Multicultural jurisdictions: The need for a feminist approach to law and religion

This chapter explores the need for a feminist approach to Law and Religion through considering Ayelet Shachar’s Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights as a leading work. On account of it being discussed during Rowan Williams’ infamous lecture on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England’ , Shachar’s book is widely cited. Our chapter shows, however, that Shachar’s diagnosis of the situation shows what a feminist approach to Law and Religion could achieve, ironically Shachar’s proposed solution of transformative accommodation suffers from many of the defects she is rightly critical of. We suggest instead that a feminist approach, derived from Thompson’s previous work on prenuptial agreements, can provide a way forward. More generally, the chapter suggests that a feminist approach provides one way in which the Law and Religion field could be developed and rejuvenated