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18 Disp. Resol. Mag. 4 (2011-2012)
Women in Dispute Resolution: Parties, Lawyers and Dispute Resolvers - What Difference does Gender Difference Make

handle is hein.journals/disput18 and id is 78 raw text is: Women in Dispute Resolution: Parties, Lawyers and Dispute Resolvers What Difference Does Gender Difference Make? By Carrie Menkel-Meadow Introduction: Gendered Justice? What does it mean to talk about or study women in dispute resolution when women play so many different roles in dispute resolution-as party-disputants, lawyer-representatives, witnesses, experts, negotiators, mediators, arbitrators, special masters and other forms of dispute handlers? Any dispute involves many of these roles, now played by people of both genders who interact with each other in different substantive contexts, physical sites, and with a great variety of gender composition in groups large and small. In this essay I review how I, a feminist scholar and prac- titioner in the fields of dispute resolution and gender and law studies, have evolved, as has the underlying research, from a firm conviction about existing gender differences in dispute resolution behaviors to a more nuanced and contextualized approach to the study and practice of gender in dispute resolution. Gender may matter in dispute resolution, but other factors, especially in such an interactive field of behavior, may trump or smooth out or make more complex any gender differences in the pursuit of dispute resolution. In short, gender matters, but context may matter more. Twenty five years ago I wrote an article, Portia In a Different Voice: Speculations on a Women's Lawyering Process,' which controversially claimed that with the addition of more women in the legal profession, legal processes would be likely to change, and more use of problem-solving, relational, contextual, and caring methods of dispute resolution would alter the way in which legal, social and economic problems would be solved. This article, which adapted and applied the even more controversial work of psychologist Carol Gilligan,2 argued for a different approach to legal problem solving and dispute resolution based on notions of care and con- nection for the parties engaged in disputes, the possibility of less brittle and binary conclusions of right and wrong and legal propriety, and a more mediated approach to problem solving. The short-cut example of all this came 4 SPRING 2012 DISPUTE RESOLUTION MAGAZINE