Instructor(s): Rebecca Cook

Note: This course satisfies either the Perspective or the International/Comparative/Transnational course requirement.

Note: Students may find it helpful to have taken or be taking Public International Law and International Human Rights Law (or equivalent).

This course is structured around three goals: i. to move beyond the formalistic approaches to gender discrimination to envision news ways of thinking about gender equality in specific contexts; ii. to provide retrospective views of the struggles to eliminate gender equality in international and regional treaty systems, and iii. to reconstruct gender equalities in concrete ways treaty by the rewriting of court judgments.  The course applies a rewriting approach to explore such questions as: 

What methods, feminist and otherwise, are used to expose forms of gendered harms of different subgroups of individuals, such as raped women, Indigenous women or women in the health sector?  

How can the gender equality analysis be sharpened, for example by reference to different theories of equality?  

How can regressive subthemes that allegedly subvert specific kinds of gender equality be more adequately addressed? 

Judgments will be selected from various human rights treaty bodies to address forms of subordination that are of transnational concern.

Evaluation
90% for written work is based on two papers of about 2,100-2,500 words each, written during the semester for the 2nd and 3rd parts of the course. The first paper will be a case comment on a court decision assigned for class, and the second paper will be rewriting a specific section of a judgment assigned for class. 10% for class participation is based on one-page response papers for three of the classes where students are not submitting a longer paper. All papers and comments are due by 12:00 noon the day before the class in which they are discussed. A limited number of students may arrange with the professor to write a SUYRP in the course. If a student completes the SUYRP, that paper will constitute 90% of the grade and will replace the two written papers.
Academic year
2023 - 2024

At a Glance

First Term
Credits
3
Hours
2
SUYRP
Perspective course
ICT

Enrolment

Maximum
22

13 JD
4 LLM/SJD/MSL/SJD U

3 Political Science and 2 MGA students

Schedule

W: 8:30 - 10:20 am