an open access journal of feminist legal scholarship

Beyond the Gender Agenda: A joint event between the CLGS and FLaG - 24 November 2018 - Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality Common Room, University of Kent

14.11.2018

Recent incidents like the Guardian letter signed by academics who claim they are being ‘harassed over their research into transgender issues’, and who are concerned about the proposed move to self-identification in the GRA consultation process, suggest that feminists/women’s rights and trans rights positions are politically oppositional, mutually exclusive and antagonistic. This session takes place within the context of an emerging conflict over the meaning and value of gender. On the one hand, some feminists suggest that gender is inherently oppressive/harmful; they fear the annihilation of women’s rights and the dismantling of an anti-gender politics. On the other hand, some trans activists are arguing that legal gender and sex should be defined solely through self-determination. However, in this conflict, crucial struggles, positionalities and politics are being erased: what happens to a wider feminist politics that challenges gender relations, while supporting new ways of living; or the synergies between women’s rights and trans rights activisms? What common ground can we find to address systemic oppression? Click here for more information

‘How does austerity impact on women’s human rights’? Discussion of the report of the Independent Expert on foreign debt and human right - 4th December 2018 NYU London, 6 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3RA, 10am – 12.00pm

14.11.2018

The Independent Expert on foreign debt and human right focussed his thematic report to the UN General Assembly, 73rd session (2018) on the links and the impact of economic reforms and austerity measures specifically on women’s human rights. The report of the Independent Expert aims at analysing the particular ways in which austerity measures, structural adjustment, fiscal consolidation and in general economic reform programmes, have a disproportionate impact on the life of women of all ages and what to do to address the negative impacts. In this context, work by the Women’s Budget Group with the Runnymede Trust in the UK on the impact of austerity on BME women and WBG’s recent briefing on austerity and disabled women will also be presented and discussed. Click here for more information