Law, Gender, and Development: Potent Hauntings

Abstract

This article excavates and analyses an early, feminist conversation about law that emerged from foundational texts on Gender and Development (GAD). Rather than starting from current, law-heavy GAD practices, it goes backwards to see what, if anything, some canonical texts published between 1970 and 1989 said about law. My aim is to offer an account of legally-relevant GAD theorising written before the current consensus about law reform as a tool had solidified, and – in so doing – to unsettle that consensus and identify some intellectual inheritances that might offer us an alternative way forward.