Gender, Work and the Law

Gender, Work and the Law: Cases and Materials investigates the theoretical and legal treatment of men's and women's labor in the public and private spheres, informal and formal sectors, unionized and non-unionized sectors and domestic and international arenas. It is designed to fill the gaps left open by traditional casebooks on Women and the Law, Employment Law, Labor Law, Employment Discrimination Law, and Sexuality and the Law. Of special note are the unique themes around which the materials are organized. Although the casebook will contain chapters devoted to more traditional topics such as employment discrimination law, theories of equal pay and comparable worth, it will also include materials that are not typically found in American casebooks dealing with the regulation of work, for example, gender and slavery, paid and unpaid domestic labor, violence in the workplace, women's role in the labor movement, transgender issues and gender identity in the workplace, and the regulation of nontraditional/informal work such as work in the sex industry, drug trade and sweatshops. The gendered nature of work will be the explicit focus of the casebook—how the work that we do reflects/perpetuates gendered norms and behaviors for both men and women and how the superimposition of a legal regulatory framework interacts with preexisting gender norms—i.e., Does the regulation of the workplace reflect these norms, perpetuate these norms, or attempt to dismantle these norms?

The book is designed for students who are interested in examining the law's impact on the work that women and men do. It will draw on materials from labor history and theory, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and domestic and international labor and human rights law. The book is designed to be used not only in law schools, but also in undergraduate Women's Studies programs and in Industrial Relations programs.