Abstract: Feminism, Law, and Religion Marie A. Failinger, Elizabeth R. Schutz, and Susan J. Stabile (eds.) Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013, 444 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4419-0Being provided with the participation of important names in the world of gender, law and religion nowadays, this volume focuses on several conflicts at the conjunction between feminism, theology and law. The book explores a collection of themes recognized by certain traditions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism and scrutinized from both practical and theoretical viewpoint. The subjects bring into discussion the transition from religious and non-religious significances and estimates in quest of a right jurisprudence for women, how the theological perceptions arising from religious heritage are applied to legal matters of feminist projects and tasks, as well as on feminist legal studies, from or relating to the Bible, concerning women's rights and the part the religious law has played in women's ecclesiastic journey.What editors of this book aim to highlight by introducing before our eyes women's stories is that each tale and each experience brings something new to help our perception and interpretation of women's conditions, along with the human condition. Overall, the project of this book, comprising a collection of seventeen essays, is developed around the idea that religion plays a significant part within a more substantial contemporary critique of liberal feminism, mainly because religious heritage often highlight human sensitiveness and weak points rather than power, commitment to others rather than self-prerogatives.The book comprises four parts and seventeen essays, preceded by Foreword that introduces readers to the religious communities where women make an indispensible contribution in transmitting and manifesting a group's ' culture.'...[Ijdealized and gendered images of women as mothers, caregivers, educators and moral guardians of the home come to represent the ultimate and inviolable repository of 'authentic' group identity ... through carefully crafted binary codes of 'respectable' behavior ..(cited in Shachar 2005: 51).Part 1, Feminist Legal Theory - Religious and Secular Encounters, includes four essays giving thought to Christian perspectives. Addressing a subject of Catholic theology, Elizabeth Schutz (A Contemporary Catholic Theory of Complementarity) argues about the theory of integral complementarity, suggesting that it may be corrective to both liberal idea of equality as sameness and the rigidities of gender essentialism, having influence on legal issues such as parental leave in the work place.Following the same Catholic policy and practice, Susan Stabile (The Catholic Church and Women: The Divergence Between What is Said and What is Heard) considers the reality gap between Catholic teachings that shows respect to the dignity of men and women and the general understanding of the Catholic Church as discriminatory towards women. In Deconstructing Equality in Religion, Cheryl Preston, a Mormon scholar, tries to demonstrate the liberal feminism's deconstruction of religion, pleading for a more serious consideration in God's agency, by replacing the male standard of comparison with a feminist Christian model for equality. Emily Albrink Hartigan's closing essay (What is the Matter with Antigone?) offers a fundamental critique of western law rooted in the false knowability of Western science and rationality, based on Sophacles' play Antigone. Hartigan argues that public law should never be separated from the unwritten, sacred law based also on morality, criticizing the removing of religious language and motivation from American legal discourse when religion is known to represent a very important feature of most American's identities.Part 2, Theological Insights Applied to Dilemmas of Woman's Social Existence, includes seven essays relating to women and family, especially marriage and divorce and domestic violence. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 11
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