Getting Class

Feminist legal scholarship has long addressed gender-based economic inequality, particularly as it affects middle-class women, yet much of this work remains inattentive to class analysis. Kessler argues that legal feminist literature and strategies have inadequately engaged with class differences, drawing primarily from the perspectives of economically privileged women. Using employment discrimination and family law as case studies, the article demonstrates how leading legal feminist theories fail to account for the experiences of working-class women. The article examines how the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), hailed as a feminist triumph, covers only employers with fifty or more employees and excludes millions of economically disadvantaged workers more likely to work part-time or hold multiple jobs. Similarly, feminist scholarship emphasizing wage work as liberation overlooks that such work may represent exploitation for low-income women rather than freedom. Kessler contends that legal feminism must shift focus from centered privileged women and instead adopt an intersectional approach drawing from labor history and African-American feminist theory. She argues that family caregiving can constitute resistance to oppression in marginalized communities and that recognition of solidarity-based norms strengthens labor law more effectively than individualistic rational-choice models. The article calls for integrating class analysis into core feminist legal theory to encompass diverse women's experiences and advance genuine economic equality.

Topics: Labor & Employment · Civil Rights

Keywords: gender-based economic inequality · Family and Medical Leave Act · FMLA · employment discrimination · working-class women · class analysis · feminist legal theory · intersectional approach