Contempt for Women in the Public Sphere: A New Low or an Old Trick?

Feelings are still running high about Shock Jock Alan Jones’comment on Friday that women (ie the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, Sydney Mayor Clover Moore, former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon) are ‘destroying the joint’.

Tory Maguire, writing in The Punch, suggests that feminists should save their energy for 'battles that might change something'.  I agree with her that it is unsurprising to hear Alan Jones make derogatory statements about women, and I agree that it becomes wearing to expend our energy on each insult leveled at women in the public sphere.  (And there have been a number of them this week.)

I do think however that concerns about women who do not have the power of the Prime Minister, Sydney Mayor or a state Police Commissioner; concerns about access to safe abortion and employment conditions, are all related to the increasingly public vilification of women - including women in power.

My question is why, in 2012, are women belittled in this way.  To ascertain this, let’s be clear: first, that it is women (not individuals) who are targeted; and that it is designed to belittle.

A Husband's Sacrificial Love and the Law

 

Sacrificial love: Just for husbands?*

My last post here concerned the change to wedding vows in the Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church.  Under the change, women can now 'submit' to their husbands, rather than obey. This is appropriate, apparently, because:

The husband's love is one of sacrificial love, and to submit to that kind of love is not oppressive, but is actually a joy and a great freedom.

Since this story, an Anglican minister from the Sydney diocese has released a paper upholding 'male headship [as] part of God's good ordering of all society - not just His Church' and suggesting that Christian women in leadership roles should only take such roles if they are prepared to adopt an appropriately masculine leadership style.

While both of these stories represent a view of women that holds no sway in the context of contemporary Australian life, they provide an excellent opportunity to re-evaluate the law and its assumptions.  Despite anti-discrimination legislation and other measures to uphold the status of women - not as submissive to 'male headship', but as autonomous legal actors in their own right - the law remains imbued with presumptions originating in these dated paternalistic Christian beliefs.

Why 'Submitting' is a Dangerous Development

The Anglican church in the diocese of Sydney is changing the wording of its marriage service to provide, optionally for couples who choose it, for the wife to submit to the husband.  This replaces the old vow for the woman to ‘obey’ – made optional in the Anglican rite in 1928.  

It is not my place to critique religious rites so long as they occur within a church context between consenting adults.  However the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) provides that those who are recognised ministers of religion of a recognised denomination, are empowered to solemnise marriages under the Act.

Because marriage is an institution of law, ministers of religion are in my view effectively agents of the state in terms of solemnisation of marriage.  It is concerning therefore that wives may undertake to submit to husbands in a legal process, even one that occurs within a church.  This is so for two reasons.

What's so hard about consensual sex?

In my guest post today on Amicae Curiae, I pose this question in response to the apparent global putsch to twist the meaning of 'rape'. Find the post here.

Women in Queensland. Back to the Future.

The public and private lives of women have come under scrutiny in Queensland in the last couple of months, including in a series of statements by LNP parliamentarians and advisers.  What is the status of women in Queensland in mid 2012, a few months after the swearing in of the Newman government?

Thinking Like a Lawyer – the Good the Bad and the Ugly

First year law students are invariably regaled with the mantra of learning to think like a lawyer: that law school is all about developing this skill.  As some have identified, 'thinking like a lawyer' is a nebulous concept at best, or at worst, a 'self-aggrandising sham...to justify the existence of a...special lawyer class'. 

There is however a mounting body of evidence to show that the culture of the law, including the way that lawyers think, is linked to stress experienced by law students and legal practitioners alike. (For example, see here and here.) 

While this creates issues for the sustainability of the legal profession as it sees an exodus of early- and mid-career practitioners, and women in particular, I believe it also takes a toll on the personal lives and relationships of lawyers.

Property and Procreation: Problematising Sperm

Recently in the US, bills have been sponsored in a number of states providing for personhood for sperm.  One bill, for example, provided that ejaculating anywhere outside a woman's vagina constitutes 'an action against an unborn child'.  These bills were put up in response to legislation regulating women's reproductive rights - curtailing women's access to contraceptives and abortion.

The law in the US (and elsewhere) continues to regulate the reproductive rights of women with wide acceptance that this is appropriate.  In contrast, the 'sperm bills' are considered satirical.  It's OK to regulate women's reproductive rights, but patently ridiculous to regulate men's.

This shows that reproductive rights and regulation of gametes is obviously a complex issue for the law. (See my previous post here)

This complexity is borne out through a comparison of a recent Canadian decision (JCM v ANA), a forthcoming Canadian case (deBlois), and a 2011 Australian decision (Edwards). (I've written about this case here.)  To what extent does the law recognise rights to sperm, in terms of property; procreation; and parenting?