Violence, women and the law: an unfinished story

Dates: Thursday, May 9, 2024 - 13:00 to 14:00
Location: Online and in-person at Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall, MK6 7AA

In her inaugural lecture, Olga Jurasz, Professor of Law in the OU’s Faculty of Business and Law, will explore the uneasy relationship between violence, law and women’s lives using three examples: conflict-related sexual violence, online violence against women and the impact that withdrawal of rights and laws has on violence they experience.

The topic of violence is not alien to women – and neither are their encounters with the law. The relationship between the law, violence and women’s lives has always carried a degree of complexity, overshadowed by law’s dominant narratives and assumptions about violence which frequently contribute to the maintenance of the cycles of violence rather than disrupting or breaking them.

In her inaugural lecture, Professor Jurasz will explore this uneasy relationship using three examples. First, she will look at conflict-related sexual violence to illustrate how the law (here: international law) responds to gender-based violence which ‘shocks the conscience’, often appears ‘extraordinary’ and which has gained legal visibility in the past two decades (despite being perpetrated for millennia).

Second, Professor Jurasz will discuss online violence against women as an illustration of a modern challenge for legal regulation. She will critique how its hypervisibility in everyday life has thus far failed to translate into recognition of this type of violence (and harms arising from it) within the law.

Lastly, Professor Jurasz will discuss the impact that withdrawal of certain rights and laws has on women’s lives and violence they are subjected to. In doing so, she will draw on the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs from June 2022 which overturned Roe v Wade, and the decision of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from 22 October 2020 establishing that abortion due to foetal impairment is unconstitutional.