What is the gender of the international legal system? Noted teacher, scholar, lawyer, writer, and sex equality activist Catharine A. MacKinnon will address this question in her lecture on “Women’s Status, Men’s States.” She will also trace developments in women’s human rights on the international stage and inquire about the direction of international law on gendered concerns.

Catharine A. MacKinnon is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. She is also a lawyer, writer, and activist on sex equality domestically and internationally. She has taught at ten law schools, including the law schools of University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvard University, Osgoode Hall, Stanford University, and Yale University. She has also been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. Widely published in many languages, her books include Are Women Human? (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), Sex Equality (Foundation Press, 2001), Only Words (Harvard University Press, 1993), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press, 1989), and Sexual Harassment of Working Women (Yale University Press, 1979). By pioneering the legal claim that sexual harassment is sex discrimination, she advanced the concept that sexual crimes violate equal rights. She also helped establish the harms of pornography as civil rights violations. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she established legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide and won a $745 million verdict at trial. She works with Equality Now, an international NGO promoting sex equality. Empirical studies document that MacKinnon is one of the most widely cited legal scholars in the English language.

The Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture is supported by Robert F. Rothschild ’39, in memory of Maurine P. Rothschild ’40. The event is organized by the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and brings a distinguished woman in history, library science, women’s studies, or related fields to the Radcliffe Institute for a public talk. Past speakers include Angela Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eve Ensler, and Samantha Power.

For more information, please visit www.radcliffe.edu or call 617-495-8600.

LOCATION: Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street, Radcliffe Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts.