Beverly Baines and Ruth Rubio-Marin have gathered together a group of lawyers, mostly law faculty, with expertise in constitutional law, women's rights, civil and human rights, and gender equality. The result is an edited collection on constitutional sex equality litigation, with chapters covering a wide array of issues, including reproductive rights, employment discrimination, sexual harassment, family law, pornography, social welfare policy, and voting rights. By using gender as a “focal point” (p. 1) of constitutional jurisprudence, the authors assess the success of a feminist constitutional agenda.

Although the editors present the chapters as independent analyses, clearly they are meant to be understood within a comparative framework. As the chapters indicate, there are many cross-national similarities in constitutional litigation for gender equality. Moreover, it appears from this volume that the similarities outweigh the differences—in both successes and failures. Taken as a whole, the contributors discuss how a gendered approach to constitutional litigation transcends national boundaries, doctrinal analysis, and legal traditions. Their purpose is to assess the value of such litigation in achieving women's equality goals over the last several decades. Women were, of course, delayed in entering the realm of constitutional litigation, in part because they were precluded from citizenship. By the 1980s and 1990s, however, women had gained sufficient power in a number of countries to be able to enshrine feminist goals in new constitutions or constitutional amendments; perhaps the most ambitious of these is France's provision for gender parity in elections.

The 12 nations comprising the study include Colombia, Germany, France, Australia, India, Israel, South Africa, Turkey, Costa Rica, the United States, Canada, and Spain. In general, these nations are all committed to democratic principles, albeit with varying degrees of gender equality. The countries differ along several dimensions: type of legal tradition, type of government, type of economic system, and level of development, as well as degree of religiosity, majority religion, race, and culture. Unfortunately, the editors give no rationale for including these nations, and so we are left to speculate why these specific countries were chosen.

The book seeks to transform “a purportedly ‘gender-neutral’ constitutional law perspective” (p. 4) into an explicitly feminist, that is, woman-specific, set of orientations, formulating a new approach that encompasses both constitutional and feminist analysis. It brings together two trends in legal analysis: comparative constitutional analysis and constitutional feminist theory. The goal is to fill in the “gender gap” (p. 2) in a tradition of constitutional analysis that has heretofore been largely devoted to questions of federalism, judicial review, and economic development. The authors discover that to accomplish their aims, constitutional litigants have to learn to speak the same language with respect to equality, in other words, to “develop a feminist constitutional agenda” (p. 5) that strives to achieve women's bodily integrity and reproductive autonomy, as well as sexual equality in social, political, and economic spheres.

According to the editors, the authors of these chapters independently concluded that constitutional sex equality litigation encompasses three meanings of sex equality, varying across nations. The first two, “formal equality” and “separate but equal” (p. 13), are mirror images of each other, based on the notion that equality is defined as equal treatment for those “similarly situated” (p. 14). The formal equality model strives to treat “alikes alike, and unalikes unalike … focus[ing] on identifying the relevant differences and similarities … between men and women as groups” (p. 13), regardless of individual need or qualification. Typically proceeding from the male model, this approach seeks to accord women the same treatment as men. The second approach, acknowledging that women differ from men, attempts to ensure that they are not subordinated to their male counterparts. The last, known as “substantive equality” (p. 13), also recognizes differences between the sexes and seeks to accommodate those differences by leveling the playing field. Here, disputes over issues of pregnancy policymaking and affirmative action play a crucial role in the struggle for equality between the sexes.

The chapters demonstrate both the universality and particularity of women's equality claims: concern with bodily integrity and autonomy, eradication of discrimination, and an end to their subordinate social and economic status. The authors indicate that progress has not always been forthcoming in constitutional litigation, in part because gender-equality claims often conflict with other constitutional principles, such as freedom of speech versus restrictions on pornography, concern for fetal rights versus reproductive autonomy, and due process protections versus enhancement of women's safety through rape, domestic violence, and sexual-assault prosecutions. Another difficulty is that in some nations, constitutional litigation cannot address concerns of inequality in the private realm, necessitating legislation to remedy inequities there.

Overall, the chapters suggest that constitutional litigation may be a necessary, but not a sufficient, means for achieving sexual equality and that ultimately it must be secured through political struggles outside the courtroom as well as inside.

Taken as a whole, The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence is accessible to students and therefore suitable for the classroom, and is an excellent resource for scholars as well. Footnotes are helpful in this regard, as are the lists of suggested readings at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately, as with all edited collections, the quality of the chapters tends to be somewhat uneven; however, this is to be expected in such an endeavor. My only real criticism of the book is that it lacks a conclusion. The editors would have greatly contributed to the value of this work had they provided a concluding chapter that drew the readings together and discussed findings within and across nations, thereby making the book truly comparative.