Reflections, New Directions
| Author | Didi Herman,Michael Thomson,Noel Whitty |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399900800301 |
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
REFLECTIONS,
NEW DIRECTIONS
NOEL WHITTY, MICHAEL THOMSON AND DIDI HERMAN
University of Keele, UK
THIS SPECIAL issue of Social and Legal Studies emerged out of the
Keele Conference on Gender, Sexuality and Law, held at Keele Uni-
versity in June 1998.1The conference, subtitled ‘Reflections, New
Directions’, was organised by the Gender, Sexuality, and Law Research
Group in the Department of Law at the University.
This issue contains articles based upon four of the plenary speeches at the
conference. We have also included an article that we think complements
these, also given at the Keele conference, but submitted independently to
Social and Legal Studies. As a collection of work, this issue presents leading
scholars in the field bringing theory and practice to bear upon a range of his-
torical and contemporary debates. Read individually, each article exemplifies
a particular yet complementary approach to socio-legal analysis. Each author
offers an exciting, insightful and, at times, personal statement that reflects the
diversity, breadth and dynamism of scholarship in gender, sexuality and law.
We are grateful to the editorial board of Social and Legal Studies for agree-
ing to a special issue of the journal and in so doing continuing to support
scholarship in this area.
The subtitle ‘Reflections, New Directions’ was an invitation to all the con-
ference participants to ‘take stock’; that is, to look back, to consider where we
are now, and to ask where this may lead us. Over recent decades, scholarship
in the field of gender, sexuality and law has undergone a series of shifts (see
also Naffine, 1990). Early work (in this case ‘early’ being the early 1980s)
developed in different directions. One trajectory focused on substantive legal
inequalities. Its main concern was laws that excluded or acted to the detriment
of women. Scholars in this tradition interrogated issues such as women in the
legal profession, equal pay, formal discrimination within statutory law and,
particularly in the United States, constitutional law questions relating to
privacy, autonomy and equality (for example, Fuchs Epstein, 1981; O’Dono-
van, 1985; Stang Dahl, 1987). This trajectory was pursued by both liberal legal
feminists – understanding law as essentially neutral and gender inequality as
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (199909) 8:3 Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 8(3), 307–311; 009282
01 Whitty (jl/d) 22/7/99 11:03 am Page 307
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