IDS Seminar: Gender and Sexuality - What’s law got to do with it?

IDS Live

This seminar marks the launch of the Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice Edited Collection. Comprising 33 articles, photo essays, interviews and thought pieces with academics, activists and legal practitioners from over twenty countries in the world, the speakers will reflect on the complexity of the deceptively simple question posed by the Collection’s title: Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice: What’s Law Got to Do With It? The increasing centrality of law and legal reform to the political strategies through which sexuality and gender justice are sought requires interrogation and careful scrutiny. As the contributions in this Collection show, the law is often an imperfect tool for achieving meaningful justice. Yet it is in these important and complex conversations that the scope for future action becomes tangible. In exploring different processes by which activists and other actors have worked for change, in interrogating what we mean when we talk about ‘solidarity’, and in questioning the usefulness and place of law, a picture of a complex but vibrant field of action for sexuality and gender justice begins to emerge. From activists working with women in Assam’s tea gardens in India or youth lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders in Vietnam, to lawyers fighting the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda or the criminalisation of cross-dressing in Malaysia, to academics carefully re-reading Islamic Sharia or scrutinizing the link between feminism and criminal Law in Latin America, or to researchers assessing HIV prevention programmes in South Africa, the Collection offers first-hand knowledge and experience of the complexities of gender, sexuality and social justice.