Women, Marriage and Law in Scotland: Historical and Legal Perspectives

争取两性平等的历史性斗争改变了现代世界妇女诉诸司法的机会。在过去的两个世纪里，女权主义者及其支持者为妇女的选举权、拥有财产和参与经济网络、寻求婚姻分居以及在法庭上获得子女监护权而斗争。然而，妇女争取平等的斗争并不是一个现代现象，也没有完全实现。纵观历史，妇女诉诸法院是为了确保其法律的地位和财产权。在历史和当代景观中，总是有运动;平等通常必须不断争取，一旦实现，就要保护。了解过去妇女的代理权和财产权可以帮助法律的从业人员和法院在今天遇到类似问题时作出更明智的决定。我们理解妇女社会能动性的方式需要承认过去持续存在的歧视的交叉性质。即使在今天，苏格兰争取性别平等的斗争也远未结束，妇女实现的平等与她们的生活现实之间仍然存在着明显的差距。苏格兰国家妇女和女孩咨询理事会成立于2017年，旨在通过为第一部长提供基于证据的方法来改变公众对平等的态度，从而使性别不平等成为历史上的一个奇迹。妇女仍在努力争取平等诉诸司法的机会，特别是在苏格兰的贫困地区。苏格兰妇女权利中心等协作组织通过法律的咨询、代表和宣传，协助妇女获得诉诸司法的机会。苏格兰妇女援助会帮助遭受家庭虐待的妇女在寻求离婚、获得子女监护权和免受暴力伴侣侵害时诉诸法律。关于妇女参与法律的变革和财产辩论的历史知识可以为当前的政策变革和决策提供信息，这反过来又在理解妇女对社会和法律的成果的贡献方面发挥重要作用。该项目旨在汇集历史学家、政策制定者和对妇女诉诸法律的特殊性感兴趣的法律的从业人员，以推动以新的方式思考妇女在历史和现代背景下参与法律。该项目探讨了现代早期苏格兰妇女诉诸司法的相对机会，介入了关于妇女的法律的主体性以及政治和法律的变化可能破坏或改变不平等的程度的现代辩论。社区安全部长Ash Denham最近表示，“今天苏格兰家庭的组成与半个多世纪前通过这些法律时有很大不同，包括更多的同居夫妇和更多的继家庭。“这种进步的叙述是一种熟悉的叙述，往往是当代政策制定和法律的实践的基础。我迄今为止的研究表明，继婚家庭在近代早期的苏格兰很常见，17世纪格拉斯哥的法庭记录中，大约有四分之一的女性是再婚的寡妇，有多段婚姻的孩子。声称自己是社区“名誉和财产”的已婚妇女在同居伴侣死亡后试图在下级教会法院获得财产，尽管她们没有以法律的方式使婚姻合法化。妇女还试图证明她们已经结婚，因为她们的同居伴侣为了确立她们的财产权而抛弃了她们的家庭。通过将关于妇女诉诸司法的创新性历史研究与妇女组织、法律的专家和政府委员会相结合，该项目将对当前围绕苏格兰继承法和同居改革期间妇女财产权的法律的辩论产生持久影响。

The historical struggle for gender equality has transformed women's access to justice in our modern world. Over the last two centuries, feminists and their supporters campaigned for women's right to vote, to own property and engage in economic networks, to seek marital separation, and to obtain custody of their children before the courts. Yet, women's struggles for equality is not a modern phenomenon and nor has it been fully achieved. Throughout history, women approached the courts in an attempt to secure their legal status and rights to property. Within the historical and contemporary landscape, there is always movement; equality usually has to be continuously fought for and, once achieved, protected. Understanding women's agency and property rights in the past can help legal practitioners and the courts make better-informed decisions when encountering similar problems today. The ways in which we make sense of women's social agency needs to acknowledge the intersectional nature of ongoing discrimination in the past. Even today, the struggle for gender equality in Scotland is far from complete, and a glaring disparity between the achieved equality of women and their lived realities still remains. The Scottish National Advisory Council on Women and Girls was established in 2017 to make gender inequality a historical curiosity by providing the First Minister with evidenced-based approaches to changing public attitudes to equality. Women still struggle to obtain equal access to justice, particularly in deprived areas of Scotland. Collaborative organisations, such as the Scottish Women's Rights Centre, assists women in achieving access to justice through legal advice, representation and advocacy. Scottish Women's Aid helps women experiencing domestic abuse to access law when seeking a divorce, securing child custody, and protection from violent partners. Historical knowledge of women's involvement in legal changes and property debates can inform current policy change and decision-making, which in turn plays a significant role in understanding women's contribution to social and legal outcomes. This project aims to brings together historians, policy-makers, and legal practitioners interested in the particularities of women's access to law to advance new ways of thinking about women's engagement with law in a historical and modern context. Exploring women's relative access to justice in early modern Scotland, this project intervenes in modern debates about women's legal subjectivity and the extent to which inequities might be disrupted or modified by political and legal change. Community Safety Minister Ash Denham recently stated that "The make-up of families in Scotland is vastly different today than it was when these laws were passed over half a century ago, including significantly more families made up of cohabiting couples and an increased number of step-families." This narrative of progress is a familiar one, often underpinning contemporary policy making and legal practice. My research to date shows that stepfamilies were common in early modern Scotland, with about a quarter of the women identified in court records in seventeenth-century Glasgow being remarried widows with children from multiple marriages. Women who asserted that they were 'repute and haldin' by the community as married women attempted to secure property following the death of their live-in partners before the lower church courts, despite not having solemnised their marriage in a legal manner. Women also attempted to prove that they were married when their cohabiting partners abandoned the household in a bid to establish their property rights. By combining innovative historical research on women's access to justice with women's organisations, legal experts and government committees, this project will have a lasting impact on current legal debates surrounding women's rights to property during the ongoing reform of succession law and cohabitation in Scotland.