Recently, I travelled to Paris to take part in a full day seminar on Anti-Racism and Feminism as Activism in EU and Comparative Law. I was particularly excited about contributing as I had been specifically invited because of my expertise on Gender and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). My contribution allowed me to bring together my two strands of research work – EU Law and Policy, and Learning and Teaching.

I made the following key arguments:

1. Courts, and the CJEU is a good example of this, are contested, political and complex institutions that are gendered just like any other aspect of our lives. This plays out in who inhabits the space and in what roles, the ways of working and the outcomes of that work – in this case, law.
2. Highlighting the gendered aspects of the Court and its work, as well as feminist and anti-racist work in academia often struggles to transcend boundaries and make real world impacts. In other words, we are not always good at changing the world through our scholarship and need to think more about how we can also be activist.
3. Teaching can be a powerful form of activism. Through teaching about the myriad of ways that Courts are subject to the same biases as any other institution, we can empower students to examine law as well as legal and political institutions more critically. This leads to more critical engagement with law that can be a force for good and help students advocate for themselves, their communities and peers and create a better world for all.

The seminar was attended by speakers from a variety of backgrounds and countries and the audience was full of engaged and critical Masters’ students, many of them exchange students in Paris who asked brilliant questions of us all. Throughout the morning, we discussed questions of merit and diversity, of how we might begin to decolonise EU Law and how metrics can hide important stories.

We continued conversations around comparative law and the lack of feminist legal studies within it, around abortion rights and the importance of using data as evidence to argue for change and to not get too caught up in categories and binary divides such as public and private law. We talked a lot about what we need to change the world for the better and agreed that we need stories to support our activism.

There were some clear unifying themes for me. I was reminded of law’s power to define and categorise, and how this is problematic because, if you categorise, you always exclude some voices. I wondered how we might break free from the neo-liberal obsession of measuring everything and get to a point where stories and narratives don’t risk going unheard.

As I listened to a group of fantastic scholars from across the globe, I felt real optimism and hope. That may be odd given that some of our conversations had been about frustrations of lack of progress or work still to be done and much acknowledged how so many women and racialised people across the world are really struggling. However, being part of a group of talented and committed scholars who use their (relative) privilege to unearth and champion the otherwise unheard voices, who share their time and expertise generously and who apply their incredible minds to solving some of our big social justice problems is a powerful thing indeed!

Dr Jess Guth is Head of the Law School at Leeds Trinity University.