Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice: What’s Law Got to Do with It?

This edited collection came out of an international symposium organised by the Sexuality, Poverty and Law programme. The contributors include activists working with women in Assam’s tea gardens in India or young LGBT leaders in Vietnam, lawyers fighting the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda or the criminalisation of cross-dressing in Malaysia, academics carefully re-reading Islamic Sharia or researchers assessing HIV prevention programmes in South Africa. This collection offers multiple routes to sexuality and gender justice and numerous suggestions of what the two could be in a plurality of contexts. Further, it explores different processes by which activists and other actors have worked for change, interrogates what we mean when we talk about ‘solidarity’, and questions the usefulness and place of law. The Collection also suggests that there are many potential pitfalls and barriers to justice or progress.