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Feminist Approaches to Law pp 31–52Cite as

The Concept of Gender in Law

Part of the Gender Perspectives in Law book series (GPL,volume 1)

Abstract

Everybody talks about gender. The term gender is now part of our vocabulary and globally incorporated in media, academy, law, politics, and society in general. Gender perspective, gender mainstreaming, gender identity, gender and law are now common terms. However, do we know what we refer to when using the term gender? Frequently, simple questions like, What is your gender? or What is your sex? can be difficult to answer when we realize that the term gender is used in the same context as sex to refer to male and female or masculine and feminine.

Gender can also be used to refer to sexual harassment, social sex, cultural oppression, and even as a synonym for woman. Furthermore, for some, gender is a binary, while for others, it reflects fluidity and diversity. These various approaches to the concept of gender appear to complicate its use in law which prefers established normative factual concepts. Therefore, what is the meaning of gender in law? Avoiding the misleading use of gender requires shedding some light on the concept and term and its development within feminism and in law.

Keywords

  • Gender
  • Feminism
  • Sex
  • Law

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. 1.

    Baden and Goetz (1997).

  2. 2.

    Scott (1986), Shaw (2000), Baden and Goetz (1997), and Maynard and Purvis (2018).

  3. 3.

    Lykke (2012).

  4. 4.

    Calás and Smircich (2006), p. 218.

  5. 5.

    Verdu-Sanmartin (2020): The Istambul Convention can be signalled as the first time a definition is given in an international legal text Niemi and Verdu-Sanmartin (2020)

  6. 6.

    Ahmed (1995), p. 56.

  7. 7.

    Dworkin (1991) and Grosz (1994).

  8. 8.

    Stoller (1984).

  9. 9.

    Lamas (1986).

  10. 10.

    Butler (2011).

  11. 11.

    Shaw (2000), p. 412.

  12. 12.

    Barad (2020).

  13. 13.

    Jaggar (1983), Tong (1984), and Beasley (2005).

  14. 14.

    Oakley (1972).

  15. 15.

    Butler (2011).

  16. 16.

    Oakley (1972), p. 13. Garfinkel, for his part, refers to a “natural attitude” that relies on biology: this attitude is grounded in the notion that gender is the cultural part, the expression of a moral commitment to these natural facts in Garfinkel (1967).

  17. 17.

    Hawkesworth (1997).

  18. 18.

    Delphy (1996).

  19. 19.

    Delphy (1984, 1996).

  20. 20.

    Delphy (1996).

  21. 21.

    The law still seems to reinforce this distinction as for instance the Act on Equality between Women and Men in Finland. In Section 2 on the limits to the scope of application the relationships between family members or other relationships in private life are excluded. www.finlex.fi.

  22. 22.

    The feminist analyses of law first focused on positive law and its direct discriminatory effects o women such as the lack of recognition of marital rape, the prohibition to vote or to work without the male permission and as Margaret Davies explains, the focus moved into the analysis of concepts, values and principles in which law is grounded, to show how these foundations of law “support a socially embedded notion of masculinity” Davies (2017a), p. 299; see also Munro (2016).

  23. 23.

    Minow (1988).

  24. 24.

    Smart (1992), p. 29; Cain (1988).

  25. 25.

    Smart (1989).

  26. 26.

    Bartlett (1990), p. 103; Bornstein (1994); Watson (2016).

  27. 27.

    Lykke (2012).

  28. 28.

    Postmodernism includes many different theorists and theories: post-feminism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, postcolonialism. For the purpose of this chapter I do not focus on and address the differences between all of these; rather, I highlight their approach to gender as a continuum with an emphasis on identity and anti-essentialism.

  29. 29.

    Lorber (1997).

  30. 30.

    Lorber’s classification is quite comprehensive within the humanities, and it focuses on the theories that try to answer questions about equality and inequality between women and men. Even if some strands of feminism are left out, she includes many of the theories from the last 35 years. Lorber proposes three categories that group feminist theories and political strategies with regard to the gendered social order: (1) gender reform feminism; (2) gender resistance feminism; and (3) gender revolution feminism in Lorber (1997).

  31. 31.

    Franke (1995).

  32. 32.

    Repo (2011).

  33. 33.

    Smart (1989).

  34. 34.

    Ortner (2005).

  35. 35.

    Olsen (2000), Conaghan (2013), and Smart (1989).

  36. 36.

    Daly (1990), Lacey (1998), and MacKinnon (2007).

  37. 37.

    MacKinnon (1989).

  38. 38.

    Burgess-Jackson (1996), MacKinnon (2005), and Halley (2016).

  39. 39.

    Directive (EU) 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on work-life balance for parents and carers and repealing Council Directive 2010/18/EU.

  40. 40.

    For the differences between countries on recognizing parental leave see: EUrodev, Paternity Leave in Europe 2021 – New EU Directive (2021) <https://blog.eurodev.com/paid-paternity-leave-europe-2021-new-eu-directive>; Introducing the Network https://www.leavenetwork.org/introducing-the-network/.

  41. 41.

    Fausto-Sterling (2000).

  42. 42.

    Valdes (1995a, b).

  43. 43.

    Köhler et al. (2015).

  44. 44.

    Westbrook and Saperstein (2015).

  45. 45.

    Nature is understood as the source of biological determinism. Nature gives us a sex and with it certain sexual attributes. Culture in opposition to nature represents social construction giving meaning to the natural. As cited by Hawkesworth in “Confounding Gender”, Garfinkel writes that “the beliefs constituting the natural attitude are ‘incorrigible’ in that they are held with such conviction that it is nearly impossible to challenge their validity”.

  46. 46.

    Garfinkel (1967) and Kessler and McKenna(1985).

  47. 47.

    Bondi (1998) and Hearn and Parkin (2001).

  48. 48.

    Miller (2011), p. 837.

  49. 49.

    Butler (1994).

  50. 50.

    Miller (2011), p. 838.

  51. 51.

    Gatens (2013) and Thompson (1989).

  52. 52.

    Davies (1997).

  53. 53.

    For examples on this see: Niemi and Sanmartin (2020).

  54. 54.

    Alcoff (1988), p. 417.

  55. 55.

    McGill and Kirkup (2013), p. 33. Other her examples can be found on cases such parental leave, in the obligation of sterilization when changing sex or adoption law which varies in each national legislation.

  56. 56.

    Sweden Adds Gender-Neutral Pronoun to Dictionary. (The Guardian, 2015) <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/24/sweden-adds-gender-neutral-pronoun-to-dictionary>.

  57. 57.

    Deleuze and Guattari (2004), p. 271.

  58. 58.

    Davies (2017b), p. 73.

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  1. Turku Institute for Advanced Studies of Law, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Amalia Verdu Sanmartin

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  1. University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

    Dragica Vujadinović

  2. University of Cádiz, Cadiz, Spain

    Antonio Álvarez del Cuvillo

  3. Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Susanne Strand

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Verdu Sanmartin, A. (2023). The Concept of Gender in Law. In: Vujadinović, D., Álvarez del Cuvillo, A., Strand, S. (eds) Feminist Approaches to Law. Gender Perspectives in Law, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14781-4_2

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