Writing in the Australian Feminist Law Journal, Margaret Thornton has recently spoken of her wish to begin ‘a conversation which I hope others will join so that we might discursively constitute a new episteme of feminist legal theory that is linked to the political’.[1082] In exploring whether ‘the conjunction of postmodernism and neoliberalism’ might add […]

The above concerns point to the conceptual limits of masculinity in relation to family law. I wish to draw this discussion to a close by considering an issue central to feminist legal scholarship — the way in which such analytical imprecision[1074] renders the concept potentially fraught with political dangers for feminism at the present moment. […]

Recent empirical and theoretical scholarship concerned with exploring the gen­dered discourses of family law has sought, in a number of ways, to explore the masculine subjects of family law. Whether it be in relation to studies of divorce law and practice, contact law reform, marriage, parenthood or men’s relation to employment, for example, it is […]

Deflection of the objectifying gaze from women and Indigenous people to bench­mark masculinity and heterosexuality, as well as ‘whiteness’, represents an attempt to disrupt the conventional orderings of modernity within legal texts.[1029] It was in an attempt to explore the above concerns that a range of studies developed in family law during the 1990s concerned […]

By the mid/late 1980s, in work which, by 1990, Naffine felt able to describe as itself constituting a ‘third phase’ of feminist scholarship,[1022] a far-reaching critique had taken place of the limits of each of the above two approaches. Yet, once again, a conceptualisation of masculinity appeared central to how the relationship between law, the […]

Within what has been termed ‘first phase’ liberal-progressivist feminist scholar — ship,[1009] through to the work of those writers who later sought to engage with what was seen as the inherent ‘maleness’ of patriarchal legal systems, methods and reasoning (below), the concept of masculinity has been linked in diverse ways to ideas about law and […]

The study of men and masculinities in the field of family law has occurred at a nexus of developments which, although linked, draw on distinct political and intellectual trajectories in terms of how the central relationship between law and the power of men has been conceptualised. A number of authors associated with the critical study […]

Richard Collier Introduction Within feminist legal scholarship in the field of family law, a critical engagement with the gender of men approached via recourse to the concept of masculinity/ies is a now well-established theme.[999] In recent years, in particular, it has become commonplace within literary and hermeneutic projects informed by the ‘post­modern frame’[1000] to find […]

One alternative to traditional approaches in feminist theory is what we can loosely label post-modern feminist theory.[979] Post-modern feminism is especially useful in any attempts to accommodate the claims of minority women because it challenges assumptions about the definition and status of the subject ‘woman’, therefore providing room for alternative definitions and analysis. It also […]

How should feminism respond to those women within a particular group — the insiders — who freely choose to be governed by traditional systems of justice that contain rules that are likely to harm them? My main argument is that it is possible for feminism to respond to this challenge at the levels of theory […]