Governance feminism: an introduction

Governance Feminism shows how some feminists and feminist ideas have entered into state and state-like power in recent years. Collecting examples from the U.S., Israel, India, and from transnational human rights law, the authors argue that governance feminism is institutionally diverse and globally distributed—emerging from grassroots activism as well as statutes and treaties, as crime control and as immanent bureaucracy. What happens when feminist critique inverts into governing norms? What kind of feminism becomes law and what becomes of arguments among feminists when it does? How are feminist challenges to male super-ordination transformed and distributed by bureaucratization and NGO-ification? How might we honestly assess feminism that governs? In this deeply intelligent, reflective, and pedagogical work, four feminist legal scholars probe these theoretical and empirical questions. No reader will favor every move, but all will be usefully provoked and instructed.