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you soon discover that they are all the Same God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible Gods, from elephant Gods, birds Gods and snake Gods, right up to the great Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which makes room for the Virgin Mary and modern FEMINISM by making Shiva a woman as well as a man. Christ is there as Krishna who might also be Dionysus. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolater are equally at home in it”[Indian Supreme Court AIR 1975 SC 290-Krishna Iyer,J] .

Carol Smart asserts that feminist jurisprudence originated in the nineteenth century, even though such a concept was not recognized by the feminists of that era. Women’s movements then had their grounding in the liberal philosophy of equal rights, protesting material restrictions upon women such as bars to educational and political opportunities. See Carol Smart, Feminist Jurisprudence, in SUPPLEMENTARY JUSTICE (Peter Fitzpatrick ed., 1990) [hereinafter Smart, Feminist Jurisprudence]-1978

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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5. C. McGlynn, “Ideologies of Motherhood in European Community Sex Equality Law” (2000) 6(1) European Law Journal
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8. E McLeod, Women Working: Prostitution Now (London, Crook Helm, 1982
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13. MacKinnon, C.A. (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14. M. J. Mossman, “Feminism and Legal Method” (1986) 3 Australian Journal of Law and Society
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17. Okin, S.M. (1989) Justice, Gender and the Family, New York: Basic Books.
18. Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity Press.
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21. Sachs, A. and Wilson, J.H. (1978) Sexism and the Law: A Study of Male Beliefs and Legal Bias in Britain and the United States, Oxford: Martin Robertson.
22. Smart, C. (1984) The Ties that Bind: Law, Marriage and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
23. Smart, C. (1991) ‘Feminist Jurisprudence’, in P. Fitzpatrick (ed.) Dangerous Supplements, London: Pluto Press.
24. Smith, Patricia, ed., Feminist Jurisprudence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
25. S. Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York, Basic Books, 1989)
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