Sociology 3360F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Cultural Diversity, Egalitarianism, Institutional Racism
8 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
3360 – January 30, 2018
Feminism, Law, and The Family
Videos from class lectures WILL be a question on the exam
Key Themes
• Laws are shaped by the society at the time (**will be on exam**)
• Laws are political and are designed to reinforce or challenge the existing social system
• 1st Example: Leilani Muir
o Wanted to control the gene pool
o Sterilizing people who may have had a defective gene pool
o Sexual Sterilization Act
Locating Law: “Feminism, Law, and the Family”
How women impacted laws related to family
Emphasize the duality of law
• Private (home) and public (work)
• Women occupied the private and men occupied the public
• Public tended to have more power
• Work in the private sphere is very undervalued
o Which made women dependent on men
Canada has undergone 3 major transformative movements since 1840:
1. Consolidation of a white settler society and development of industrial capitalism and a laissez-faire
state
2. Corporate capitalism and a welfare state
3. Transnational capitalism and a neo-liberal form of state
The three above changes are all feeding into the nuclear family status quo
Law and social policy help reproduce and perpetuate the status quo by supporting particular forms of social
and family organization BUT law and public policy also are not simply unitary instruments of oppression
Feminist movements have drastically impacted the political and social movements recently
“First-Wave Maternal Feminism” = helped to create the Canadian welfare state and to entrench a welfare
model of family in law and social policy
• Gain: Property Laws
o Prior to “first wave” reforms
▪ “The Unity Doctrine” was abolished
o Hope to be recognized as separate but equal
o Establish rights in the private sphere
o Allowed women to acquire property and manage it as they see fit
• Gain: Tender Years Doctrine (removed total control of children from the father) – helped some women
gain custody of their children
• “Unity-Doctrine” = a husband and wife became one person (the man) in which the wife and children
were mere extensions of the male dominant
• What changed this was the desire to end the legal subordination of women
• Premised on the assumption that men and women are different but complimentary
o The men do the masculine things and the women do the feminine things
▪ Both of equal value
• Women and men have sex-specific traits, capabilities, and needs
• Wanted to have ‘women’s work’ legally recognized
• Fought for legislation when the male breadwinner was absent
• Fought for the mothers to have their biological children rather than the fathers
• Gain: Property rights were fought for: women and men were considered to ‘share’ what they owned
during the marriage and if it ended, they each took what they brought into the relationship
• Once women/child poverty became a problem, people sought legislation that binded husbands to
taking care of their dependents
• Gain: They received legal recognition of child rearing and acknowledgement of the private nature of
reproduction (especially in cases where divorce/custody was being entertained)
o But because this was paid work, women were still dependent on men
• Gain: Legal assistance to obtain spousal and child support
• Oversee the well-being of the disadvantaged
• They promoted the nuclear family (rather than challenging it) which just reinforced heterosexual
marriage and other implications
o This promoted a double standard: women had to be faithful and chaste until marriage but men
did not
▪ If there was evidence of impurity, the mothers couldn’t get custody of their children
o “Man in the House” Rule = a woman who resided with a man became ineligible for state
benefits because authorities assumed that he must be supporting her, yet the same rule did not
apply to men
• Made their own legislation that reinforced the idea of the distinction between the public and private
spheres
• Simply paid attention to the differences between men and women rather than differences among men
and women
o Assumptions were based on white, middle-class, heterosexual women and men
• Summary: transformed legislation from giving women no rights, to giving them rights based on being
married or having children
“Second-Wave Liberal Feminism” = influenced socio-legal reforms that are based on an egalitarian model of
family and have helped deconstruct the welfare state
• Equity-seeking movements
• Welfare-state consolidation, prosperity, and rising expectations among traditionally marginalized
groups
• Realized that making women visible was not helping; it actually codified women to men
• Focused on ‘sameness’ rather than ‘difference’ (women have the same capabilities as men)
• Viewed the paternalistic welfare-state as something that was reinforcing women’s subordination to
men
• Allow flexibility of roles for women and men in both public and private spheres
• Separate property rights exist until the marriage ends, then things are to be split equitably
• “Man in the house” has become “Spouse in the house”
• Women were no longer held accountable for the sexual double standard
Document Summary
Videos from class lectures will be a question on the exam. Canada has undergone 3 major transformative movements since 1840: consolidation of a white settler society and development of industrial capitalism and a laissez-faire state, corporate capitalism and a welfare state, transnational capitalism and a neo-liberal form of state. The three above changes are all feeding into the nuclear family status quo. Law and social policy help reproduce and perpetuate the status quo by supporting particular forms of social and family organization but law and public policy also are not simply unitary instruments of oppression. Chinese immigrants (this did not work: the exclusion act was employed (those who already lived here were allowed to stay but nobody else could come in, many of the men here were bachelors. Men left china when the economy was bad and came to north america in search of better opportunities: they initially worked as gold miners, then worked on the canadian pacific railway.
