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This list is a collection of course descriptions from Canadian law schools for courses related to women's rights, gender equality or feminism. The courses listed are primarily offered in professional law programs, but courses from two universities offering undergraduate studies in law are also included. Please see the links for each institution for further details about the courses.
Professional Law Degree Programs
Dalhousie Law School, Dalhousie University
Course Title: Women and the Law - Introduction
Course Description: This class is open to all second and third year law students and all students eligible to take classes from the classes listed as Gender and Women's Studies core classes. This class begins with a focus on feminist legal theory, and the integration of feminism with issues of race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. The second major focus is on equality rights in Canada, from the early cases to current concepts of equality under the Charter. The class then considers the impact of feminist legal theories in particular areas of law. This is followed by student class presentations on their major paper topics.
Link: http://www.registrar.dal.ca/calendar/class.php?subj=LAWS&num=2151
McGill University Faculty of Law
Course Title: Feminist Legal Theory
Course Description: This seminar explores recurrent themes related to feminist methodology, including the concern that the contextual realities of diverse women's lives be incorporated into the study and interpretation of law. It further examines the historical development of feminist legal thought, assessing how liberal feminism, cultural feminism, dominance feminism, lesbian feminism, critical race theory, critical disability theory, postmodernism and post-colonial theory have influenced feminist legal theory and practice.
Link: http://www.law.mcgill.ca/register/CourseOfferings2006.pdf
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Course Title: Law, Gender, Equality
Course Description: This course focuses on the way that law responds to and creates gender inequalities and relations. … Topics covered will include: The sex/gender divide; Constructions of masculinity in law; Gender and Criminal Law; Connections, Contradictions & Intersections between Race and Gender; Gender and "Culture" in Law; Sex/Sexuality, Gender and Equality; Equality, Gender and Private Law/Privatization.
Link: http://osgoode.yorku.ca/myosgood2.nsf/0/3AF63878CBBD643585256FFE006C2404/$FILE/syllabus2005-2006.pdf
Course Title: Feminist Legal Theory
Course Description: This course will study and engage key strands of feminist legal theory, inquiring into what feminist perspectives offer to the study of law, and how these perspectives and theories frame the view of law as a potential tool for progressive social change. The seminar will explore recent significant developments in feminist theory in general, as well as how feminist legal theory in particular, can be of assistance in developing feminist strategies for engaging with law. Topics include the question of diversity among women, theories of intersectionality, issues of essentialism and the challenges of anti-essentialism in trying to grasp multiple identities and social contexts.
The course will explore how feminist insights might change or influence the way in which we conceptualize law. We will examine specific sites of feminist engagement with law, including issues which have evoked debate and controversy, in order to examine the ways in which theoretical challenges and dilemmas have practical and concrete implications for legal strategy and practice.
The goal of the course is to provide students with analytical tools and perspectives to enable critical thinking about gendered aspects of legal institutions and legal doctrines, and about how feminist perspectives illuminate these issues. It is also aimed at providing students with some knowledge of how the law regulates women's lives, as well as produces, reproduces and challenges social relations of inequality structured around gender, race, ability, class and sexuality.
Link: http://osgoode.yorku.ca/myosgood2.nsf/0/3AF63878CBBD643585256FFE006C2404/$FILE/syllabus2005-2006.pdf
Queen's University Faculty of Law
Course Title: Law, Gender, Equality
Course Description: This interdisciplinary seminar seeks to engage the challenges of developing strategies for advancing the equality of women which are responsive to the ways that systems of oppression such as racism, capitalism, ablism, heterosexism and imperialism interact with gender oppression. From readings that analyze inequalities among different constituencies of women and that model alternatives to essentialist, exclusionary or privileged theorizing, we will explore three related issues: how to construct genuinely egalitarian theories, practices and coalitions; and whether and how law can or should be used to advance all women's equality. These three issues will be discussed in relation to one or more current feminist legislative or litigation initiatives.
Université Laval: Faculté de droit de l'Université Laval
Course Title: Analyse féministe du droit
Course Description: À partir d'un cadre théorique féministe, ce cours vise à analyser les théories qui remettent en question la neutralité et l'objectivité de la norme juridique face aux femmes et les solutions proposées pour atteindre une véritable égalité entre les sexes. Différents thèmes en droit touchant les femmes seront abordés.
Université d'Ottawa: Faculté de droit, Section de droit civil
Course Title: Femmes et droit
Course Description: Évolution de la situation juridique de la femme au Canada, en particulier au Québec. Analyse du statut juridique actuel de la femme, présentée d'après certains grands thèmes : la femme et les droits fondamentaux, la famille, l'éducation, la santé, le travail, l'économie, la fiscalité, la criminalité. (Ce cours fait partie du programme concentration Étude des femmes.)
Link: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/crs/coursesFR/DRC.htm
Course Title: Analyses féministes du droit
Course Description: Analyse des théories féministes du droit. Réflexion sur les fondements philosophiques de notre société et sur les critiques féministes du savoir et de concepts comme l'Etat, la famille, la sexualité, la féminité. Analyse des liens entre le droit et l'inégalité ou la discrimination fondée notamment sur le genre, la race, l'origine ethnique, la religion, la classe sociale, l'orientation sexuelle.
Link: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/crs/coursesFR/DRC.htm
Université de Québec à Montréal — Departement des Sciences Juridiques
Course Title: Droit des femmes
Course Description: Les objectifs de ce cours sont d'analyser la reproduction des rapports de sexe dans la sphère juridique tant à l'égard de l'énonciation des règles juridiques que de leur interprétation. Étude de l'influence des différentes théories féministes du droit sur le droit, la jurisprudence et les procédés et règles d'administration de la justice. Les diverses stratégies juridiques et judiciaires destinées à la réalisation de l'atteinte de l'égalité des sexes dans la société québécoise et canadienne. Aux fins des objectifs ci-dessus énoncés, ce cours privilégie une approche thématique notamment destinée à l'exploration des problématiques suivantes: femmes et travail, femmes et famille, femmes et intégrité physique et psychologique, femmes et protection sociale, femmes et fiscalité, femmes et droit international.
This course has a detailed website (http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/k27114/jur6525/) with a course outline, background reading, course bibliography, links to cases, and more.
Link: http://www.juris.uqam.ca/cours/jur6525/index.htm
Course Title: Femmes et droit: enjeux contemporains
Course Description: Introduire les étudiants au phénomène des femmes à titre de sujets spécifiques du droit. À cette fin, tant le système international que les systèmes régionaux ou internes sont examinés dans une perspective évolutive et normative. Ce cours se démarque par un souci constant de rattacher les enjeux contemporains aux règles pertinentes du droit et à son évolution historique. Le cours portera sur l'un des thèmes suivants: les violences faites aux femmes dans la sphère privée et publique; les femmes et la guerre; les femmes et la mondialisation; le droit international et la norme d'égalité; les droits économiques et sociaux des femmes; les droits des femmes et l'incidence de la méthodologie des sexospécificités; les femmes et la régulation du travail; les femmes et les politiques de lutte à la pauvreté. Chaque thème sera examiné sous l'angle de l'apport normatif et politique du droit à la problématique abordée.
Link:http://www.juris.uqam.ca/cours/jur7360/index.htm
Course Title: Le droit et les femmes
Course Description: Cours sur les femmes et la loi. Les principales législations traitant de la famille, de la maternité, des biens, du travail, de la sécurité du revenu étudiées à partir des conditions particulières affectant les droits et les obligations des femmes. Principales lois étudiées: le Code civil, la Loi de l'adoption, la Loi du divorce, les lois des allocations familiales, la Loi d'aide sociale, etc. Étude des droits et recours des femmes qui font face à des problèmes particuliers reliés à la condition féminine.
Université de Sherbrooke, Faculte de droit
Course Title: Analyse féministe du droit
Course Description: Objectifs: Comprendre l'importance de la théorie féministe en général et appliquée au droit. Comprendre et critiquer le rôle du droit comme instrument de subordination des femmes.
Contenu: Introduction sur l'importance du mouvement féministe. Étude de la théorie féministe. Étude de questions choisies en droit touchant particulièrement les femmes: l'égalité, les programmes d'accès à l'égalité, l'avortement, etc.
Link: http://www.usherbrooke.ca/programmes/cours/DRT/drt551.htm
University of British Columbia Faculty of Law
Course Title: Women, Law and Social Change
Course Description: This course provides a survey of western feminist legal thought and recent developments in feminism and law. Various feminist approaches to law are explored and illustrated by reference to selected substantive areas. Attention is paid to the diversity of feminist discourses on law, and the ways in which some discourses have become dominant and others marginal. The interdisciplinary nature of the field and the intellectual traditions upon which feminist legal scholars rely will be investigated. The objective of the course is to provide an overview of feminist legal studies and an introduction to feminist legal theory. Students who wish to take more advanced seminars related to women and law are strongly advised to take this course first.
Course Title: Topics in Feminist Legal Studies: Sexual Assaults and Related Issues
Course Description: The goal of this course is to understand and critically evaluate the most recent legislative and judicial developments in the criminal law of sexual assault in the context of the historical development of the law of rape in Canada and abroad. The course considers, within a feminist framework, recent developments in the procedural and substantive law of criminal sexual offences, including: causes and effects of sexual assault; the definition of consent and mistaken belief in consent; failure to disclose HIV+ status; access to the complainant's counselling records; racism and sexual assault; the sexual assault of women with disabilities; prostitution, and community notification provisions. The course is taught through lecture, discussion, and audio-visual presentations.
University of Calgary Faculty of Law
Course Title: Feminist Legal Theory
Course Description: A critical inquiry into the nature and function of law from a variety of different perspectives within feminist legal theory; the role of rights and of legal discourse, and the possibilities and limitations of law as a strategy for social transformation.
Link: http://www.law.ucalgary.ca/current_students/600level.html
University of Manitoba Faculty of Law
Course Title: Gender and the Law
Course Description: An exploration of ideas about gender differentiation in law, the legal system, legal education and the legal profession. It will offer an introduction to the feminist critique of law and feminist theories about sexual equality and discrimination. This course will explore how law is an agent of social ordering and how it can be used to effect social change for women. After some introductory seminars on feminist and legal method and the history of women's status in law we will focus on current legal issues were there are significant differences among feminist on how to tackle the issue. We will focus on issues connected to women's bodies or women's families although students will be able to choose the topics for 1 or 2 seminars and students have often chosen topics connected to women and money. Some of the issues discussed in recent seminars include:
- should the state have the power to apprehend pregnant women on the ground that their conduct it hurting the fetus?
- should there be any restrictions on a pregnant woman's ability to seek prenatal testing for sex determination? the presence of a disability?
- should common law relationships be treated the same way in law as marital relationships?
- do the proposed amendments to the Divorce Act on custody and access create more problems than they solve or are they an acceptable compromise?
- is the recognition of the "battered women's syndrome" as a defence in murder cases a good thing? has it made much difference?
- should feminists rely on the criminal justice system as a response to high levels of wife assault?
- should feminist support a criminal obscenity law?
- trans-women and women's only space: should they be welcome?
- should Muslim divorcing couples have the option of settling property, custody and support issues before a Shari'a law tribunal rather than civil courts?
Link: http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/law/newsite/course_desc.php?coursenumber=45307
University of New Brunswick Law School
Course Title: Feminist Advocacy
Course Description: Assists students to apply feminist legal analysis to the circumstances of women with different histories and self-definitions and to understand the application of feminist legal analysis to cases, both those already decided and those still to be litigated.
Link: http://www.law.unb.ca/pdf/courses.pdf
Course Title: Readings in Law and Feminist Theories
Course Description: Open to students outside the Faculty of Law who want to explore issues involving feminism and law. Requires weekly meetings with instructor to discuss assigned readings in the area of feminist legal theories and preparation of paper on topics selected by student in consultation with instructor.
University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
Course Title: Women and the Law
Course Description: Various analytical tools are employed to examine the question of law's contribution to women's legal, social, political, and economic inequality. Analytical frameworks such as legal history, language, political theory, equality theory, critical race theory, and feminist jurisprudence are used to explore selected current substantive topics as reflected by cases, legislation, law reform, and litigation strategies.
Link: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/crs/coursesEN/CML.htm
Course Title: Feminist Theory and Law
Course Description: Advanced seminar examining the contribution of various perspectives of feminist theory and feminist jurisprudence to an understanding of the social meaning of law; the development of an analysis of the relationship between law and inequality or oppression; and an evaluation of the implications of this analysis for strategies of engagement with specific forms of law. Current selected topics (such as ideology, the construct of the public/private, violence, globalization) will be analyzed.
Link: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/crs/coursesEN/CML.htm
University of Saskatchewan College of Law
Course Title: Gender and Law
Course Description: Examines the social construction of gender, and critical and feminist perspectives on law.
Link: http://www.usask.ca/calendar/law/200-699/results11-20/
University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Course Title: Feminist Theory
Course Description: This course examines how recent developments in feminist legal theory might be helpful in developing feminist strategies for engaging with law. The course begins with an examination of different theoretical perspectives to law, and recent challenges to the feminist project of theorizing about law. The course then turns to examine how these insights might change or influence the way in which feminists think about law. The seminar will consider the relationship between feminism, law and politics; feminist litigation strategies; agency and feminist legal subjects; and finally, specific sites of feminist engagement with law. We will focus on areas that have been particularly controversial within feminism, and will consider how the theoretical frameworks may be helpful in negotiating these highly contentious issues. Particular attention will be given to the implications for developing feminist strategies for engaging with law.
Link: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/students_content.asp?docNo=575&itemPath=2/2/12/1/0&cType=coursespg
Course Title: Women's Rights in International Law
Course Description: This course addresses the challenges of achieving the international legal protection of the human rights of women. It reviews how international and regional human rights conventions have been applied to prevent, punish and remedy the violations of women's rights in international, regional and domestic forums. It examines how the norm of the prohibition of all forms of discrimination against women has been applied, and how it might be more effectively applied, particularly to subgroups of women such as those marginalized by race and ethnicity. It explores how feminist theories, empirical data and narratives might be used to expose women's experiences of injustice. The course aims to go beyond a formalistic understanding of international legal obligations in order to examine different approaches to fostering compliance with the human rights of women in different cultures and religious traditions.
Full-year version of this course: During the second semester of this course students will meet every other week. The course will be structured around key research themes of interest to both the students and the instructor agreed at the end of the first semester. The aim is to enable students to develop their first semester work into papers of publishable quality for submission to a relevant law journal.
Link: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/students_content.asp?docNo=422&itemPath=2/2/12/1/0&cType=coursespg
Link to full-year version of this course: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/students_content.asp?docNo=587&itemPath=2/2/12/1/0&cType=coursespg
University of Victoria
Course Title: Feminist Legal Theories (offered 2004-2005)
Course Description: This seminar is in an exploration of the foundations of feminist critiques of law. The first part of the seminar will introduce various feminist perspectives and the main theoretical concerns, notably the debate over essentialism in feminism, that has engaged feminists working in law and otherwise in recent years. An early and central theme of the seminar will be the divergent views within feminist legal scholarship and the centrality of race, class, sexual orientation, culture, and other axes of difference, in addition to gender, that inform feminist ideas. While we will study the foundational texts in specific contexts, it is in the second part of the course that we explore various topics, both established and emerging, within feminist analysis of law. Such topics include violence against women, including colonialism, transgender challenges to women-only spaces, reproductive rights and ideas of motherhood, and the relationship between cultural equality and gender equality. The readings are situated within a legal framework, but are interdisciplinary in orientation. They will thus immerse students in the "law and society" and "law, culture, and humanities" approaches to legal study. While familiarity with the concept of "social construction" and critical theory in general is an asset, no prior knowledge is required.
Link: http://www.law.uvic.ca/Current_Students/winter/369s012005outline.htm
Course Title: Indigenous Women and the Law
Course Description: This seminar examines the unique place of Indigenous women within the constructs of Canadian law and society. The seminar takes an interdisciplinary approach. Topics canvassed are marital property, colonialism, government, membership, human rights, criminal justice, sexuality, employment and children.
Course Objectives: The first objective of the seminar is to introduce the growing body of scholarship by and about Indigenous women. Secondly, by the end of the course, participants will be able to formulate a critical analysis of the political, economic and social challenges faced by contemporary Indigenous women. This is not a course about developing solutions to the political, economic and social challenges facing Indigenous women and their families in contemporary Canadian and Indigenous societies.
Link: http://www.law.uvic.ca/Current_Students/winter/369s012005outline.htm
University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law
Course Title: Sex Discrimination and the Law
Course Description: This seminar course addresses the ways in which sex discrimination has (and has not) been conceptualized and remedied in Canadian law. To this end the course materials engage questions about the nature of sex discrimination and equality rights, and debates about the kinds of legal interventions and remedies most conducive to achieving gender equality. The focus is on the importance of theoretical understanding and analysis to the development of practical strategies for social transformation through engagement with law. The goal is for students to complete the seminar with an understanding of some of the key questions feminists ask in conducting an analysis of the ways in which law is implicated in sex discrimination, as well as of the law's potential to assist in countering that discrimination. Through an examination of theoretical writings and case law, in any particular year, the course materials may address the following topics, among others:
- conceptualizing discrimination – what is it? what is gender? how are the relationships between gender, power and inequality structured? what are the relationships between forms of inequality (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability)?
- sexual violence (including sexual assault and sexual harassment) as sex discrimination
- gendered harms, sexual violence and war crimes
- state intervention, reproductive rights and the regulation of pregnancy
- violence against women in intimate relationships / domestic violence (Battered woman syndrome and self-defence)
- "the family," marriage, sexual orientation and inequality
- The legal status of Aboriginal women in Canada
- discrimination / equality rights in labour and employment contexts — equality rights in law / legal remedies for discrimination, the Charter and gender discrimination
Link: https://www.law.uwo.ca/lawsys/pages/contents.asp?contentName=Course+Pages&contentFileName=485A+001
University of Windsor Faculty of Law
Course Title: Feminist Legal Theory
Course Description: This is an interdisciplinary course, which employs an historical, cultural, legal and psychological analysis of North American and specifically Canadian sex-based stereotyping. Topics include the origins of feminist analysis, women in the political process, merit and equality nondiscrimination legislation and litigation. The first seven meetings are devoted to establishing a framework of analysis for the student seminars, which occupy the rest of the term. (Recommended: Family law, Civil Liberties)
Undergraduate Studies in Law
Carleton University, Department of Law, Faculty of Public Affairs and Management
Course Title: Women and the Legal Process
Course Description: How the legal process has affected the status of women. Areas of concentration within the Canadian context include the criminal law, citizenship and immigration, education, employment, and welfare and social services.
Link: http://www.carleton.ca/cuuc/courses/LAWS/3001.html
Course Title: Law, Family and Gender
Course Description: Relationship between family law and ideology of the family, gender roles and the reproduction of family structures. Social ramifications of family law; potential for family law reform as an agency of social change.
Link: http://www.carleton.ca/cuuc/courses/LAWS/4001.html
Course Title: Feminist Theories of Law
Course Description: The literature comprising feminist perspectives on law; theoretical bases of these perspectives; place of feminist theories within other critiques of law; significance of different feminist theories for equality theory and law reform strategies; unique contributions of the various perspectives.
Laurentian University, Department of Law and Justice
Course Title: Women in Conflict with the Law
Course Description: This course explores varying recent explanatory frameworks for and applications of theories of women's criminality in differing contexts with the intent of fostering critical analyses of the interconnections among women's criminal actions, gendered social relations and responses by the police, prosecutorial, judicial and correctional systems.
Female criminality has frequently piqued the interest and attention of the media and public as activity contrary to or consistent with expected or appropriate feminine gender roles. Until recently, female criminality has been explained either in a manner consistent with socially-accepted expressions of femininity, or as examples of isolated departure or deviation from these roles. A significant body of academic and popular writing has now amassed which questions, challenges, and attempts to reinterpret women's criminality consistent with feminist and other theories of autonomy, agency, interdependence, victimization and independence. This course showcases and allows students to explore varying recent explanatory frameworks for and applications of theories of women's criminality in differing contexts with the intent of fostering critical analyses of the interconnections among women's criminal actions, gendered social relations and responses by the police, prosecutorial, judicial and correctional systems.