The essays in this collection examine issues of gender, family, and law in the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, the authors address the impact of colonialism on law, family, and gender relations; the role of religious politics in writing family law and the implications for gender relations; and the tension between international standards emerging from UN conferences and conventions and various nationalist projects. Employing the frame of globalization, the authors highlight how local and global forces interact and influence the experience and actions of people who engage with the law. By virtue of a "south-south" comparison of two quite similar and culturally linked regions, contributors avoid positing "the West" as a modern telos. Drawing upon the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, and law, this volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the complicated history of jurisprudence with regard to family and gender.

This text presents an overview of the major issues and topics in current developments in Indian family law. Indian law has produced a number of very important innovations in the past two decades, which are also highly instructive for law reform debates in western and other jurisdictions. Topics discussed are: marriage, divorce, polygamy, maintenance, property and the Uniform Civil Code.

This volume is a collection of articles by scholars across disciplines to create a discourse of family law independent of Religious Personal Law, whilst striving for fairness and justice to all. It demonstrates the artificiality of the public–private divide and seeks the systematic development of ideas for a fair and just family law in contemporary India. The book does not merely document the pathologies of power within the family but also makes proposals for remedying these inequities. It is not confined to considering what changes need to be inducted into existing family law to make it more just, but also strategises on the means and methods of effecting the change. It lifts the familial veil and scrutinises the status, rights and disabilities of some of the subordinated members of the family. The volume is an invitation to redefine family law with the twin tools of reflection and responsibility. It will interest those in law judges, legislators, law reformers as well as those in women and family studies, policy makers and policy analysts, apart from the general reader.

The distinct personal laws that govern the major religious groups are a major aspect of Indian multiculturalism and secularism, and support specific gendered rights in family life. Nation and Family is the most comprehensive study to date of the public discourses, processes of social mobilization, legislation and case law that formed India's three major personal law systems, which govern Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. It for the first time systematically compares Indian experiences to those in a wide range of other countries that inherited personal laws specific to religious group, sect, or ethnic group. The book shows why India's postcolonial policy-makers changed the personal laws they inherited less than the rulers of Turkey and Tunisia, but far more than those of Algeria, Syria and Lebanon, and increased women's rights for the most part, contrary to the trend in Pakistan, Iran, Sudan and Nigeria since the 1970s. Subramanian demonstrates that discourses of community and features of state-society relations shape the course of personal law. Ruling elites' discourses about the nation, its cultural groups and its traditions interact with the state-society relations that regimes inherit and the projects of regimes to change their relations with society. These interactions influence the pattern of multiculturalism, the place of religion in public policy and public life, and the forms of regulation of family life. The book shows how the greater engagement of political elites with initiatives among the Hindu majority and the predominant place they gave Hindu motifs in discourses about the nation shaped Indian multiculturalism and secularism, contrary to current understandings. In exploring the significant role of communitarian discourses in shaping state-society relations and public policy, it takes "state-in-society" approaches to comparative politics, political sociology, and legal studies in new directions.

Women, Business and the Law 2021 is the seventh in a series of annual studies measuring the laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. The project presents eight indicators structured around women’s interactions with the law as they move through their lives and careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. This year’s report updates all indicators as of October 1, 2020 and builds evidence of the links between legal gender equality and women’s economic inclusion. By examining the economic decisions women make throughout their working lives, as well as the pace of reform over the past 50 years, Women, Business and the Law 2021 makes an important contribution to research and policy discussions about the state of women’s economic empowerment. Prepared during a global pandemic that threatens progress toward gender equality, this edition also includes important findings on government responses to COVID-19 and pilot research related to childcare and women’s access to justice.

The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law aims to publish peer-reviewed scholarly articles and reviews as well as significant developments in human rights and humanitarian law. It examines international human rights and humanitarian law with a global reach, though its particular focus is on the Asian region. The focused theme of Volume 5 is Law, Culture and Human Rights in Asia and the Middle East.

Families and family law have encountered significant challenges in the face of rapid changes in social norms, demographics and political expectations. The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Family Law highlights the key questions and themes that have faced family lawyers across the world. Each chapter is written by internationally renowned academic experts and focuses on which of these themes are most significant to their jurisdictions. In taking this jurisdictional approach, the collection will explore how different countries have tackled these issues. As a result, the collection is aimed at students, practitioners and academics across a variety of disciplines interested in the key issues faced by family law around the world and how they have been addressed.

Contributed articles presented earlier at several seminars on women's studies and feminism in India.

Since the late 1990s, development institutions have increasingly used the language of rights in their policy and practice. This special issue on feminist perspectives on politics of rights explores the strategies, tensions and challenges associated with ‘rights work’ in a variety of settings. Articles on the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, East and South Asia explore the dilemmas that arise for feminist praxis in these diverse locations, and address the question of what rights can contribute to struggles for gender justice. Exploring the intersection of formal rights – whether international human rights conventions, constitutional rights or national legislation – with the everyday realities of women in settings characterized by entrenched gender inequalities and poverty, plural legal systems and cultural norms that can constitute formidable obstacles to realizing rights. The contributors suggest that these sites of struggle can create new possibilities and meanings – and a politics of rights animated by demands for social and gender justice.