Gender, Law and Justice in a Global Market

Considers how law interacts with economic and social processes to create global gender injustices.

Ann Stewart (Author)

9780521763110, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 2011

376 pages, 5 b/w illus. 1 table
25.5 x 18.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.88 kg

'It is relevant literally right across … from [courses on] feminist theories, through … courses on research methodologies and human rights to … courses on access to land; labour and social security law; women's sexuality and the law; women and the criminal justice system; women's social realities and the law; women, social justice and law reform; gender, masculinities and the law; and … women, commerce and law … Each chapter of this compelling book provides a simple framework for further research and a template for action.' Julie Stewart and Rosalie Katsande, Journal of Law and Society

Theories of gender justice in the twenty-first century must engage with global economic and social processes. Using concepts from economic analysis associated with global commodity chains and feminist ethics of care, Ann Stewart considers the way in which 'gender contracts' relating to work and care contribute to gender inequalities worldwide. She explores how economies in the global north stimulate desires and create deficits in care and belonging which are met through transnational movements and traces the way in which transnational economic processes, discourses of rights and care create relationships between global south and north. African women produce fruit and flowers for European consumption; body workers migrate to meet deficits in 'affect' through provision of care and sex; British-Asian families seek belonging through transnational marriages.

Introduction: living in a global north consumer society: a contextual vignette
1. Constructing relationships in a global economy
2. Globalising feminist legal theory
3. State, market and family in a global north consumer society
4. Gender justice in Africa: politics of culture or culture of economics?
5. From anonymity to attribution: producing food in a global value chain
6. Constructing body work
7. Global body markets
8. Constructing south Asian womanhood through law
9. Trading and contesting belonging in multicultural Britain
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Gender & the law [LAQG], Law [L], Human rights [JPVH]