Feminist Constitutionalism and the Entrenchment of Motherhood
Special Issue: Law and the Imagining of Difference
ISBN: 978-1-78756-031-4, eISBN: 978-1-78756-030-7
Publication date: 12 June 2018
Abstract
This chapter examines the relationship between constitutional guarantees of sex equality, understood as prohibiting unequal treatment between men and women, and the constitutional protections of maternity. Textual guarantees of sex equality are nearly universal in constitutions around the world, and many constitutions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia also include provisions guaranteeing mothers the special protection of the state. In the United States, by contrast, the special treatment of mothers has long been contested as a threat to gender equality, and the efforts to add a sex equality amendment to the U.S. constitution have failed over the past century because of conflicts about the status of motherhood. This study traces the origins and jurisprudential development of maternity clauses in European constitutions to shed light on the possibility of synthesizing maternity protection with a constitutional commitment to gender equality.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Mathilde Cohen, David Fontana, Vicki Jackson, Serena Mayeri, Douglas Nejaime, Austin Sarat, Bernhard Schlink, Reva Siegel, Gila Stopler, Katherine Young, and participants in the faculty workshop at the University of Connecticut, Constituting Motherhood Panel at ICON-S in Berlin in June 2016, the Equality Roundtable at Cardozo Law School, the Global Constitutionalism workshop at Boston College Law School, the symposium on Law and the Imagining of Difference at the University of Alabama Law School, and the Comparative Constitutional Law Roundtable at the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts and the related writings from which this chapter emerged.
Citation
Suk, J.C. (2018), "Feminist Constitutionalism and the Entrenchment of Motherhood", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue: Law and the Imagining of Difference (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 75), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 107-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720180000075004
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited