By Helen Irving
We are living in an period of constitution-making. New constitutions are showing in traditionally unparalleled numbers, following regime switch in a few nations, or a dedication to modernization in others. No democratic structure at the present time can fail to acknowledge or offer for gender equality. Constitution-makers have to comprehend the gendered personality of all constitutions, and to acknowledge the differential effect on ladies of constitutional provisions, even the place those seem gender-neutral. This e-book confronts what should be thought of in writing a structure whilst gender fairness and organisation are objectives. It examines rules of constitutionalism, constitutional jurisprudence, and background. Its aim is to set up a framework for a "gender audit" of either new and latest constitutions. It eschews an easy specialize in rights and examines constitutional language, interpretation, buildings and distribution of strength, principles of citizenship, techniques of illustration, and the constitutional popularity of foreign and common legislation. It discusses equality rights and reproductive rights as detailed matters for constitutional layout.
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Extra resources for Gender and the Constitution: Equity and Agency in Comparative Constitutional Design
Example text
11 It can make women and women’s experiences “invisible,” while purporting to be both neutral and inclusive. The masculine pronoun employed in constitutional references to people may include references specifically to individuals, or to individual and/or collective citizens or persons (depending on whether there is a genderspecific form of the third-person plural in the relevant language). The framers of some modern constitutions, however, have sought to avoid gender specificity, for example, by repeating nouns and avoiding pronouns.
In democratic polities, where government is both powerful and limited (and the theory of constitutionalism is thus meaningful), even the oldest constitutions have never been rigid and fixed. Some people – in particular, proponents of originalist interpretation – might want them to be. However, in reality, even those who hold that a constitution’s meaning must never change once it has been signed off by its framers are forced to accept its adaptation and its openness to social, technological, and political change.
To articulate such goals is one thing. To recognize how constitutional provisions either facilitate or obstruct them, or to identify ways in which constitutional provisions may be designed to incorporate them, involve a much more complex analysis. In developing this analysis, one must understand that change does not occur merely because of words in a constitution. ”43 Still, the choice of the words on paper is of immense significance, and those who are faced with writing (or amending) a constitution cannot be 43 Christina Murray, “A Constitutional Beginning: Making South Africa’s Final Constitution” (2001) 23 University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review 809, at 838.