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What is feminism? The answer depends on whom you ask. As new challenges transform traditional civil rights issues, feminist legal theory itself has been challenged and, in many cases, dismissed as essentialist or incomplete. As Michelle S. Jacobs, one of the editors of Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader, aptly comments, at its worst feminist theory "is a label to describe the thinking and experiences of liberal middle-class white women" (p. 1). The essentialist idea that one theory can accurately describe, let alone address, the problems confronting all women is a static approach to both law and gender. To presuppose a single monolithic concept of women, as much of the feminist theory in the last century has done, is to ignore critical intersections of gender with class, race, nationality, and sexual orientation, among several other issues that account for the specific positions women occupy in society.
Regular readers of the Berkeley Women's Law Journal know that the Journal's editorial mandate is:
[T]o publish research, analysis, and commentary that address the lives and struggles of underrepresented women. We believe that excellence in feminist legal scholarship requires critical examination of the intersection of gender with one or more other axes of subordination, including, but not limited to, race, class, sexual orientation, and disability. Therefore, discussions of "women's issues" that treat women as a monolithic group do not fall within our mandate. 1
1. 18 BERKELEY WOMEN'S L.J. [i] (2003); see also BERKELEY WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL, at http://www.boalt.org/bwlj (last visited Mar. 15, 2004).
Accordingly, I applaud Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs for their tour de force collection. At a time when feminism continues to struggle to define itself, Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader is a necessary addition to the discussion. Standing alone, each article in the anthology already has incredible analytical impact. However, edited and arranged as they are by Dowd and Jacobs, they comprise a collection of which the whole is a powerful reminder of the potential for rich and variegated feminist analyses of the law.
Feminist theory is a powerful tool. As a theory, feminism critiques a system of persistent sex-based discrimination. Second-wave feminism offered new and exciting challenges to traditional hierarchies. Feminists challenged a patriarchal culture, that subjugated all women, albeit...