Engendering Change

In this episode Niamh Maguire talks with Mairead Enright, Reader in Feminist Legal Studies at Birmingham Law School, about feminist legal theory and the Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project. They discuss the nature of feminist legal theory and the kinds of insights and perspectives it brings to the development and analysis of the law. Mairead, as Co-Director of the Northern/Irish Feminists Judgements Projects, and Co-Editor of the book of the same name, explains what feminist judgments are about and the types of techniques that they use to reinterpret judgments. Their discussion goes to the heart of what law is by highlighting that the content of law is always contingent on the specific social, economic and political contexts in which it is made and that legal judgments are never inevitable.

In our second episode, John O’Brien talks with Paul Ryan, Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology in Maynooth University. We discuss his latest book: Male Sex Work in the Digital Age: Curated Lives. The discussion centres on the research of Professor Ryan, which emphasises listening to the voices of sex workers so that their experiences and needs can be heard. The talk covers background issues of migration, precarious and difficult employment for migrant workers in the mainstream economy, the housing crisis, and the transformation of the nature of sex work in the digital age.

In our first episode, Niamh Maguire talks with Professor, Senator and Barrister-At-Law Ivana Bacik about gender and the law, and the myriad ways in which law enforces and reinforces gender roles in society.  Is the law gender neutral? If, not, in what ways does the law enforce and reinforce stereotypical gender roles? What, if anything, has changed over the last two decades? Their discussion of the gendered nature of law touches on topical issues including the defence of provocation in criminal law, the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, gender equality in the legal profession, the 5 C’s holding women back and the 3 G’s that push men forward, gender quotas for electoral candidates, the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill 2019, Maternity and Paternity Leave for Elected Politicians and a radical feminist analysis of recent changes to the Irish Prostitution law.

A trailer for our forthcoming podcast Engendering Change.