Lotika Sarkar, b. 1923, feminist legal scholar; contributed articles

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for 1998. How can women's full participation transform Jewish law, prayer, sexuality, and marriage? What does it mean to "engender" Jewish tradition? Pioneering theologian Rachel Adler gives this timely and powerful question its first thorough study in a book that bristles with humor, passion, intelligence, and deep knowledge of traditional biblical and rabbinic texts.

Although there is a growing body of international literature on the feminisation of politics and the policy process and, as New Labour's term of office progresses, a rapidly growing series of texts around New Labour's politics and policies, until now no one text has conducted an analysis of New Labour's politics and policies from a gendered perspective, despite the fact that New Labour have set themselves up to specifically address women's issues and attract women voters. This book fills that gap in an interesting and timely way. Women and New Labour will be a valuable addition to both feminist and mainstream scholarship in the social sciences, particularly in political science, social policy and economics. Instead of focusing on traditionally feminist areas of politics and policy (such as violent crime against women) the authors opt to focus on three case study areas of mainstream policy (economic policy, foreign policy and welfare policy) from a gendered perspective. The analytical framework provided by the editors yields generalisable insights that will outlast New Labour's third term.

Engendering Human Rights brings together distinguished scholars and feminist activists in a collection of essays on human rights in Africa. Contributors explore the formulating, monitoring, reporting, and implementation of human rights in Africa and the African Diaspora. The individual chapters examine how human rights frameworks and practices differ in various political, economic, social, cultural, racial and gendered contexts througout Africa.

Democracy is the central political issue of our age, yet debates over its nature and goals rarely engage with feminist concerns. Now that women have the right to vote, they are thought to present no special problems of their own. But despite the seemingly gender-neutral categories of individual or citizen, democratic theory and practice continues to privilege the male. This book reconsiders dominant strands in democratic thinking - focusing on liberal democracy, participatory democracy, and twentieth century versions of civic republicanism - and approaches these from a feminist perspective. Anne Phillips explores the under-representation of women in politics, the crucial relationship between public and private spheres, and the lessons of the contemporary women's movement as an experience in participatory democracy.

This first significant collection of essays on women in China in more than two decades captures a pivotal moment in a cross-cultural—and interdisciplinary—dialogue. For the first time, the voices of China-based scholars are heard alongside scholars positioned in the United States. The distinguished contributors to this volume are of different generations, hold citizenship in different countries, and were trained in different disciplines, but all embrace the shared project of mapping gender in China and making power-laden relationships visible. The essays take up gender issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Chapters focus on learned women in the eighteenth century, the changing status of contemporary village women, sexuality and reproduction, prostitution, women's consciousness, women's writing, the gendering of work, and images of women in contemporary Chinese fiction. Some of the liveliest disagreements over the usefulness of western feminist theory and scholarship on China take place between Chinese working in China and Chinese in temporary or longtime diaspora. Engendering China will appeal to a broad academic spectrum, including scholars of Asian studies, critical theory, feminist studies, cultural studies, and policy studies.

Why have states in general been slower to incorporate the international diffusion of women’s human rights norms domestically than other human rights norms and why has the diffusion of these norms varied so greatly between states? Why are some states more responsive and exert more effort than others to comply with these norms? Engendering the State explains these key issues and argues that the gender biased identity of many states represents the most significant barrier to diffusion. It also explores how particular norms have diffused into certain states at specific points in time, as a consequence of international and domestic pressure. The author: addresses the limitations of existing explanations of international norms case studies of Germany, Spain, Japan and India, which provide a new perspective on comparative analysis of Europe and Asia alternative arguments on cross-national variation and the influence of international norms of sexual discrimination the theoretical and practical implications of the argument. This book is essential to those with an interest in the topical subject of women’s human rights, gender studies and international studies.

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