Recommended book: Gender Equality in Law. Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism (Hart Publishing, 2017)

Our working group is happy to recommend the book Gender Equality in Law. Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism (Hart Publishing, 2017) by Barbara Havelkova, Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law at the University of Oxford, and a kind supporter of our working group. We had the pleasure to launch this book at the EUI on June 2, 2017 and we want to thank to the author for accepting our invitation and to everybody who joined us.

Elena Brodeala, one of the founding members of our working group just published a review of this book in the European Journal of Legal Studies.

According to her “in terms of content, the book revolves around the central theme of anti–discrimination and equality law in Czechia. In addition to this, the book also touches upon the regulation of different domains relevant for gender equality, like gender–based violence, sexuality, reproductive politics and parental leaves, as well as upon more general aspects related to post–Socialist societies. These include issues such as the rejection of ideologies like feminism after the fall of State Socialism, or characteristics of post–Socialist legal cultures like the disrespect for legal norms imposed in a top–down fashion by external players such as the European Union”.

As emphasized by Brodeala, “this is the first book since 1989 to apply a feminist and critical studies methodology to the legal system of a Central and Eastern European (‘CEE’) country” and “is therefore indispensable to any scholar writing about gender and equality in CEE and a must–read for anyone with an interest in understanding the CEE legal culture(s) and societies.”

For further details, the full review can be read here.