IP/ Gender: Mapping the Connections

In the Spring of 2004, the WCL Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Women and the Law Program, and Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law, sponsored an initial effort to bring scholars together to focus interdisciplinary attention on the interplay between intellectual property and gender. The following year, we built on the discussions from that first workshop by holding a second program highlighting the work of two scholars writing in this emerging area, Ann Bartow and Sonia Katyal. Following the symposium, these two scholars published their work in the Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law. In 2006, we held a full day Symposium on intellectual property and gender, leading to a number of works published in the Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law and other publications.

Topics we have discussed in our past meetings have ranged from: the impact on intellectual property law and policy on gender-related imbalances in wealth, cultural access, political power, and social control; creative production and gender; the effects of stereotyping and of actual and rhetorical feminization and masculinization of participant roles upon intellectual property stakeholders; the gendered development of IP doctrines and doctrinal categories; related issues in the teaching and practicing of intellectual property; and feminist jurisprudential insights about intellectual property law.

The Law and Society Association Collaborative Research Network
Integrating Gender into Legal Education: Transforming Women's Legal Status

This Collaborative Research Network (CRN) provides a forum for legal educators, practitioners and advocates to exchange ideas, experiences and strategies for integrating gender into legal education and legal doctrine.  Traditional models of legal education do not effectively address women’s rights issues or explore how gender and the law interact, ultimately reinforcing gender-bias at all levels of the legal system. The full incorporation of gender into legal education and doctrine leads to a more inclusive legal culture and contributes to a justice system that is responsive to the needs and priorities of women, as it trains a new cadre of legal practitioners, advocates, policymakers and scholars to have a better understanding of women's human rights and how gender and the law interact. Each year, we organize panels at the Law and Society annual meeting to explore these issues. For more information, or to become a member, please contact Daniela Kraiem at kraiem@wcl.american.edu

Comparative Family Law

The Women and the Law Program has opened a critical dialogue in Comparative Family Law by hosting a series of meetings aimed at assessing the “exceptional” place of the family and family law in decolonization, modernization and development.

The initial Conversation on Comparative Family Law, hosted by American University Washington College of Law in 2007, was a day-long roundtable discussion with invited scholars from a variety of legal backgrounds (common law and civil law) and radically different geographic interests (Middle-East, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America) to discuss the rapidly expanding field of Comparative Family Law.  In March 2009, the Women and International Law Program, in collaboration with the Harvard Law School's Program on Law and Social Though's "Up Against Family Law Exceptionalism Project," gathered scholars for a two-day workshop to compare systems of family law in Canada, the Unites States and worldwide. The comparison provided a rich methodological framework for exploring the impacts of immigration, globalization, and public policy on the family – and vice versa: the impact of the family and family law on immigration, globalization and public policy.