scholarly journals Making Her Case: Dramatisation, Feminism, and the Law in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Biopic On the Basis of Sex

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. WLS210-WLS236
Author(s):  
Christina Schönberger-Stepien
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Female Success

The portrayal of women in film has experienced a remarkable increase in recent years (see for example The Iron Lady, Hidden Figures, Jackie, or Judy). Female biographical film becomes particularly powerful when its entire theme and ideology centres around the law and politics of gender and sex, as is the case in Mimi Leder’s biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018) about the life of the late US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The gender-conscious film portrays and dramatises the life of a determined woman who, despite struggles and sex-based discriminations, has transformed the justice system in terms of gender equality and the protection of women’s rights since the 1970s. This article argues that by negotiating the intertwinement of personal life and public achievement, the film covers pivotal issues of the feminist biopic such as the dissolving of traditional gender roles and a narrative of female success but also points to a collective notion of the biopic in its attempt to initiate wider political and societal discourses. The dramatisation of Ginsburg’s life in the form of a feminist courtroom biopic celebrates Ginsburg’s legacy via a strong affective, political focus and a juxtaposition of private and public, personal and professional, accompanied by an aesthetics of symbolism and symmetry.

scholarly journals “We Can’t Just Throw Our Children Away”

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-645
Author(s):  
Anjelica Harris
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Offenders ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
Life Without Parole ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Law

In the words of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, children are different. The issue of how to sentence juvenile offenders has long been controversial. Although psychology acknowledges the connection between incomplete juvenile brain development and increased criminality, the justice system lags behind in how it handles juvenile offenders. A prime example is the case of Bobby Bostic, who at the age of sixteen was charged with eighteen offenses and sentenced to 241 years in prison. This sentence, known as a term-of-years or virtual life sentence, essentially guarantees that no matter what Bobby does or who he proves himself to be as an adult, he will die in prison. Since Bobby’s sentencing in 1997, the Supreme Court has held that sentencing juveniles to death violates the Eighth Amendment and has banned life without parole for juvenile offenders. Despite landmark Supreme Court decisions, a gap in the law continues to exist when it comes to juvenile non-homicide of- fenders who are certified and tried as adults. Thousands of juvenile offenders are now trapped in the legal gap that exists in the distinction, or lack thereof, between life without parole and lengthy term-of-years sentences. This Comment will explore the gap in the law, the various ways the States have chosen to handle this issue, and will propose a possible solution for Texas.

Profaning Jewish Mores in Chochana Boukhobza's Un été à Jérusalem

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Arenberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The City ◽  
Traditional Roles

As a transnational Israeli writer, Chochana Boukhobza delves into the complex problem of crossing borders in Un été à Jérusalem (1986), a text which focuses on the unnamed protagonist's trip from Paris to visit her family during the summer months in Jerusalem. Although the narrator had resided in Israel previously, she is forced to grapple with her ‘Otherness’ in Jerusalem, especially as a Jew originally from Tunisia. The narrator's crisis of exile is defined by her sense of disconnection to her family, the city, Israeli politics, and women's traditional roles. In this essay, particular emphasis will be placed on the protagonist's penchant for profaning Jewish cultural and religious practices, which is articulated through a series of corporeal transgressions. To launch this revolt against the patriarchal structure of the nation in Israel, the narrator rejects the submissive role assigned to Jewish-Tunisian women, and, in so doing, dismantles traditional gender roles.

Material World: Gender and the Bible in Evangelical Purity Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Moslener
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Material World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Bible

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.

scholarly journals What Lies beneath Sustainable Education? Predicting and Tackling Gender Differences in STEM Academic Success

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1671
Author(s):  
Maura A. E. Pilotti
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
High School Gpa ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles

In many societies across the globe, females are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields), although they are reported to have higher grades in high school and college than males. The present study was guided by the assumption that the sustainability of higher education critically rests on the academic success of both male and female students under conditions of equitable educational options, practices, and contents. It first assessed the persistence of familiar patterns of gender bias (e.g., do competencies at enrollment, serving as academic precursors, and academic performance favor females?) in college students of a society in transition from a gender-segregated workforce with marked gender inequalities to one whose aims at integrating into the global economy demand that women pursue once forbidden careers thought to be the exclusive domain of men. It then examined how simple indices of academic readiness, as well as preferences for fields fitting traditional gender roles, could predict attainment of key competencies and motivation to graduate (as measured by the average number of credits completed per year) in college. As expected, females had a higher high school GPA. Once in college, they were underrepresented in a major that fitted traditional gender roles (interior design) and over-represented in one that did not fit (business). Female students’ performance and motivation to graduate did not differ between the male-suited major of business and the female-suited major of interior design. Male students’ performance and motivation to graduate were higher in engineering than in business, albeit both majors were gender-role consistent. Although high school GPA and English proficiency scores predicted performance and motivation for all, preference for engineering over business also predicted males’ performance and motivation. These findings offered a more complex picture of patterns of gender bias, thereby inspiring the implementation of targeted educational interventions to improve females’ motivation for and enrollment in STEM fields, nowadays increasingly available to them, as well as to enhance males’ academic success in non-STEM fields such as business.

scholarly journals Prejudice Nation: Hypersexualization and Abuse in Jude Dibia’s Unbridled

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110326
Author(s):  
Chinenye Amonyeze ◽  
Stella Okoye-Ugwu
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Culture Of Silence

With the global #Metoo movement yet to arrive in Nigeria, Jude Dibia’s Unbridled reflects an emblematic moment for the underrepresented to occupy their stories and make their voices heard. The study analyzes patriarchy’s complicated relationship with the Nigerian girl child, significantly reviewing the inherent prejudices in patriarchy’s power hierarchies and how radical narratives explore taboo topics like incest and sexual violence. Contextualizing the concepts of hypersexualization and implicit bias to put in perspective how women, expected to be the gatekeepers of sex, are forced to navigate competing allegiances while remaining submissive and voiceless, the article probes the struggles of sexual victims and how hierarchies in a patriarchal society exacerbate their affliction through a culture of silence. Arguing that Dibia’s Unbridled confronts the narrative of silence in Nigerian fiction, the article explores ways the author empowers gender by challenging social values and traditional gender roles, underscoring gender dynamics and the problematic nature of prevalent bias against the feminine gender in Nigeria.

scholarly journals Misogyny in Health Professions? An Analysis of the Dalhousie Dentistry Scandal

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Hunter ◽  
Erika Maxwell ◽  
Fern Brunger
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Hidden Curriculum ◽  
Health Professions ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles

This commentary offers an explanation for how and why the Dalhousie Dentistry scandal could occur in a society and time where traditional gender roles are seemingly being eradicated. We use Foucault’s modes of objectification, applied to an analysis of the use of “manhood acts” and in relation to the hidden curriculum, to argue that when women threaten the authority of men in health professions, men may subconsciously look for ways to re-exert an unequal and gendered subject-object binary.

Legal Change and Stigma in Surrogacy and Abortion

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-195
Author(s):  
John A. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Procreative Liberty ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Good Mother

The role of stigma in limiting reproductive rights has long hovered in the air. Paula Abrams has sorted through the concept and shown how it operates in two major areas of procreative liberty — having a child through surrogacy and avoiding childbirth by abortion. Her paper is especially useful for showing how legal change initially dilutes stigma but may reinstall it with post-legalization regulation.Abrams argues that both abortion and surrogacy are stigmatized because they deviate from traditional gender roles and social expectations about pregnancy and maternity. Past restrictions have rested on a common legal and cultural paradigm of the good mother: a woman who conceives, carries her child to term, and then rears the child. Indeed, as she later argues, evidence of stigma surrounding a practice is “relevant to determining whether laws regulating abortion or surrogacy are based on impermissible stereotyping.”

scholarly journals Culpability, Kingston and the Law Commission

2010 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 434-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cath Crosby
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Character Theory ◽  
Criminal Offence ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Law ◽  
Court Of Appeal ◽  
Law Commission ◽  
Do So

This article considers the basis upon which a person should be held to be criminally liable, and to do so, it is necessary to examine the leading theories of character and choice that underpin the State holding a person to be culpable of a criminal offence, i.e. the link between culpability and fault. The case of R v Kingston1 is used to examine the application of these leading theories and it is observed that choice theorists would not excuse such a defendant from criminal liability even though his capacity to make a choice to refrain from law breaking was made extremely difficult by external factors beyond his control. Only character theory could possibly offer exculpation in such circumstances on the basis that the defendant acted ‘out of character’ and his deed did not deserve the full censure and punishment of the criminal law. The Court of Appeal in R v Kingston would have been prepared to excuse, but the House of Lords, and most recently the Law Commission have adopted a pragmatic approach to the involuntarily intoxicated offender. This case serves as a reminder that while justice is the aim of the criminal justice system, it is not an absolute standard.

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