The image of "backlash" is pervasive in contemporary debates about the impact of second-wave feminism on law and policy. But does it really explain the resistance to feminist initiatives for social change in contemporary culture?

In this timely volume, contributors from various disciplines analyze reaction and resistance to feminism in several areas of law and policy - child custody, child poverty, sexual harassment, and sexual assault - and in a number of institutional sites, such as courts, legislatures, families, the mainstream media, and the academy. Collectively, their studies paint a more complicated, often contradictory, picture of feminism, law, and social change than the popular image of backlash suggests.

Reaction and Resistance offers feminists and other activists empirically grounded knowledge that can be used to develop legal and political strategies for change.

Acknowledgments

1 Feminism, Law, and Social Change: An Overview / Dorothy E. Chunn, Susan B. Boyd, and Hester Lessard

Part 1: Media Representations of Feminism, Anti-Racism, and Their Counter-Movements

2 "Take It Easy Girls": Feminism, Equality, and Social Change in the Media / Dorothy E. Chunn

3 Virtual Backlash: Representations of Men's "Rights" and Feminist "Wrongs" in Cyberspace / Robert Menzies

4 Imperial Longings, Feminist Responses: Print Media and the Imagining of Nationhood after 9/11 / Sunera Thobani

Part 2: Sexual Terrains: Criminal Law and the Campus

5 The Discursive Disappearance of Sexualized Violence: Feminist Law Reform, Judicial Resistance, and Neo-liberal Sexual Citizenship / Lise Gotell

6 Backlash in the Academy: The Evolution of Campus Sexual Harassment Regimes / Hester Lessard

Part 3: Familial Identities and Neo-Liberal Reform

7 Feminism, Fathers' Rights, and Family Catastrophes: Parliamentary Discourses on Post-Separation Parenting, 1966-2003 / Susan B. Boyd and Claire F.L. Young

8 Child-Centred Advocacy and the Invisibility of Women in Poverty Discourse and Social Policy / Wanda Wiegers

9 Challenging Heteronormativity? Reaction and Resistance to the Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships / Claire F.L. Young and Susan B. Boyd

Contributors

Index

Edited by Dorothy E. Chunn, Susan Boyd, and Hester Lessard