Gender, Constitutions, and Equality

This book addresses whether the "gendering" of constitutions promotes women’s equality.

The authors use a mixed-methods approach to explore how constitutional gender rights affect political processes and strategies, legislative and judicial outcomes, and ultimately women’s equality. They employ a cross-national study by constructing a unique database of gender provisions in over 100 countries at three points in time: 1995, 2005, and 2015. Four in-depth comparative case studies on Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and Botswana trace the complex relationship between constitutional law, strategies, and policy change in four policy areas: family law, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, and employment rights. They argue that where egalitarian constitutional provisions are present, women’s rights advocates can use them as a tool to fight gender discrimination and pursue policy changes that address gender-based power disparities.

At a time when gender equality provisions are increasingly common in constitutional design, this book clarifies the mechanisms that link constitutional provisions to changes in process and outcomes while also systematically describing and analyzing the effect of gender provisions across countries and over time. Gender, Constitutions, and Equality will inform theoretical debates on gender and politics, law and social change, feminist institutionalism, and constitutional design and its effect on legislation and political strategies.