Reimagining Gender

UK: EQUALITY LAW

2021

Flora RENZ / Davina COOPER, «Reimagining Gender Through Equality Law: What Legal Thoughtways Do Religion and Disability Offer?» in: Feminist Legal Studies 2021.

«British equality law protections for sex and gender reassignment have grown fraught as activists tussle over legal and social categories of gender, gender transitioning, and sex. This article considers the future of gender-related equality protections in relation to ‘decertification’—an imagined reform that would detach sex and gender from legal personhood. One criticism of decertification is that de-formalising gender membership would undermine equality law protections. This article explores how gender-based equality law could operate in conditions of decertification, drawing on legal thoughtways developed for two other protected characteristics in equality law—religion and belief, and disability—to explore the legal responses and imaginaries that these two grounds make available. Religious equality law focuses on beliefs, communities, and practices, deemed to be stable, multivarious, and subject to deep personal commitment. Disability equality law focuses on embodied disadvantage, approached as social, relational, and fluctuating. While these two equality frameworks have considerable limitations, they offer legal thoughtways for gender oriented to both its hierarchies and its expression, including as disavowal.»

Direct link to the article (link.springer.com)

 

Gender Law Newsletter FRI 2022#1, 01.03.2022 - Newsletter abonnieren