Gender Analysis of Legal and Judicial Practicies

Call for papers (AAC) for the international conference HLJPGenre ANR, from 1 to 3 April 2025 at the Faculty of Douai (Université d'Artois)

For various reasons, the boundaries between legal studies, history, sociology of law and political science have long remained watertight, in France more than elsewhere, closing off interdisciplinary dialogue and thus blocking the acculturation of law to gender studies. Gender is understood here as a concept that allows us to name and think about the social differentiation of individuals according to binary, hierarchical gender categories. This social differentiation produces inequality and discrimination between individuals.

However, law, whether in its formal dimension - legal texts - or in its practices, like all social phenomena, is permeated by gender. It ratifies, produces or neutralises gender.

While some pioneering work has begun to analyse legal practices from a gender perspective, the 2000s marked a turning point in the emergence of this field of research in the social history of law. Ten years later, the REGINE project paved the way for gender studies in law, focusing in particular on the question of judicial practices. In 2022, the ANR HLJPGenre project will follow the same approach in the history of law.

Gender studies research is therefore relatively recent in these different disciplines and still suffers from a historiographical gap on the question of the gendered treatment of litigants in the courts and, more broadly, in the legal system as a whole.

The aim of this call for papers is therefore to bring together and promote research on the "gendered analysis of legal and judicial practices" in an international and interdisciplinary symposium to be held in Douai from 1 to 3 April.

While gender studies is the main theme, the colloquium will take an intersectional perspective: the study of social relations between the sexes will be articulated or interwoven with the effects of their intertwining with, or competition with, other relations of power such as race, class, age or those induced by the validist order.

This event follows on from the first colloquium of the ANR HLJPGenre entitled "Discours juridiques, genre et histoire" (Legal discourses, gender and history), which focused on legal texts as normative statements in order to identify the gendered dimension of dominant representations. In parallel, and integrating the contributions of the realist theory of law, which distinguishes between "book law" and "law in action", the aim is to examine the relationships between gender and law as expressed in and around the judicial arena.

Contributions may cover the entire judicial chain, from the initiation of proceedings to the enforcement of judgments. Different types of disputes can be examined, whether they are gendered from the outset, such as sexual violence or the consequences of divorce, or whether they appear, at least superficially, to be 'neutral': theft, political crimes and offences, prison disputes relating to the enforcement of sentences.... The biases of gender, race, class... or the intersectionality of these power relations can be analysed in the practices of judicial actors, in the political and social orders given to them, or in the agentivity of litigants (i.e. their strategies in the face of gender biases). Papers on those who may be excluded from the judicial institution are also welcome, as is work on the gendered consequences of judicial decisions.

The chronological scope of the call includes a diachronic perspective and the study of different periods (Antiquity, Ancien Régime, 19th century, contemporary).

Our call for papers serves several purposes, including that of collecting and discussing contributions from colleagues whose research focuses on the gender of legal decisions and the treatment of litigants, through different disciplinary approaches (legal history, law, sociology, political science, etc.), investigative methods (archives, ethnography, interviews, etc.) and research fields. Contributions are invited from the fields of law - legal history, positive law, philosophy/theory of law, sociology of law, etc. -and the humanities and social sciences in general - history, political science, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, psychology, ethnology, anthropology, literature (non-exhaustive list).

In addition, special interest will be given to papers that propose methodological and epistemological discussions in order to capture research on gender and the intersectionality of legal and judicial practices.

The work of young researchers will be particularly valued.

Paper proposals (between 1,500 and 3,000 characters) should be sent to the members of the organising committee by 15 November 2024: Prune Decoux (prune.decouxuniv-artoisfr); Hélène Duffuler-Vialle (helene.duffuleruniv-artoisfr) and Aymeric Mongy (aymericmongygmailcom) with a copy to the general ANR HLJPGenre address: hljpgenreuniv-artoisfr