Current Affairs

Julie Suk is a professor of law at Fordham University. Her new book After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It is about why the law has not succeeded at eliminating patriarchy despite advances in formal gender equality. Suk acknowledges that legal feminists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped bring about equal protection under law, but shows that, just as "colorblind" racial policies leave existing hierarchies untouched, "equal treatment" fails to alter gender imbalances of power. Suk also explains that, just as racism doesn't have to involve "hatred," misogyny shouldn't necessarily be defined as hating women. Rather, she draws our attention to concepts she calls overempowerment and overentitlement; that is, misogyny is men's excessive power over women and excessive sense of entitlement to women's labor. In this conversation, Prof. Suk explains her new framework for understanding gender inequality under the law. We talk about unpaid care work, abortion, and Prof. Suk even gives an interesting