Irving, Helen --- "Drafting, Design and Gender" [2011] ELECD 362; in Ginsburg, Tom; Dixon, Rosalind (eds), "Comparative Constitutional Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Comparative Constitutional Law

Editor(s): Ginsburg, Tom; Dixon, Rosalind

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848445390

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Drafting, Design and Gender

Author(s): Irving, Helen

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

2. Drafting, design and gender
Helen Irving



1 INTRODUCTION
The literature on constitution-making is substantial but, until recently, gender as an impera-
tive of design has received little attention, and most analyses have been narrowly framed.1
Even giving `constitutional' its broadest compass ­ extending beyond the legal instrument, to
institutions of governance and relations between the citizen and the state ­ we rarely find
gender as a factor of which to take account, let alone as a lens through which to view consti-
tutional design broadly.
Even the conceptualisation of what is at stake may be missing. Neither the Forward, nor
any of the thirteen contributions to a 2009 symposium issue of the Texas Law Review `What,
If Anything Do We Know About Constitutional Design?' identifies gender as an issue for
constitutional design or gender equality as a principle informing design choices. None
acknowledges women as a design constituency (although several consider ethnic, religious,
or cultural minorities as subjects requiring dedicated attention).2 One chapter alone, out of
fifteen, in a 2008 collection on Constitutional Design for Divided Societies¸ acknowledges
gender as a divider (indeed a `deep fault line' challenging provisions for constitutional equal-
ity (Murray and Simeon 2008: 417)). There are many other examples ­ monographs,
symposia or collections on constitutional design ­ where gender as a referent is entirely miss-
ing, and where women, if acknowledged at all, are only listed as a sub-set in a taxonomy of
design challenges.3 In the large body of theoretical writings on ...