Women and the Magna Carta ─ A Treaty for Rights or Wrongs?

Are women equal? Do women have equal rights? Have women's campaigns for justice, access to law, property ownership and child custody rights, and rights to bodily and psychic integrity, won women advances? When women fought for the right to vote, to be on juries, to be independent beings entitled to jobs, income, equal pay and the right to industrial action, did Magna Carta mean anything? Albeit no women were at Runnymede in 1215, have women used Magna Carta to underpin their own struggles against the abuse of power, the denial of natural justice and human rights, and the right to be and be regarded as human? Spanning eight hundred years of women's rights denial and achievement, Women and The Magna Carta shows how far women have come – and how far there is yet to go. Can Magna Carta make a difference?

Jocelynne A. Scutt is a barrister and human rights lawyer, Visiting Professor and Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Buckingham, UK, and elected county councillor for Cambridgeshire. Her books include Women and the Law and The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics, The Sexual Gerrymander: Women and the Economics of Power, as well as the 'Women's Voices, Women's Lives' series.