Mixed Blessings ― Laws, Religions And Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region

The nine essays presented by the editors (both law professors at the U. of Melbourne, Australia) examine how state systems of law intersect with religion (including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and indigenous spiritual practices) in specific Asia-Pacific countries and the impact this intersection has own the lives of women. Topics include legal and religious aspects of the non-normative gender roles of sex workers and Buddhist nuns in Thailand, Papua New Guinea's judicial decisions in cases where men who have killed women make claims of witchcraft, patriarchal interpretations of customary law and Christian scriptures in the Solomon Islands, the impact of nationalism and religion in the Roman Catholic Church's differing responses to rape in East Timor, Indonesian women's emancipatory readings of Islamic law as part of the effort to reform the state's family law, and Singapore's attempted dilution of the patriarchal aspects of Confucianism in pursuit of economic development. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Carolyn Evans is Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, in the Faculty of Law, The University of Melbourne, Australia. She has undergraduate degrees in Arts and Law from that university and a doctorate in law from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She has taught at both Oxford and Melbourne. She is the author of Freedom of Religion under the European Convention on Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2001) and the co-editor of Religion and International Law (Martinus Nijhoff, 1999). She has published articles and chapters in the areas of religious freedom and general international law. Her current research interests are in the areas of the intersection of religion and law (including issues of religious freedom) and the role of legislatures in the protection of human rights. She has given presentations on religious freedom issues in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Peoples’ Republic of China and Russia.Amanda Whiting is a Lecturer in Law at The University of Melbourne and Associate Director, Malaysia, Asian Law Centre, also at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has taught both history and law at that University. She is Co-editor of the Australian Journal of Asian Law and author of Situating Suhakam: Human Rights Debates and Malaysia’s National Human Rights Commission,Stanford Journal of International Law, 39 no.1 (2003): 59-98 and Some Women can shift it well enough: a legal context for understanding the women petitioners of the seventeenth-century English Revolution,; Australian Feminist Law Journal 21 (December) 2004: 77–100. Her current research interests include women and Islam in Southeast Asia; national and regional human rights institutions, values and practices in Southeast Asia; indigenous land claims in Malaysia; and the use of defamation to stifle public debate in Southeast Asia.