While the impact of an attorney's sex has been examined with respect to trial court processes (e.g., jury decision making), no one has previously studied its effects on appellate court decision making. In this article, we argue that the application of gender schemas by some justices results in a devaluing of the arguments made by women litigators. Our findings suggest that women orally arguing attorneys are less likely to receive a favorable vote by a justice than are the male counsel they oppose and that conservative justices are more likely than their liberal counterparts to vote against litigants represented by female counsel at oral argument. This suggests that the ideology of elites influences whether they apply gender schemas in a negative fashion. We also find that justices are more likely to side with female lawyers in women's issues cases, indicating that the justices' perceptions of female lawyer expertise are enhanced in those cases. These findings persist even after controlling for multiple factors, including attorney expertise, the sex of the justice, amicus participation, party capability, and judicial ideology.

This article examines the use of gender in constitutions and its significance for gender equality. New democracies, and some older ones, are increasingly including gender provisions in their constitutions. What is the impact of these provisions on women's political and economic status? Does constitutionalizing gender serve to empower women? If so, what kinds of provisions have an empowering effect and under what conditions? To address these questions, we trace the political use (legislation, policy, and judicial interpretation) of gendered constitutional provisions in Botswana and South Africa, countries that differ substantially with respect to how they have “constitutionalized” gender. The case studies demonstrate how constitutional provisions provide a legal basis and legitimacy for women's rights advocacy and how they influence the content of legislation and judicial review of laws and policies.

Social scientists are increasingly taking a more complex theoretical approach to the role of stereotyping in the electorate's evaluation of political candidates. Within this literature, most studies investigate the impact of one stereotype on the public's evaluation of candidates from an underrepresented group. We build on and extend this literature by exploring what we term “intersectional stereotyping”: The role of stereotypes in shaping the electorate's evaluation of political candidates who share dual membership in stigmatized groups—women and sexual minorities. We empirically examine the impact of intersectional stereotyping in a unique 2003 survey of national adults. Our results indicate that gender, both of the respondent and the candidate, plays a key role in shaping attitudes toward gay and lesbian political candidates. These findings suggest that intersectional stereotyping plays a nuanced role in evaluations of candidates; in certain contexts gender stereotypes are more significant, and at other times stereotypes about sexual minorities appear to be driving evaluations of candidates.

The introduction of France's “parity” law in 2000 raised fears of electing inferior women candidates via a gender quota. France has since held two legislative elections, with the proportion of women in parliament rising from 10.9% to 12.3% in 2002, and 18.5% in 2007. These rises permit an empirical evaluation of whether “quota women” measure up to those elected without a quota. New women parliamentarians are compared to their male counterparts and to women elected before 2002 to see whether there are any noticeable differences in their background (profession, age, and prior experience) and their levels of parliamentary activity (including numbers of bills, reports, and questions introduced).

The findings challenge the notion that parity is producing weak politicians. The slightly different profiles of men and women politicians reflect wider barriers to women's political careers that would not have been overcome without the parity law. Once women are elected, the volume of activity shows no evidence of being gendered, suggesting that women are as effective in the job as men. These findings imply that sex is a barrier to entry but not to performance, reinforcing claims for the use of quotas to overcome entry barriers and negating claims that quotas produce second-rate parliamentarians.

So long as the state defines, confers, and uses marital status as a vehicle for protecting and supporting associations of intimate caregivers, also known as families, it must offer the status to same-sex intimate caregiving couples. A commitment to equal treatment before the law demands it. Period.

They do look awfully romantic, those chocolate brides in Victorian gowns and matching pink bouquets. But just as the romance of the wedding often belies the more mundane realities of marriage, the romance of the movement that has come to call itself “marriage equality” may blind us to how difficult and long the struggle for real political equality will be. After all, traditional gender roles have not gone the way of the dinosaur. Why should we expect this to be true of hierarchies based on sexual orientation, particularly if the vehicle for inclusion is the institution of marriage?

In America, the arguments for same-sex marriage are articulated primarily in the language of liberalism: justice, rights, and equality. Activists in the public square appeal to rational and intuitive, or at least culturally relevant, notions of justice and fairness. In countering such a defense of same-sex marriage, feminists may feel compelled to rearticulate fundamental concerns about how gender normativity of marriage oppresses women. Marriage, feminists are certain, has never been a good thing, economically or politically, for women.

Feminist critics of the institution of marriage point to its tendency to reproduce and solidify a gendered division of labor, norms of dependency and protection, and mandated monogamy. While I support the feminist call for a decoupling of state benefits, such as rights to health care and legal proxy, from the institution of marriage in light of discrimination against same-sex couples who are denied the right to marry, in this essay I draw attention to a separate but related issue. I focus here on what I consider one of the most troubling aspects of marriage for feminists, one highlighted by Simone de Beauvoir in her classic and still timely critique of marriage in The Second Sex (1952): the fact that marriage automatically confers bourgeois respectability on its participants. Even as we oppose antigay marriage legislation and recognize that marriage can protect vulnerable parties by guaranteeing health care, equity upon divorce, tax benefits, and so forth, feminists must continue to refuse the bourgeois respectability that is so deeply linked with the institution of marriage. Having the state accord legitimacy to some kinds of intimate relationships and consensual sex, but not others, goes against basic ideas of feminist freedom articulated most convincingly, I argue, by Beauvoir. While arguing this position, however, I will also ask whether only the relatively privileged are able to refuse the bourgeois respectability that marriage promises.