Regulating Women: Policymaking and Practice in the UK

By Sarah Cooper and Sarah Cooper Lecturer in Politics Uni

Book Overview

A number of women's issues serve to create novel policy problems that require creative, and sometimes unique, regulatory and legal responses. This book embarks upon a comparative case study approach to explore UK policymaking in the areas of abortion, rape, prostitution and pornography in turn. Each chapter engages a different institutional perspective to explore the influence of a range of bodies such as the legal system, medical profession, civil society, police force and mass media. The analysis reveals a common thread that runs throughout decision-making in these areas; a constant balancing act between regulation that purports to protect women, and regulation that supposedly reflects female liberation, with a continual dance between the labels of 'criminal' and 'victim' being performed by policy actors.

Largely reflective of a dogmatic approach to the status of women, it is argued that different institutions retain strongholds over policymaking in these domains, prohibiting a joined-up approach. This has served to perpetuate harmful and negative stereotyping of women's issues and create countless conundrums when the activities of women fall into more than one policy category.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1783481846
• ISBN13: 9781783481842
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"