Doing feminist legal work: using feminist pedagogies in law schools in Ireland and Northern Ireland

Ireland and Northern Ireland have a long, and often shared, history of feminist legal activism, yet a systematic integration of this history, of feminist legal theory or feminist pedagogy across the law schools on the island, is yet to happen. Law remains widely understood as a doctrinal, neutral, elitist concern, at a remove from society. Our survey of Irish law schools, (including both academic law schools and professional training bodies) carried out in summer 2024, as part of the Doing Feminist Legal Work (DFLW) network showed that feminist legal work is routinely absent from law schools’ core curriculum and students can graduate from law school unequipped to identify and critique the gendered nature of law. We argue for a conceptual shift in how women’s contributions to law are understood and included in legal education. In this article, we contextualise the existing landscape of pedagogical practice, research, and materials across the island within the historic under-representation of women from the spaces that create, apply and academically scrutinise law. We contemplate how a distinct form of feminist legal pedagogical practice could be established across the island, that is both local in its valuing of experiential feminist legal work on the island and transnational in its shared learning from wider feminist legal pedagogical practice. DFLW is a network of feminist legal scholars, activists and practitioners interested in Ireland and Northern Ireland which was established following Irish Research Council Shared Island funding in 2022. It builds on existing, albeit ad hoc, North/South and East/West collaborations, and has developed workshops and best practice guides on feminist pedagogical practice to shift understandings of legal education on this island.