Document Type
Essay
Publication Title
Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law
Publication Date
1995
Volume
3:1
First Page
177
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Over the past decade, fueled in part by Carol Gilligan's controversial book, In a Different Voice, both feminists and scholars of color have critically examined the law from the "outsiders'" perspective. Stretching methodological bounds, this interrelated body of scholarship has utilized narrative form to question the gender and racial implications of social practices and legal rules and to demonstrate the useful purpose that stories serve as a means of including marginalized groups in law's evolution and reform. Women scholars of color have carved out a particular role in this debate, criticizing feminism's categorical conceptualization of "woman." They have advanced an alternative theoretical framework that recognizes gender as a construct shaped by various social experiences including race, class, culture, and sexual orientation. In other words, not all women speak in one voice.
In this essay, I explore this multidimensional strand of legal discourse on the "woman question” by identifying the concept of "ethnic voice" and developing a methodology for further exploration of that concept. The contextual framework I use is the continuing influence of ethnic culture and ethnic markers on the career choices and professional participation of women lawyers of one particular ethnic group, Italian Americans. I suggest that although ethnicity may not play as pervasive a role as race in directly shaping the consciousness of women in our society, it is nevertheless significant. Even third and fourth generation women of Italian-American and perhaps certain other ethnic backgrounds may still experience more subtle, and therefore less easily perceptible and quantifiable, internal and external cultural constraints, that make most of these women "outsiders" or, at best, marginal players in the legal academy and the practice of law. I explore this thesis through my personal observations and experiences, those of other Italian-American writers, sociological research, and the stories and perspectives informally shared with me by lawyers and law students of Italian ancestry.