Women, Law and Culture - Conformity, Contradiction and Conflict

Scutt, Jocelynne (2016) Women, Law and Culture - Conformity, Contradiction and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature, United Kingdom. ISBN 9783319831671

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Abstract

For Jocelynne A. Scutt, women and women’s role are influenced and acted upon by culture and law combined. Laws are frequently based on and in culture, and culture is impacted by law. In Women, Law & Culture she has brought together scholars from different countries, with different ethnic/race and cultural backgrounds, to explore this reality. Their contributions illustrate the impact of law and culture on women from varying ethnic/race and cultural backgrounds living in different countries, ranging from popular culture – television and film, to the role of religion, and to women grappling with the legal system in work settings, as litigants, and as activists seeking to change law and culture to enhance women’s rights and redress discrimination and oppression. Part I ‘Identity & Representation’ takes as its template women’s struggle over time to be recognised as human – ‘equal’ to men, and entitled to an equal voice – in law and culture. Part II ‘Space & Place’ looks at women in different spaces, different places, in different cultures and countries, where in every country, every culture, men take more space in more places. Part III ‘Bodily and Psychic Integrity’ recounts the continuing impact of violence at home, on the streets, in private, in public against women globally, and the role played by law and culture in promoting or at least condoning the downgrading of women’s lives and safety, where men dominate in cultural, social, political and legal settings. Scutt emphasises that this ‘global’ perspective is essential to illustrate that ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity/race’ are not confined to ‘other’: women in the world, whatever country, whatever culture and race/ethnicity, are impacted by the overwhelming control exercised at all levels by those who have the power to determine the content of culture and the language and application of law.

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