Gender and the Law

Overview

The module provides students with an understanding of how law affects people differently, depending on gender and the ways in which law contributes to regulating and representing gender. This understanding is not specific to one area of law, rather the course cuts across a number of different areas (such as criminal law, human rights, international law) increasing students’ knowledge and understanding of legal issues more generally at the national and international levels from a gendered perspective. Students will have the opportunity to further evaluate these issues through film and visual representation of the interaction between gender, justice and society. The module introduces students to a number of new and different topics (for example, judicial decision making, the Global South, LGBTQI, kinship and reproduction, the military) from which to interrogate contemporary debates on gender and contribute to the development of students’ critical and analytical skills.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

The main theoretical approaches to analyses of law, gender and society.
The relevance of gender issues in the determination of law and legal policy.
The social and political dimensions of particular areas of substantive law and the relationship to gender.

Skills

Students will develop and demonstrate the:
Ability to critically analyse and make links between theory and practice.
Ability to identify and understanding of the significance of law in its social context.
Synthesis of materials from diverse sources; exercise of critical judgement; discernment between the merits of particular arguments.
Ability to write and speak with care and precision in the analysis and synthesis of the law, policy and theory.
Ability to identify issues for independent research and to retrieve accurate and relevant sources.

Assessment

Coursework (100%)