Feminist Terrains in Legal Domains - Interdisciplinary Essays on Women and Law in India (Hardcover)

A collection of articles that explores law from a feminist perspective. Basing themselves in the discipline of feminist legal studies, the authors attempt to go beyond looking at the mere impact of law on women. They also examine the specific conditions of women and analyze the role of law at different points of intersection: conceptual, institutional, or community based. This interdisciplinary approach points to the complex and contradictory nature of the legal regulation of women. The authors argue that law has become an important site of feminist action and inquiry. Feminist legal studies examine the particular ways in which law has been informed by male norms, male experience, male values and male dominance. In doing so, they demonstrate the exclusion from law of women's experience and the ways in which the law serves to re-inforce stereotypical and patriarchal assumptions about women. At the same time, feminist legal studies are also concerned with the extent to which law can be used to improve the position of women.