Gender and the Law

Cluster Overview

Warwick Law School offered its first full year undergraduate module on ‘women and the law’ as long ago as 1977, when feminist studies of law were still in their infancy. Since then, it has continued to celebrate scholarship on the gendered construction, operation and impact of law, reflected both in colleagues’ research and teaching.

Many members of the School work closely with the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Women and Gender, which some colleagues were involved establishing.

Though the foci and approaches of scholarship within the Gender & Law Cluster are varied, a prominent theme of much research has been the relationship between gender, development and human rights, particularly in post colonial societies. Much work has also been undertaken on the issue of gender-based violence, whether during armed conflict or in times of ‘peace’, across domestic and international regimes, and within criminal, asylum and family systems. Issues linked to the valuing of women’s care labour in employment and family contexts has also been a dominant focus of attention, as have wider but often associated issues regarding equality, discrimination and inclusion. Theoretical, empirical, comparative and doctrinal methodologies weave through the research produced within this cluster, and its members draw variously on feminist and queer theories of law to expose the contradictions, constraints and consequences of prevailing power dynamics.

Key Topics

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
Equality, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination
Women’s Rights as Human Rights
Gender, Culture and Community

Connected LLMs

Gender and the Law Cluster Work-in-Progress Presentations

The Gender and the Law Cluster at Warwick Law School would like to invite you to our upcoming work-in-progress presentations. We have four wonderful sessions scheduled, each designed to provide constructive feedback on ongoing research. If you would like to join any of the presentations, please register your interest hereLink opens in a new window, and we will share further details upon registration.

Each presenter will circulate their work one week in advance to allow time for review and feedback. Your participation and support for our colleagues’ developing research would be greatly appreciated.

Lotte Young Andrade, on "Hang on a minute! This is the solicitor's job": The Role of Domestic Violence Advocates After Legal Aid Cuts

(December 10, 10-11 am, FAB3.29)

Abstract: I would like to present a chapter from my PhD thesis exploring how domestic violence advocates have responded to the gaps created by legal aid cuts. Drawing on interviews with 20 front-line advocates, this paper examines the practices that have developed within domestic violence charities to support clients' access to justice, including: building strategic relationships with law firms; mediating between traumatised clients and time-pressured lawyers; preparing clients and documentation ahead of legal meetings; and supporting self-representation, including assistance with 'DIY' civil protection orders.

While these practices demonstrate advocates' development of expertise and their responsiveness to the needs of victim-survivors as they arise, these findings also reveal an unsustainable expansion of advocacy roles beyond their professional remit. These findings illuminate how legal aid cuts have overburdened the voluntary sector, redirecting limited resources away from the holistic support that domestic violence charities have always provided towards filling the gaps left in the legal system.

Nousheen Ritu, on 'Shadow Incarceration': Women's Experiences of Pretrial Detention in Bangladesh

(January 28, 11-12 pm, S2.09)

Abstract: My PhD project delves into women's experiences of pretrial detention for drug trafficking related offenses in Bangladesh. I conducted a two-month prison ethnography in Kashimpur Female Central Jail, the country's only dedicated prison for women. Adopting a decolonial and feminist lens, I engage in creative methods such as artwork sessions with detainees, ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with 32 detainees. My research findings explore women's embodied, subjective and emotional experiences of incarceration. In addition, I investigate women's exercise of agency and resistance within these punitive spaces, contributing to broader understandings of gendered punishment and punitive governance. I argue that pretrial detention, although deemed as a procedural measure, inflicts pain and penality on women detainees in prison. This challenges dominant logics of punishment that has often been confined within Eurocentric and androcentric boundaries of knowledge.

Paula Hollstein Barria, on 'How to Make Domestic Abuse Experiences Resonate'

(March 18, TBC)

Abstract: In this paper, I will share my autoethnographic account of Domestic Abuse (DA), called 'fragments.' First, I will describe my more intimate and even embodied motives. I will address the fact that my very body seemed to demand expression, with this claim manifesting as constant anxiety. I will also elaborate on how this feeling extends beyond my body to encompass my mind and perspectives about life, which I call a black hole. Second, I will additionally narrate my struggle to recognise myself as a proper victim or survivor. I will expand on my need for understanding, empathy, and care, as well as how those needs were addressed through writing—a ‘technology of survival’. Then, I will clarify how the fragmented narrative mirrors the messy and complicated experience of DA, echoing the difficulties encountered in creating a unified discourse. Finally, after unpacking my positionality (who I am, as a cultural, social, and political woman), I will transcribe my fragments into film scripts, analysing them with passages from the selected five other autoethnographies.

Mahek Bhatia on 'Exploring Marital Sexual Violence Litigation in India'

(May 6, 11-12pm, S2.09)

Abstract: My MSc thesis investigated the operation of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, focusing on litigation experiences and the potential for strategic legal engagement. Drawing on legal reports and ten semi-structured interviews with lawyers, it uncovered that engagement with civil law is not legalistic, uniform, straightforward, or wholly separate from criminal justice institutions. Instead, litigation is more complex and game-like, with players, rules, advisors, and contested outcomes, in which civil law and criminal law are enmeshed in complex ways. Within this framework, lawyers emerge as crucial intermediaries who balance the legal system’s constraints with the needs of survivors. As I begin my PhD, I will be developing this project for doctoral research. In the presentation, I will outline how I plan to do so and explain the intended methodological design of the project. Receiving feedback and constructive criticism on this development will be crucial and beneficial for the project.

Seminar Series 2024/2025

Thinking Gender, History and International Law

This new series engages a global audience interested in contemporary and historical issues in international law and politics from a critical, feminist, and postcolonial perspective.

Find out more

Past Events Archive