WLD HISTORY
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  • Home
    • The story of WLD
    • About Women, Law and Development
    • About the Website
    • About the Author
  • Beginnings
    • First Initiatives
    • Central America Legal Services
    • Nairobi Forum
  • Organizing
    • Early regional linkages
    • Asia
    • Latin America
    • Africa
    • Interregional connections
    • WLD International
  • Research
    • Clarifying issues and strategies
    • Participatory Research Project
      • Intro Freedom from V
      • Intro Legal Literacy
    • Step by Step
      • Step by Step Acknowledgements
  • Advocacy
    • Agenda setting with NGOs and UN bodies
    • Claiming Our Place
    • Support of the Special Rapporteur
    • Basic Needs Basic Rights
  • Capacity Building
    • Capacity Building
    • Human Rights Training
      • Central and Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union
      • Nigeria Human Rights Training
    • International Advocates Course
    • Russian Lawyers
  • Publications
  • Chronology
  • Reflections
  • Network Links
  • Website Map
  • Home
    • The story of WLD
    • About Women, Law and Development
    • About the Website
    • About the Author
  • Beginnings
    • First Initiatives
    • Central America Legal Services
    • Nairobi Forum
  • Organizing
    • Early regional linkages
    • Asia
    • Latin America
    • Africa
    • Interregional connections
    • WLD International
  • Research
    • Clarifying issues and strategies
    • Participatory Research Project
      • Intro Freedom from V
      • Intro Legal Literacy
    • Step by Step
      • Step by Step Acknowledgements
  • Advocacy
    • Agenda setting with NGOs and UN bodies
    • Claiming Our Place
    • Support of the Special Rapporteur
    • Basic Needs Basic Rights
  • Capacity Building
    • Capacity Building
    • Human Rights Training
      • Central and Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union
      • Nigeria Human Rights Training
    • International Advocates Course
    • Russian Lawyers
  • Publications
  • Chronology
  • Reflections
  • Network Links
  • Website Map
© Margaret Schuler
WLD HISTORY

Legal Literacy: A Tool for Women's Empowerment

Picture
Margaret Schuler (editor)

UNIFEM
​OEF International, 1992
ISBN-10: 0912917253
ISBN-13: 978-0912917252
​346 pages
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 
​92-091682


Legal literacy is commonly understood as knowing the “ABCs” of law. The conventional wisdom is that if women know what the law has to offer them they can improve their political, economic, and social condition. The simplistic view that mere knowledge of the law can transform women’s lives is a one-dimensional conception of legal literacy. This book challenges such limited definitions. It explores legal literacy as a process of self and social empowerment and an essential component in a broader strategy to achieve social justice. As a tool for women’s empowerment, legal literacy promotes women’s capacities to understand and critique the law and the scope of rights, to assert rights as a political resource, and to take action to change limiting definitions of gender roles, status and rights in the law and in daily practice.

Legal Literacy: A Tool for Women’s Empowerment presents experiences and strategic approaches to legal literacy from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The collection offers an eclectic mix of resources, agents, methods and strategies by which legal literacy and its long-term political goals are pursued. The contributors freely discuss strategy problems, the failure of certain methods and programs, and unrealized expectations, as well as positive and successful experiences. The authors’ frankness in discussing their central concerns, problems and strategic approaches gives value to this book as a facilitating instrument in the dialogue about legal literacy.


​To read this book online or download it, click here:
legal literacy
Women, Law & Development 
Its history and contributions to the global women's rights movement. 
by Margaret Schuler 

Women, Law and Development

In these pages, Margaret Schuler, the initiator and director of WLD for many years, shares the story of its development and the contributions it has made to the international movement.