Justice and Gender

The definitive treatment of the American legal system’s struggle to deal with issues pertaining to gender… The strength of Rhode’s analysis, however, is not its historical aspect but its probing view of modern gender issues… The focus is always on the deeper forces that have led to gender disadvantage… There is much to be learned from reading this volume. -- Victoria J. Dodd * Bimonthly Review of Law Books *
Encyclopedic… Thorough, carefully nuanced… [Rhode] gives all sides their fair due on every issue she takes up… A valuable resource for many years to come. -- Susan Okin * Law and Social Inquiry *
Rhode’s tough-minded consideration of justice and gender is clearly the product of a keen intellect—a human rather than gendered capacity… A model for theorists and policy makers alike. -- Cynthia Epstein * California Law Review *
A comprehensive journey through the history of law and gender… The book is important in a number of ways… [It] paints in stark, irrefutable colors the irrational prejudices that have served to justify legal determinations limiting equality… [I]t has the audacity to ask the law to turn on itself and work more justly. -- Sheila James Kuehl * California Lawyer *
Rhode’s work is impressive in its scholarship and its range…a compelling account. -- Josephine Shaw * International and Comparative Law Quarterly *
Justice and Gender breaks the impasse created by legal and theoretical debates over ‘sameness’ and ‘difference.’ Deborah Rhode’s brilliant analysis of gender and the law in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present argues persuasively for theories rooted in careful contextual analysis and for a legal emphasis on gender disadvantage rather than gender difference. This book offers a new vantage point from which to think about the role of law in building a just society. -- Sarah M. Evans, University of Minnesota