Negotiating Gender in Daily Life: Legal Perspectives

The course explores the construction of gender and the role that it plays in shaping women’s and men’s social identities and their experiences of the everyday world in which they live. Drawing on materials from the North and the South it examines the varying effects of gender in shaping people’s lives as part of the politics of power in western, colonial and postcolonial worlds. It will explore the impact of international human rights and transnational law at a local level as people go about their daily lives. Some of the areas highlighted for discussion include families and social relations, notions of care and belonging, the economic dimensions of work and labour, informal justice and alternative dispute resolution and aspects of inter personal and institutional violence.