Critical Introduction to Law - Essay Example

Basically feminism concerns the study or movement against women’s subordination common to all of them in a particular society. And it is culturally and historically specific. Thus forms of oppression of women are different among societies, races and countries. The subordination of Afro-Caribbean women, Asian women, working class women, lesbian women, single mothers are qualitatively different but unified by gender. For example, reluctance of the police to intervene in Asian women’s protest against domestic violence in their community.

Police justify their reluctance citing the value of extended family system in Asian communities and letting them settle their disputes on their own. This is not only sexist but also racist bias. White State power has also been indifferent to the voices of these Asian women. 2 Women have been excluded in market place and government and given the main responsibility of bearing and rearing children and to give refuge to men from the pressures of capitalist world. This separation of women from the public sphere was more acute in the nineteenth century.

At the same time, men are dominating both the public and private spheres even today by legal orders with private sphere devoid of legal control making them even more dominant in private life. In America, females were excluded for exercising franchise in the 19th century. In 1820s and 1830s, white males got franchise rights even without property holdings. And after the civil rights movement when black men gained the franchise rights, women regardless of race, were left behind. It was only through the 13th amendment, women gained the right to vote.

It did not mean women finally got the rights and duties befitting electoral status. It was only in 1961, they were accorded jury duty. The armed combat duty as a test of citizenship has still not been accorded to women today. In English common law, women were not allowed to enter certain professions like law