Negotiating Gender Justice, Contesting Discrimination

Informed by practices of women’s activism in India, this book proposes a feminist social justice framework to address the wide range of issues women face globally, including economic exploitation; sexist oppression; racial, ethnic, and caste oppression; and cultural imperialism. The feminist social justice framework provides an alternative to mainstream philosophical frameworks that analyze and promote gender justice globally: universal human rights, economic projects such as microfinance, and cosmopolitanism. These frameworks share a commitment to individualism and abstract universalism that underlie certain liberal and neoliberal approaches to justice. Arguing that these frameworks emphasize individualism over interdependence, similarity over diversity, and individual success over collective capacity, McLaren draws on the work of Rabindranath Tagore to develop the concept of relational cosmopolitanism. Relational cosmopolitanism prioritizes our connections, while acknowledging power differences. Extending Iris Young’s theory of political responsibility, McLaren shows how Fair Trade connects to the economic solidarity movement. The Self-Employed Women’s Association and MarketPlace India empower women through access to livelihoods as well as fostering leadership capabilities that allow them to challenge structural injustice through political and social activism. Their struggles to resist economic exploitation and gender oppression through collective action show the importance of challenging individualist approaches to achieving gender justice. The book concludes with a call for a shift in our thinking and practice toward reimagining the possibilities for justice from a relational framework, from independence to interdependence, from identity to intersectionality, and from interest to sociopolitical imagination.

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Gender and judging at the International Criminal Court: Lessons from ‘feminist judgment projects’

Leiden Journal of International Law ◽

10.1017/s0922156520000588 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Rosemary Grey ◽

Kcasey McLoughlin ◽

Louise Chappell

Keyword(s):

International Criminal Court ◽

Final Section ◽

International Criminal ◽

Criminal Court ◽

Gender Justice ◽

Gender Analysis ◽

Male And Female ◽

The Law ◽

And Shifts ◽

Law Making

Abstract To date, analyses of gender justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have focused primarily on critiques of, and shifts within, the Office of the Prosecutor. This article takes a different approach by focusing on the ICC’s judiciary. We being by arguing that state parties can and should do more than electing a balance of male and female judges – they can also ensure gender-sensitivity on the Bench by supporting candidates with expertise in gender analysis, and by backing judges who bring a feminist approach to their work once elected. Next, we explain the concept of the ‘feminist judgment-writing’ and suggest that this method offers a useful framework for embedding gender-sensitive judging at the ICC. To illustrate this argument, we highlight opportunities for ICC judges to engage in gender-sensitive judging in relation to interpreting the law, making findings of fact, and deciding procedural questions. The final section of the article discusses how best to institutionalize the practice of gender-sensitive judging at the ICC.

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