Barbara Havelková: Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Lydia Hayes |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12125 |
GENDER EQUALITY IN LAW: UNCOVERING THE LEGACIES OF
CZECH STATE SOCIALISM by BARBARA HAVELKOVA
Â
(Oxford: Hart, 2017, 368 pp., £70.00)
A feminist approach to a book review requires recognition that a book is
embodied, in the sense that it is part of its author and has its own `story'.
Taking up this task, I interviewed Havelkova at Oxford University in the late
Spring of 2018 to explore how Gender Equality in Law befits and `belongs'
to the woman who has written it.
Mindful of Czech accession to the EU in 2004, Havelkova describes
herself as a `first-generation' law student for whom key topics at law school
were EU membership and EU law. In this quietly ambitious monograph, her
investigation is both rich and accessible. HavelkovaÂ's account provides the
first socio-legal exploration of gender equality law in the post-socialist space
and takes a long historical view to consider its legal functioning, under-
pinnings, and trajectory. The central question for investigation is why gender
equality law has proven so ineffective in Czechia. This question is inspired
by the hard fact that, fourteen years on from accession, the Czech higher
courts have yet to uphold a single case of alleged sex discrimination by a
female claimant, despite the uncomfortable similarity of facts contested with
those recognized in other EU member states as incontrovertible breaches of
EU law. Nevertheless, the Czech courts take the injustice of discrimination
seriously indeed, finding discrimination almost exclusively where the
perceived discrimination lacks any specific `equality' grounds.
When Havelkova began to formulate an explanation for the evident
failures of equality law in Czechia, she found it fruitful to consider
problematic perceptions about the impact of anti-discrimination law rather
than the problems of anti-discrimination law itself. Accordingly, general
understandings of the rule of law could impact on the gender discrimination
project quite deeply. Judicial decision making in Czechia is structured by a
legal formalism, inherited from its past. The mechanical task of textual
interpretation is discordant with purposive interpretations of law but its
application in the field of anti-discrimination is little different to judicial
treatments of other areas. However, it hurts anti-discrimination decision
making in specific ways because discrimination is an area of law that
presupposes certain extra-legal understandings, for example, the need to
understand the dimensions of inequality, to recognize that while the impact
of gender bias can be devastating for an individual, it can be subtle in its
operation at a societal level. As Havelkova espouses:
As a judge, if you don't have that [understanding], you are going to have an
issue with interpreting anti-discrimination provisions. To understand anti-
discrimination law it is helpful to have an awareness of the wider status of
women and gender.
When I ask her about intellectual influences, Havelkova immediately ack-
nowledges a triumvirate, `my sociologist mother . . . Catharine MacKinnon
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ß2018 The Author. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of Cardiff University Law School
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