The Inconspicuous Impact of Feminist Pressure through Law

Abstract

Law reformers tend to be remembered as those responsible for transforming the law; but for their involvement, the law may not have changed as it has. Yet when evidence of this is not apparent, we might discard as remote campaigns which were in fact very important. These campaigns may have been neither immediately nor directly successful, but had, what I have termed, ‘inconspicuous impact’. Inconspicuous impact is an effect upon the law that did ultimately lead to change, but not in a linear or short-term fashion. The effect is inconspicuous because it relates to efforts to change the law that are not typically viewed or credited as having contributed to reform, perhaps because those efforts were initially or ostensibly unsuccessful. The inconspicuousness of impact is especially characteristic of feminist efforts to reform the law through legal channels since historically, feminists have struggled to gain a sympathetic ear among members of the executive or judiciary. This has often left feminist pressure groups outside of formal law-making processes, but they have nevertheless been lawmakers in an indirect sense. This article is about why, and how, we should pay attention to the more subtle ways in which feminists have contributed to law’s development. Using examples from the attempts of one feminist pressure group to use law as a tool for change – the Married Women’s Association – I identify reasons why impact can be inconspicuous and why this should lead to revisionist accounts of legal history. I argue that this approach compels us to look in different places, widen our intellectual bandwidth, and rethink what constitutes law reform.