Feminism, Law and Gender (FLAG)

This cluster provides an intellectual and collaborative space for academics, visiting researchers and PhD students interested in gender-focused and feminist analysis of the law.

FLAG’s research and research activities currently centres around the four themes:

Gender and technology
Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) (online and offline)
Gender and criminal law
Gender and the justice professions.

FLAG has had considerable success in engaging in knowledge exchange activities including in devolved nations, UK, and internationally. The work of FLAG members has been cited by the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, politicians, the House of Lords, Women & Equalities Committee, the Law Commission and used to influence knowledge and working practices of national and international civil society organisations.

Members of the cluster are pursuing a range of projects, collaborative research, and public engagement activities in the areas of their expertise.

The cluster is led by Dr Olga Jurasz. If you are interested in joining the FLAG cluster, please contact us.

Content warning

Due to the nature of some of the issues within this research area, these pages may contain content that may be triggering or distressing. Please proceed with caution if any of the topics outlined above could be upsetting for you.

Cluster members

News

Dr Olga Jurasz gave an invited keynote address titled ‘Violence, law and the marking of women’s bodies’ at the Annual Gender Law Conference at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland (9-10 February 2023). The conference was organised by the FRI Swiss Institute for Feminist Legal Studies and Gender Law with a theme of In-Corpore: What does law do to our bodies.
Dr Kim Barker & Dr Olga Jurasz’s chapter exploring Women, Violence and Protest in Times of COVID-19 has been published in the open access volume, Law, Humanities, and the Covid Crisis (ed by Carl Stychin). Available here: https://www.sas.ac.uk/publications/law-humanities-and-covid-crisis.
Dr Kim Barker’s piece exploring Why we must carry on the work of women who changed modern Scotland has been published in The Herald https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/23333063.must-carry-.... It is the accompanying piece to the BBC series Women Who Changed Modern Scotland (https://connect.open.ac.uk/society-psychology-and-criminology/the-women-...)
Dr Olga Jurasz has been elected to serve on two techUK’s Working Groups: Violence Against Women and Girls Digital & Tech Working Group (which focuses on prevention of violence against women and girls) and rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) tech working group. This was formed in partnership with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Police Digital Service, College of Policing, Home Office and local policing partners, to tackle the barriers and challenges in policing’s response to RASSO.
Dr Kim Barker was an invited speaker at the Internet Policy & Politics Conference in Oxford on Saturday 21 January. Her paper was ‘Online Violence Against Women: The Internet’s Sexism Problem as a Contemporary Internet Policy Challenge?'.
Dr Caroline Derry gave an invited talk on ‘Lesbianism and the criminal law: the strange case of Louise Mourey’, to the Law and History Network on Monday 12 December. A few weeks earlier, she presented a paper on ‘The Wolfenden Report, homosexuality and women’ at ‘The Neglected Decade: law in the 1950s’ at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
Dr Olga Jurasz contributed to the OU listening summit on misogyny, organised by the Women@OU network, the EDI Team and MK Citizens, on Wednesday 11 January. Drawing on her research, Olga spoke about the challenges of making misogyny a hate crime.
FLAG members (Caroline Derry, Olga Jurasz, Louise Taylor) submitted expert evidence to the Scottish Government Consulations on ‘not-proven’ verdict in Scotland (March 2022) and on victims’ rights (August 2022).

Recent publications

Kim Barker & Olga Jurasz, ‘Text-based (Sexual) Abuse and Online Violence Against Women: Toward Law Reform?’ in: J Bailey, A Flynn, N Henry (eds) The Emerald Handbook of Technology-facilitated Violence and Abuse (Emerald, 2021).
Kim Barker & Olga Jurasz, ‘Sexual Violence in the Digital Age: A Criminal Law Conundrum?’ (2021) 22(5) German Law Journal 784-799.
Kim Barker & Olga Jurasz, ‘Online misogyny as a hate crime: #TimesUp’ in I Zempi and J Smith (eds) Misogyny as Hate Crime (Routledge 2021).
Kim Barker & Olga Jurasz, 'Online violence against women as an obstacle to gender equality: a critical view from Europe' European Equality Law Review 2020(1) 47-60.
Caroline Derry (2020) Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Regulation in England and Wales. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Olga Jurasz & Natalia Szablewska, ‘Towards transformative gender equality: the importance of addressing economic violence against women in Cambodia’ in: M J Gámez Fuentes, S Núnez Puente, E Gómez Nicolau (eds) Re-writing women as victims: from theory to practice (Routledge 2020)
Louise Taylor and Lucy Justice, ‘Autobiographical Memory Misconceptions and the Police Investigative Response to Rape Complaints’ (2019) 10 Criminal Law Review 827-840.
Lloyd Bright, Keren (2020). ‘Gender identity and prisons in England and Wales. The development of rights and rules; checks and balances’. In: Claydon, Lisa and Derry, Caroline eds. Law, Justice and the Open University 1969-2019. Routledge, (In Press).