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33 Eur. J. Int'l L. 1 (2022)

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                    The European Journal of International Law Vol. 33 no. 1
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EJIL Ltd.
  All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com


            Letters to the Editors


Gender in International Law
Syllabi


Dear Editors,
'[T]here are things each of us can do, even
if small, and opportunities that we have
to act when  we encounter the barriers
confronting women in academia', declare
Grainne de Bdrca, Michaela Hailbronner
and Marcela Prieto Rudolphy in 2020 in
EJIL (volume 31:2).
  One   opportunity to  act is: (1) to
examine  to what extent law syllabi ex-
clude female-authored materials (works
with at least one female author to include
female-only and female/male  teams) as
mandatory  readings, (2) to explore rea-
sons why and (3) to propose solutions.
  My  findings, after analysing academic
year 2021/2022   online publicly avail-
able syllabi of one randomly  selected
and  typical European  institution pro-
viding education in international law,
indicate that law syllabi must be exam-
ined. In reviewing the 460  authored-
identified mandatory  readings on  the
institution's 11 online publicly available
syllabi, I found that over 80 per cent of
the syllabi limit female-only authored
readings to single digits (and no syllabus
limiting male-only authored  papers to
single digits). And, indeed, one syllabus
completely  excludes  female-authored
materials. Dear Reader, do my findings
reflect the norm in your institution?
  Why  might  such practices of exclud-
ing  female-authored   materials from
syllabi occur?


EJIL (2022), Vol. 33 No. 1, 1-2


    - Is it because no or few  women
      write (and are published) in the
      international legal arena?
     Is it because the quality of male-
      authored materials is higher than
      female-authored materials?
     Is it because mandatory readings
      in syllabi are limited to materials
      authored  during the  years that
      law  schools  excluded (or  sub-
      stantially excluded) women as
      students?
     Is it because mandatory readings
      in syllabi are limited to materials
      authored  during the  years that
      law  schools exclude or excluded
      (or substantially exclude or ex-
      cluded) women  as law professors?

If the answers to all four of these ques-
tions are 'no', then what other explan-
ations might there be?
  What  about the elephant-in-the-room
question? Might the explanation for the
gender  gap' in syllabi be as simple as
whether the professor is female or male?
  When  researching syllabi in a different
arena (civil-military relations), I found
male professors exist who include more
female-authored materials in their syl-
labi than do female professors ['The State
of  Civil-Military Relations Education:
Falling Short?', 6 Hemisferio, 2020].
  Yet for the institution whose inter-
national law syllabi I analysed, the an-
swer appears to be 'yes'. All syllabi are


      https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chacOl 1