Authority and Corporeality: The Conundrum for Women in Law

Feminist Legal Studies

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 147-170

  Thornton, Margaret ^a  

^a LA TROBE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84978066453     PISSN: 09663622     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF03359628     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Z.R. Eisenstein, The Female Body and the Law (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1988), 82.
2. Thornton, supra n.*, at 293–295; D. Weisbrot, Australian Lawyers (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1989), at 83–90.
3. For example, C. McGlynn, “Sex Discrimination at the Margins”, New Law Journal 146 (1996), 379–381
4. J. Hagan and F. Kay, Gender in Practice: A Study of Lawyers’ Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6–12
5. C.F. Epstein, R. Saute, B. Oglcnsky and M. Gever, “‘Glass Ceilings and Open Doors: Women’s Advancement in the Legal Profession’, A Report to the Committee on Women in the Profession, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York”, Fordham Law Review 64 (1995), 291–449
6. R.L. Abel, American Lawyers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
7. L. Abel and P. Lewis, eds., Lawyers in Society, Vol. 1, The Common Law World, Vol. 2, The Civil Law World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
8. For a discussion of resistance in the American context, see C.F. Epstein, Women in Law (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993, 2nd ed.), 265–302.
9. M. Cain, “The Symbol Traders”, in Lawyers in a Postmodern World: Translation and Transgression, ed. M. Cain and C.B. Harrington (Buckingham: Open Press, 1994), 31.
10. Compare, for example, A.J. Gellis, “Great Expectations: Women in the Legal Profession, A Commentary on State Studies”, Indiana Law Journal 66 (1991), 941–976
11. J.S. Kaye, “Women Lawyers in Big Firms: A Study in Progress toward Gender Equality”, Fordham Law Review 57 (1988), 111–126. I do not discount, however, the resistance to the feminisation of authoritative positions in other influential areas of end eavour, such as the finance industry. See, for example, L.V. Still, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors: Barriers to the Careers of Women in the Australian Finance Industry, A Report prepared for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and Westpac (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997).
12. B.F. Lentz and D.N. Laband, Sex Discrimination in the Legal Profession (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1995).
13. J. Mincer and S. Polachek, “Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women”, Journal of Political Economy 82 (1974), S76–S108
14. G.S. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1975, 2nd ed.)
15. S.W. Polachek, “Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure”, Review of Economics and Statistics 63 (1981), 60–69.
16. R.L. Blumberg, “A General Theory of Gender Stratification”, in Sociological Theory, ed. R. Collins (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984)
17. J. Saltzman Chafetz, Sex and Advantage: A Comparative Macro-Structural Theory of Sexual Stratification (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984).
18. The debt to de Beauvoir for the development of the constructionist thesis should be acknowledged. See S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trld. H.M. Parshley (London: Four Square, 1960).
19. For insightful discussions of the slippery relationship between sex and gender, see M. Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction”, in Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London: Routledge, 1996), 3–20; Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference, ed. D.L. Rhode (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990); J.W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”, in Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics, ed. E. Weed (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 81–100. On the relationship between heterosexuality and gender, sec Theorising Heterosexuality: Telling it Straight, ed. D. Richardson (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1996). For a valuable discussion of masculinity and the way in which it has been able to reproduce itself through phenomena such as the “new men’s movement”, sec R. Collier, “’Coming Together?’: Post-Hcterosexuality, Masculine Crisis and the New Men’s Movement”, Feminist Legal Studies A (1996), 3–48.
20. Compare, for example, Trinh T. Minhha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 49; Rhode, supra n.15, at 5.
21. Compare A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne, “Dislocating Masculinity: Gender, Power and Anthropology”, in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, ed. A. Cornwall and N. Lindisfarne (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 34.
22. While Catharine MacKinnon presents a politically powerful theory of sex inequality that does not ignore cultural and constructionist elements, the frequent conflation of biology, sex and gender conveys a deterministic appearance to her work which leaves little scope for individual agency. See C. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
23. C. Quadrio, “Current Cinematic Portrayals of the Female Psychiatrist”, Australian Feminist Studies 11 (1996), 115–128, at 120. Sec also M.A. Doane, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991). ’
24. K. Jones, Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women (London: Routledge, 1993), 121.
25. C. Pateman, “The Disorder of Women’: Women, Love, and the Sense of Justice”, in The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 17–32.
26. K. Green, The Woman of Reason: Feminism, Humanism and Political Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 161.
27. For analyses of the antipathy towards women in the context of the nascent equality discourse at the time of the French Revolution, for example, see Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. L. Hunt (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); J.B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988)
28. D. Outram, The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class and Political Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
29. See, for example, Ambo, “The Bench — A Prospective”, The Summons 4 (1895), 5.
30. G. Lloyd, “Woman as Other: Sex, Gender and Subjectivity”, Australian Feminist Studies 10 (1989), 13–22.
31. See, for example, C. Forell, “Reasonable Woman Standard of Care”, University of Tasmania Law Review 11 (1992), 1–16.
32. Although there are some recent exceptions. See, for example, R. Collier, “Masculinism, Law and Law Teaching”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 19 (1991), 427–451; Collier, supra n. 15. The critique of law and legality by the male-dominated American Critical Legal Studies Movement tended to steer clear of gender, as can be seen from the work of leading “Crits” (Critical Scholars). For an overview of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, see R.M. Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983).
33. M. Thornton, The Liberal Promise: Anti-Discrimination Legislation in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990).
34. See, for example, R. Alejandro, Hermeneutics, Citisenship, and the Public Sphere (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993)
35. J. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York and London: Routledge, 1993)
36. M. Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
37. E. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994); Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism, ed. E. Grosz and E. Probyn (London: Routledge, 1995); Feminine, Masculine and Representation, ed. T. Threadgold and A. Cranny-Francis (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). The instability is also reflected in the emerging literature focusing on men’s bodies and the construction of masculinity. See, for example, Collier, supra n. 15; R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995); Cornwall and Lindisfarne, supra n.17.
38. M. Gatens, “Corporeal Representation in/and the Body Politic”, in Cartographies: Post-Structuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces, ed. R. Diprose and R. Ferrell (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991), 83. Compare Hunt, supra n.27.
39. E. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), x. See also Gatens, Imaginary Bodies, supra n. 15; Diprose and Ferrell, supra n.34; Thinking through the Body of the Law, ed. P. Cheah, D. Fraser and J. Grbich (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996).
40. J. Eveline, “The Worry of Going Limp: Are You Keeping Up in Senior Management?”, Australian Feminist Studies 11 (1996), 65–79.
41. M. Thornton, “‘Liberty, Equality And?’: Endowing Fraternity with Voice”, Sydney Law Review 18 (1996), 553–567.
42. I do not deny that some women use their sexuality in the workplace to their own advantage, although it is likely to detract from their authority. See, for example, C. Cockburn, In the Way of Women: Men’s Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations (London: Macmillan, 1991), 155.
43. For an overview of gendered dualisms and the way they arc systematiscd, see F. Olsen, “Feminism and Critical Legal Theory: An American Perspective”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 18 (1990), 199–215.
44. E. Swan, “Managing Emotion”, in Women in Management: A Developing Presence, ed. M. Tanton (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 90.
45. M. Thornton, “Feminism and the Contradictions of Law Reform”, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 19 (1991), 453–474.
46. Compare M. Angel, “Sexual Harassment by Judges”, University of Miami Law Review 45 (1991), 817–841.
47. C.A. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).
48. J. Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trld. L.S. Rondiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). See also Grosz, Volatile Bodies, supra n.33, esp. at 192–210.
49. Rationality and reason are also the conventional characteristics of legal method. See M.J. Mossman, “Feminism and Legal Method: The Difference it Makes”, Australian Journal of Law & Society 3 (1986), 30–52. See also N. Naffine, Law and the Sexes: Explorations in Feminist Jurisprudence (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990).
50. For a discussion of socially sanctioned technologies that are used to discipline pregnant women, averredly in the interests of the foetus, see I. Karpin, “Reimagining Maternal Selfhood: Transgressing Body Boundaries and the Law”, Australian Feminist Law Journal 2 (1994), 36–62.
51. I.M. Young, “Breasted Experience”, in Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 189–209.
52. See, for example, M.J. Mossman, “Lawyers and Family Life: New Directions for the 1990s”, Part 1, Feminist Legal Studies 2 (1994), 61–82; Part 2 Feminist Legal Studies 2 (1994), 159–182; Epstein et al., “Glass Ceilings”, supra n.3,427f.
53. Compare J. Brockman, “‘Resistance by the Club’ to the Feminisation of the Legal Profession”, Canadian Journal of Law & Society 111 (1992), 47–92
54. D.K. Holmes, “Structural Causes of Dissatisfaction among Large-Firm Attorneys: A Feminist Perspective”, Women’s Rights Law Reporter 12 (1990), 9–38.
55. The work of feminist ethicists, such as Gilligan and Noddings, have sought to shake off the seeds of invidiousness associated with caring within masculinist discourses. See C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press); N. Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
56. The feminist debate that counterpoises an ethic of justice with an ethic of care has the unfortunate effect of fostering the masculinist myth of autonomy, as shown by G. Clement, Care, Autonomy and Justice: Feminism and the Ethic of Care (Boulder, Col. and Oxford: Westview Press, 1996), 69f.
57. For analyses of the ambiguous relationship between public and private, see Public and Private: Feminist Legal Debates, ed. M. Thornton (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995); K. O’Donovan, Sexual Divisions in Law (London: Weidenfield, 1985); F.E. Olsen, “The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform”, Harvard Law Review % (1983), 1497–1578.
58. C. Burton, “Women’s Accommodative Strategies in the Labour Market”, in Gender, Politics and Citizenship in the 1990s, ed. B. Sullivan and G. Whitehouse (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1996), 155
59. C. Grimwood and R. Popplestone, Women, Management and Care (London: Macmillan, 1993).
60. For illustrations of the proposition, see the collection of essays in Asian and Pacific Inscriptions, ed. S. Perera (Melbourne: Meridian, 1995).
61. For discussion of the contradictions of “feminisation”, see C. Menkel-Meadow, “The Comparative Sociology of Women Lawyers: The ‘Feminisation’ of the Legal Profession”, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 124 (1986), 897–918.
62. A. Game and R. Pringle, Gender at Work (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), 18–19 etpassim.
63. D.E Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988)
64. D.E Smith, Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (London: Routledge, 1990).
65. Foucault emphasises the fluidity of power which “functions in the form of a chain”. The chain connects individuals so that they become “vehicles of power, not its points of articulation”. See M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trld. Gordon et al. (Brighton, U.K.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980), 98.