Our growing Law list includes a range of books to help readers develop their understanding of legal issues; from engaging works on current affairs and topics of public interest to interdisciplinary monographs and international edited collections, such as those in our Law, Society, Policy series.
The titles on this list are high-quality scholarly works that shape readers’ understanding of law and society, with authors shining a spotlight on injustice and presenting compelling proposals for change in policy and practice.
Law
You are looking at 81 - 90 of 646 items
This chapter highlights the difficulty in achieving effective vindication of human rights at the national level. It argues that while human rights frameworks may offer detailed guidance for combatting disability harassment at work, these are not always effective when implemented in national legislation. Differences between human rights frameworks may potentially lead to gaps in implementation, but without adequate monitoring and data, it is difficult to know what is happening on the ground. This chapter therefore argues not only for revised national frameworks that are in compliance with human rights requirements, but also for continued monitoring and increased transparency to enable barriers to be identified and addressed, as well as for positive employer duties to combat disability harassment at source.
This chapter outlines the social and legal context for disability harassment in Ireland. It highlights similarities between disability harassment rates in Ireland and internationally, and outlines the key legal provisions on disability harassment at work contained in the Employment Equality Acts 1998–2021. The chapter argues that, while Irish law complies with European Union requirements under the Framework Employment Directive, it fails to satisfy the requirements of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in relation to intersectional discrimination.
This chapter outlines the human rights framework for addressing disability harassment. It focuses particularly on three of the most significant instruments for addressing disability harassment at work in the European and global contexts. These are the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Framework Employment Directive in the European Union and the International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention 2019. The chapter demonstrates the importance increasingly accorded in human rights to intersectional analysis, particularly in relation to gender, though also encompassing other intersecting characteristics, such as race and disability. It also highlights some important gaps in protection against harassment for persons with disabilities. Finally, the chapter explores the potential of the International Labour Organisation convention to advance protection from work-related disability harassment.
This chapter provides an overview of key issues and concepts addressed in the book. It explores the nature of disability harassment and its interaction with harassment of other kinds. While much disability harassment derives from the othering, stigmatization and social exclusion of persons with disabilities, multiple and intersectional forms of harassment are also highly prevalent. The chapter outlines both the prevalence of disability harassment and its impact in the work context. It demonstrates that disability harassment constitutes a serious problem both within and outside of employment, and that the response to disability harassment must encompass intersectional forms of harassment, including sexual harassment.
This chapter evaluates the operation of Irish law in practice, considering primarily its ‘curative’ effectiveness (the extent to which law rectifies a previous injustice). Analysing all available disability harassment decisions under the Employment Equality Acts 1998–2021 from 1998 to 2020, it finds that very few cases go to hearing and that the success rate for claims is extremely low. It then explores the reasons for the success and failure of claims, the kinds of remedies awarded, and the implications of these findings. It concludes by arguing that notwithstanding the theoretical capacity of the Employment Equality Acts 1998–2021 to address much work-related disability harassment, the legislation has not been curatively effective in practice.
This chapter considers what other jurisdictions might learn from the Irish experience. It begins by considering the international relevance of the Irish experience, and argues that this is extensive but not absolute, considering a range of significant factors. It then identifies a number of key lessons for combatting disability harassment at work. These relate to the effectiveness of disability harassment legislation in practice, the importance of facilitating and monitoring intersectional claims in national legislative frameworks, the need to address specific barriers that impede legislative effectiveness, and the need to supplement existing, individualistic approaches with positive employer duties to prevent disability harassment at work.
This chapter sums up the research of the book, outlining how Prevent considers women to be crucial to counterterrorism work primarily because it thinks of them as peaceful. It also considers their role as mothers to be inherently useful to counterterrorism, as mothers are supposedly best able to care for, and understand, their children’s needs. Because of this, this chapter argues that we can apply Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus framework, which sees our actions as upholding ideologies. The ideology upheld by women engaging in Prevent is that of intensive motherhood, which sees women as being most fulfilled when consumed by caring for their children. Prevent’s insistence that mothers are best able to protect their children from terrorism upholds this ideology, and those mothers that engage it in begin to reproduce it. This framework is used to argue that we need to move beyond simply analysing Prevent as a counterterrorism policy, and instead see it as something inherently political.
Many studies look at how Prevent operates in different areas of public life, including schooling, hospitals and local policing. However, Prevent is highly localized and there are few case studies that outline how local authorities develop their strategies and decide on what type of projects to pursue. This chapter provides a case study of one local area, known pseudonymously as ‘Townsville’. Using local strategy documents from 2006 to 2020, it outlines how the local strategy is similar to the national strategy in thinking of women as primarily peaceful. However, it also outlines how the flexibility offered to local authorities allowed Townsville to adjust to developments both locally and nationally, eventually including women as a risk due to an increase in young women migrating to Islamic State-held territory. However, this adjustment maintained the idea that women are naturally peaceful, in that it considered these girls to be manipulated. It also further reinforced national ideas about how mothers are best placed to tackle radicalization in the family.
The UK’s ‘Prevent’ strategy aims to dissuade vulnerable groups from supporting terrorism, and women have been involved since its inception in 2006. Sam Andrews argues that women are still viewed within a traditional gendered framework as primarily peaceful and are mostly engaged as mothers, enlisted by Prevent to watch over and guide their families and communities.
Drawing on interviews and case studies, this book reveals how Prevent goes beyond simple counter-terrorism messaging to fund a diverse array of projects, from support for victims of domestic violence to parenting courses, shaping wider engagement with women in society.
As Prevent is a localized strategy, there is a broad scope for Prevent professionals to adjust the national strategy according to their perceived local needs. This chapter draws on 18 interviews with people who work on Prevent to understand how they perceive women’s role within the strategy. This chapter shows that Prevent workers are much more alive to the possibility of women’s radicalization than local and national strategy indicates. It outlines how they consider women to be radicalized by their search for romance, by patriarchal structures and domestic abuse, and due to their more idealistic nature. It also details the various problems that Prevent workers have faced in trying to get women involved in Prevent locally, and how they sought to overcome them. The chapter demonstrates that Prevent workers also see women mostly in relation to the family, seeking to draw mothers into Prevent. The chapter argues that while Prevent workers are much more nuanced than the strategy indicates, they still rely on gendered stereotypes in forming policy decisions.
