Women and the Law Program

Pan American Conference on Transforming Women's Legal Status:  Integrating Gender into Legal Education and Legal Doctrine

The Global Partnerships on Gender and the Law hosted the Pan American Conference on Transforming Women's Legal Status: Integrating Gender into Legal Education and Legal Doctrine at the American University Washington College of Law on November 3 - 6, 1997. The Conference brought together over seventy academics, advocates, and university officials from Latin America and the United States to examine Latin American legal systems from the perspective of gender and to exchange experiences regarding the challenge of integrating the intersecting perspectives of gender and human rights into legal  doctrine and the law school curriculum. The Conference agenda consisted of a series of presentations, teaching demonstrations, round-table discussions, and small group exercises and focused on both content and pedagogy. Law teachers exchanged and developed teaching materials in working groups organized by subject matter and returned to their countries with the teaching skills and materials that they need for integrating a gender and human rights perspective into their own course work. The Pre-Conference publication consisted of articles written by feminist legal scholars and women's rights advocates. The Conference proceedings were published in the American University Washington College of Law Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law.