Women’s Legal and Constitutional Rights

Abstract

The right to vote, equal protection under the law, and the right of privacy are the primary constitutional provisions that are pertinent to women as women. Formal recognition of these rights has failed to achieve full equality for women in the United States, however. The critical social and institutional analyses provided by political scientists can explain the failure of women’s rights to be realized. Adjudication of rights can be found in Supreme Court doctrine, but political scientists routinely look beyond the courts to consider that rights are political in their making, their operation, and their reception. Formal constitutional provisions were the product of social movements and political organization. The social hierarchies that impeded coalitions likewise inflected those victories with ongoing inequality between women, as well as inequality between men and women. Once achieved, those rights were shaped by ongoing legal mobilization, either to expand or to limit their reach. Even where the legal system legitimately sought to protect women’s rights, inadvertent institutional arrangements and practices have served to reproduce conditions of inequality. State-building and policy, then, are important in understanding the lived experience of rights. Finally, rights alone are unlikely to be honored if women lack the standing to be considered as legitimate exercisers of those rights. For that reason, scholars refer to rights in terms of citizenship, in which rights are protected and the polity recognizes the rights-holder as worthy of the claim.