030814 KU Gender, Law and Power: Intersectional Perspectives of Legal Gender Studies (2026S)

In its first part, the course is an introduction to some essential currents of legal gender studies – against the background of the thesis that law is, in principle, a suitable instrument for furthering the emancipation of marginalized persons and groups, even if the outcome of legal reform is frequently ambivalent. One main task is to carve out fundamental questions of equality and inequality as well as equality and difference, respectively, in their everyday configuration, their theoretical framing and their expression in legal discourse. It is shown how law constitutes gender relations, also as relations of power. The focus is on the diversity of feminist jurisprudence, containing different approaches such as equality doctrine, theories of equality and difference or Catharine MacKinnon’s dominance theory of gender relations. The presentation leads to theories of the intersectional entanglement of diverse grounds of discrimination, as introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
The second part of the course is dedicated to current challenges, including the diversification of gender categories, the concept of sexual autonomy, and anti-liberal contestations of gender equality.