Using the master's tools: How the law reshapes gender boundaries in the public-private sphere

Abstract

The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house. Audre LaudreAccording to an old stance, very popular among second-wave feminists, you cannot use the Master's tools to dismantle the Master's house. In other words, you cannot change structural gender inequalities by enforcing the rules that 'the Master' put in place; you will only be reifying patriarchy. This article aims to prove that patriarchy can be beat in its own game. Through extensive legislative changes that have occurred in the past four decades in developed nations of the world, the status of women has improved dramati cally. The law has provided powerful tools, establishing new models of behavior for men and women in both the private and the public sphere. Once these spheres were distinct and separate; today they have meshed together, their boundaries effaced, changing women's lives regardless of ethnicity or culture.