After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It

by Julie C. Suk

Overview

A rigorous analysis of systemic misogyny in the law and a thoughtful exploration of the tools needed to transcend it through constitutional change beyond litigation in the courts.
 
Just as racism is embedded in the legal system, so is misogyny—even after the law proclaims gender equality and criminally punishes violence against women. In After Misogyny, Julie C. Suk shows that misogyny lies not in animus but in the overempowerment of men and the overentitlement of society to women's unpaid labor and undervalued contributions. This is a book about misogyny without misogynists.
 
From antidiscrimination law to abortion bans, the law fails women by keeping society's dependence on women's sacrifices invisible. Via a tour of constitutional change around the world, After Misogyny shows how to remake constitutional democracy. Women across the globe are going beyond the antidiscrimination paradigm of American legal feminism and fundamentally resetting baseline norms and entitlements. That process, what Suk calls a "constitutionalism of care," builds the public infrastructure that women's reproductive work has long made possible for free.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520402973
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/30/2024
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Julie C. Suk is Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law and author of We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment. She is a leading expert on gender and constitutional law in the United States and around the world.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Legal Patriarchy and Its Aftermath 

PART I HOW THE LAW FAILS WOMEN: MISOGYNY BEYOND MISOGYNISTS

1. The Equal Protection of Feminists and Misogynists 
2. Overentitlement and Overempowerment 
3. Misogyny and Maternity: Abortion Bans as Overentitlement 

PART II WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: REMAKING CONSTITUTIONS AND DEMOCRACY 

4. From Patriarchy to Prohibition: Resetting Entitlements through Constitutional Change 
5. Rebalancing Power through Parity Democracy 
6. Building Feminist Infrastructures: The Constitutionalism of Care 

Conclusion: Toward a Feminist Remaking of Constitutional Democracy 

Acknowledgments 
Notes 
Selected Bibliography 
Index 
 

Editorial Reviews

02/20/2023

In this intriguing scholarly treatise, Fordham University law professor Suk (We the Women) documents how the law protects men’s “overentitlement” and “overempowerment” and examines efforts to correct the problem through constitutional reform. In the book’s most engrossing chapters, she revisits the legal strategies of the late-19th-century temperance movement, showing how the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol in the U.S. “reduced the power of men in relation to women in the home by abolishing spaces of toxic masculinity like the saloon and by reducing the political power of the corporate liquor industry.” Suk also surveys feminist constitutional movements in other parts of the world, including Iceland’s 2008–9 “Pots and Pans Revolution,” which blamed the country’s financial collapse on a “masculine ‘Viking’ mindset” that promoted “risk-taking economic behavior.” Explaining how the Equal Rights Amendment got stalled by an arbitrary deadline imposed by its opponents, Suk outlines potential reforms (citizens’ assemblies, an advisory council) to make the constitutional amendment process in the U.S. easier. Though dense with obscure legal cases, this is a well-informed and actionable diagnosis of one of society’s most persistent ills. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Suk ’03 traces how misogyny has persisted in the law even after the end of legal patriarchy. Adopting a global perspective, Suk defines misogyny not only as hatred against women but also as overentitlement to women’s sacrifices. She examines how abortion bans compel women’s reproductive labor and assume a patriarchal notion of the public good. Suk also discusses how past generations of women have resisted misogynistic legal structures, including through the temperance movement."

Yale Law Report

"'This world has always belonged to males, and none of the reasons given for this have ever seemed sufficient,' Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her 1949 foundational text, The Second Sex. The spirit of de Beauvoir pervades After Misogyny, a provocative new book by Julie C. Suk, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. . . . Credit is due to Suk for detailing how progress has been accomplished in other countries, and for inviting us to think about how true gender equality can be achieved—after misogyny."

Ms. Magazine

Ambitious. . . . Contributes to a feminist literature on equality and care spanning centuries and national boundaries, yet offers timely diagnoses and prescriptions for the United States at a very particular moment.

Jotwell