East meets west: a gendered view of legal tradition

This volume consists of papers given at the sixth conference of the International Research Network “Gender Differences in the History of European Legal Cultures” held in March 2011 in Budapest. They explore legal cultures from Greenland to Albania, from Georgia to Belgium, from the Middle Ages to contemporary society, creating a common history of Europe across scholarly and political traditions and boundaries that have split this history into East and West. Using a gendered view of legal culture and tradition, the authors draw attention to the norms, opportunities, and barriers that women and men faced in the legal culture of their society. Individual papers are concerned, e. g., with women's access to law courts, female defendants in war crimes trials after the Second World War, women's wealth, inheritance, marriage, property, and work rights as well as their role in the economic life of their respective periods and societies. Two thought-provoking keynote lectures approach the topic in a more general, theoretical sense and illustrate their points with examples from contemporary society.