On November 20

On this day in ...
... 1910 (100 years ago today), a daugher, Anna Pauline, was borh in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. and Agnes Murray. In 1938, following her graduation from Hunter College, she applied to the University of North Carolina School of Law but was denied admission because of her African-American heritage. Entering, Howard University's law school, she was graduated 1st in her class in 1944. When Harvard Law refused her -- because she was a woman -- she earned an LL.M. at the University of California, Berkeley. Later, Dr. Pauli Murray (right) became: the 1st African-American person to earn a J.S.D. at Yale, a professor at Brandeis University; a strategist on Brown v. Board of Education; a founder of the 1st women's law periodical; a cofounder of the National Organization for Women; and the 1st African-American woman priest in the Episcopal Church. Murray, whose career was the subject of a recent conference panel, died from cancer in 1985.

(Prior November 20 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 18

On this day in ...
... 1979 (30 years ago today), at U.N. headquarters in New York, by a vote of 130-0-10, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women at U.N. headquarters in New York City. The next summer, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 64 states signed and 2 ratified the Convention. On September 3, 1981, it entered into force, "faster than any previous human rights convention had done." It has 186 states parties, Qatar having joined in April "without any reservations." This, alas, has been less than common in the case of CEDAW, as this article indicates -- though Morocco withdrew its reservations last December. As for the United States, a nonparty state, a March 2009 Nation article by Betsy Reed framed the then-soon-expected debate on U.S. ratification of the Women's Convention:

Will the Obama administration, and Senate Democrats, bow to pressure from antiabortion Republicans and include ... conditions in this year's version, in a bid to ensure passage? Or will they push for a 'clean CEDAW,' as many feminists are urging? Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the relevant Foreign Relations subcommittee, has pledged to begin hearings with a clean version of the treaty,
but pressure will quickly mount to muck it up.

(credit for Lisa Bennett photo of 2000 pro-CEDAW demonstration in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Organization for Women) Classes having ended for the semester, we at the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, will be marking the anniversary with a noon-hour event on Thursday, January 28: "The Women's Convention at 30." Featured will be Krishanti Dharmaraj (right) -- who successfully persuaded the Board of Supervisors to make San Francisco the 1st "city in the United States to pass legislation implementing an international human rights treaty," CEDAW -- as well as members of our CILC Faculty Council, like Afra Afsharipour, Lisa Ikemoto, IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Lisa R. Pruitt, and Madhavi Sunder.

(Prior December 18 posts are here and here.)

On October 21

On this day in ...

... 2003 (5 years ago today), a politician who'd made her name opposing desegregation of Boston schools, Louise Day Hicks (right), died at age 87. She was elected to the city's Schools Committee, to its City Council, and to a term in Congress. In the words of the Boston Globe, Hicks "came within 12,000 votes of being elected mayor of Boston in 1967 and earned a national reputation as a symbol of racial divisiveness." In those of an NAACP official: "'She was a tragic figure. She became an object of hate -- and she asked for it.'" She was, as well, a feminist: an attorney, a member of the National Organization of Women, and a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

... 1952, "following the declaration of a state of emergency in the British colony of Kenya" came the arrest of nationalist leader Jomo Kenyatta and a hundred other Kenyans. Kenyatta was "accused of leading the extremist wing of the Mau Mau and of inciting hatred and violence against Europeans"; 6 months later, he would be convicted and sentenced to 7 years' hard labor. Kenyatta resumed political activity upon his release, becoming Kenya's 1st Prime Minister in 1963 and its 1st President in 1964; today he's featured on the Kenyan bank note at left.

Title bout

Apparently U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) (right) prefers to be called
"Congressman." That's how she describes herself on the web. It's even how she signs her name.
The National Organization for Women is not happy. “When they refer to themselves as congresswoman, this sounds different because it is different. I think that is significant,” said Latifa Lyles (above left), NOW's spokesm-, um, spokesw-, um, spokesperson.
Here's a crazy thought:
Compromise. Use Blackburn's official title, U.S. Representative. Same with Lyles, for that matter; it's Vice President. Then focus attention where it belongs, on the legislator's voting record.

Gender & identity: some anniversary musings

As I’ve struggled to find an appropriate contribution for the first anniversary of IntLawGrrls, what keeps resurfacing for me in various guises are gender’s complexities. With the hours ticking before Ohio and Texas vote, the nuanced—and not so nuanced—dialogues in many fora continue about how race and gender have impacted the Democratic primary season. On the issue that consumes much of my professional energy, climate change, it is almost impossible to assess how gender matters, because so little of the data is disaggregated for gender. The few studies that exist suggest that women and men may have different emissions patterns and vulnerabilities, but that the details of those variations depend on context.
Over the last five years in legal academia, I’ve watched and participated as my cohort group of IntLawGrrls has navigated its professional positionality—as we've attempted to balance that with our personal lives. I am never quite sure what elements of these complex mosaics come from our being “'Grrls,” though gender seems to surface in so many moments of our stories. As a daughter of the feminist movement—my parents were active early participants, with my dad serving as the first man on the Executive Board of NOW—I sometimes muse with my parents about how the path of my cohort group varies from that of the ones that came before us.
I don’t have pat answers on any of these issues, certainly not ones that could be packaged for a short blog post. But it seems appropriate on this anniversary to raise them while appreciating that this space exists. Congratulations, IntLawGrrls—I look forward to many more years of exciting dialogue on international legal issues and of continuing to navigate these nuances.