December 17, 2013
Distinguished Professor Ruthann Robson discusses the legal policing of women’s headscarves on WOMEN=BOOKS, the blog of Women’s Review of Books. She writes,
A preoccupation with a woman’s underlying rationale for wearing a headscarf accords with many legal doctrines, but it should alarm us as feminists. Whenever the law seeks to apportion rights to women based upon their reason for the exercise of that right—as we have seen in attempts to allow abortions only in cases of rape or to prohibit abortions if based on sex of the fetus—it risks dividing women into “good” and “bad.” Here, the partition is between the sufficiently religiously “sincere” and the irreligious.
Distinguished Professor Ruthann Robson
Prof. Robson is an expert on constitutional law and sexuality issues and is the co-editor of the Constitutional Law Professors Blog. Her latest book is Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy From Our Hairstyles to Our Shoes.
