Motherhood as an Amplifier of Inequalities in International Legal Academia

‘Gravity of Tenderness’ by The Fabler.

As Immi Tallgreen in her introduction to the volume Portraits of Women in International Law shows, the international lawyer is assumed as a neutral and impersonal body. Yet the portraits of women in history unveil that women have been involved in international law across time, revealing women’s agency, while also revealing the falsehood of the image of the “international lawyer” reduced to white men.

If women in general are left aside from the image of the international lawyer it can be further presumed that the experiences and participation of mothers in international legal academia are even less considered. An important step to address this issue is to talk about these experiences openly. This symposium is a good example of such a step. However, it is not only the invisibility of mothers and motherhood that is of concern, but also the challenges faced as a result of elitism in the field. In this post I will draw on some of these challenges which are not exclusive to mothers but enhanced by the role and care duties it implies. In this regard I will argue that motherhood (and I am fully aware of the critiques that the term receives) can operate as an amplifier of the inequalities and lack of representation, on which the field of international law is built. The challenges drawn herein (e.g. discrimination, time pressure, rigid frameworks, elitism, mobility and migration) are not exhaustive. These must be taken as initial thoughts that hopefully will spark more thorough reflection.

The Maternal Wall in Legal Academia

The “maternal wall” is defined as a form of discrimination that affects mothers as opposed to women in general. Studies have shown the ways in which the maternal wall arises in the legal profession, while other studies highlight motherhood as one of the causes of the “gender gap”. Certainly a major puzzle around all of these studies is that regardless the efforts of achieving gender equality, (e.g. the ratio of law female students has increased significantly), women are still underrepresented in academia and in legal academia in particular. I would argue that answers to this puzzle could be found by talking more openly about the challenges and experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. Silence about the latter is understandable as talking about them in professional settings can be perceived as a weakness or as incompetence. The decision of having a child is a deeply personal, yet as the above mentioned “maternal wall” studies show, not without a professional cost. According to a study in the natural sciences, 50% of postdoctoral women who had a child dropped academic life. It should be then no surprise that women are underrepresented. Shocking as it is in Germany only 15.8% of the tenured law professors are women, while in Switzerland 25%. One might wonder how many of these full professors are mothers. Furthermore, the choice of not having children or remaining single might be only available in western societies, as in other societies family remains very influential in women’s public roles. Hence, representation in international legal academia might be further constrained by different needs and idiosyncratic values not addressed by academic institutions or frameworks.

Age Pressure and the Expectation to Dance as Prima Ballerinas

Another challenge in international legal academia is that it operates as a highly competitive field that demands all of our attention and discipline. Success in academia is expected to follow a ‘linear life’, with no interruptions such as a personal tragedy or a blow of fate (one of which could be a pregnancy). As an unwritten rule, milestones must be reached at a relatively young age. Putting pressure on age is understandable in high-performance sports or professional dance like Ballet, where achievement is tied to the body. After all, a young body is needed for one to meet the aesthetic perfection and physical demands. However, this logic makes little sense in international legal academia.

We are not expected to perform a flawless pirouette like a prima ballerina, but rather to teach, read, and write – activities that are not dependent on biological age. The exigency of a life without obstacles or interruptions also puts pressure on the decisions of women regarding relationships and family planning. In light of the above, it is unsurprising that motherhood is sensed (not only by women) as an obstacle, as a constraint to embark in a flawless linear, and perfect career.

The Standardization of Motherhood

While institutional measures have been taken to tackle the “gender gap”, they set up a standardization of motherhood, where pregnancy and childcare needs are expected to be homogenous and predictable. But if we are frank, these needs are anything but homogenous. How we live our pregnancy is quite arbitrary and unforeseeable. Some might experience it lightly and with a lot of energy to keep working, while others might feel completely knocked out. This means that for some, during the nine months of pregnancy their brains and bodies won’t be available for academic work, which leads to less academic production and to the reinforcement of the gender gap. Breastfeeding is another example of a very variable experience; some children demand more breastfeeding than others. It is worth noting that one year of breastfeeding amounts to approximately 1,800 hours, which is comparable to the 1,960 hours of a full-time position based on an eight-hour workday. As these realities are discussed more openly, the limits of institutional frameworks become increasingly visible.

Another example is that of fellowship or grant applications, where applicants typically receive a 19-month extension to the eligibility window due to motherhood. Yet, if we reflect on this, the extension period corresponds to only the first year and a half of a child’s life. For many toddlers, this may still be too early to spend eight hours a day away from their mother. Such circumstances can be extremely stressful for both the child and the mother, who must adapt to this separation. In this sense, institutional measures, which are intended to help mother academics, could in fact lead to more injustice, as mothers and children may face difficulties in adapting to these frameworks. As a result, mother academics may be led to quitting their position. Such an academic setting does not reward or motivate mothers according to their merit; rather, it penalizes them for failing to adapt to rigid institutional frameworks. The pressure of conforming to these frameworks while struggling with the unforeseeable circumstances of raising a child could be alleviated through more realistic, compassionate, and humane measures, some of which have already been addressed here.

Mobility, Migration and Linguistic Bias

As the above analysis suggests, an academic career in international law is built on high competition, and a capacity to adapt (not only for mothers but also for partners, parents, and children altogether) to inflexible frameworks or rigid institutional arrangements, all of which demand time and resources that might not be available to all. Above all, international legal academia has a requirement that produces even deeper inequalities: mobility. Mobility presupposes moving across countries, securing fellowships and building transnational networks. Mobility is possible thanks to a lot of logistical efforts that mothers (usually given their gendered caregiving duties) might not be able to fulfill. While mobility is sensed as a temporal stage in professional and private life, “migration” is associated with a longer termed condition. For those who have migrated to pursue an international career, being far from the place where they were raised can become a major factor in deciding whether to have children. This can be deduced from the challenges that pregnancy and raising a child in a place different from one’s hometown bring (e.g. the need to learn very quickly the institutional arrangements for childcare or schooling, the need to socialize and build friendships and a network from scratch).

Lastly, the capacity to move across countries implies certain privileges such as access to information about grants and fellowships, but most importantly fluency in the English language. However obvious, it must be stated that those who were not born in an English‑speaking country are at a default disadvantage – even more so in the global south where in some countries English is not a compulsory subject at the early grades. Odile Ammann has brilliantly raised the issue of linguistic bias in international law. In this regard, the expectation in the field of strong English proficiency significantly limits the possibilities available to mothers who did not have the opportunity to learn the language at a young age. These women are likely to be marginalized in the pursuit of an international legal career, even if they succeed in becoming lawyers, which in itself already represents a high level of achievement. This linguistic barrier has additional consequences in the field of academic publishing, further narrowing the representation of mothers in international legal scholarship. Indeed, it is unlikely to reach major international publishing houses without possessing an exceptionally high level of English proficiency, as well as argumentative and communicational strategies expected in English-language academic writing.

If not learned at a young age, it is hard to imagine that someone at a later stage in life and while being a mother with caregiving responsibilities would embark on learning a foreign language to the level of exigency demanded in international legal academia. As we can see, mobility and its requirement of fluency in English exposes at best the social privilege and elitism on which international legal academia is built. These inequalities are further sharpened by motherhood.

Concluding Observations

As the analysis above suggests, the discipline’s epistemic and institutional structures privilege certain life trajectories over others, as well as certain social classes over others, and through this differentiated treatment international law and international legal academia reproduce global inequalities. Motherhood serves as an amplifier of these inequalities. There is good reason for being aware of these inequalities and for aiming at surpassing them, especially in this “post-hegemonic international law” moment that gives opportunity of thinking about the field differently, in more pluralistic and equal terms. As a result – without being essentialist – the experience of motherhood, “maternal ethics” and “maternal thinking” should be embraced. Furthermore, mothers can also bring a lot of empathy to different situations that are regulated by international law, from migration and asylum — including the difficult decisions of migrant mothers who leave children behind in search of better opportunities — to questions of war and peace. Artistic representations such as Käthe Kollwitz’s anti-war drawings shaped by her own loss of a child in the First World War show how maternal experience can generate powerful critiques of violence and illuminate the human stakes of conflict. The standpoint of mothers, therefore, offers not only a different way of understanding international law but also a valuable source of knowledge for the discipline.

Excluding mothers is not only unjust, but also impoverishes the discipline’s imagination, and makes its knowledge production even narrower, contributing to the field’s blind spots or implicit biases. The absence of motherhood in international legal academia reinforces international law as a space shaped by privileged, linear life trajectories, rather than by the diverse realities that a truly universal field would need to reflect.

Finally, women that want to be mothers and pursue an international legal career should not be left alone to choose between one or the other. Greater institutional support is needed as is probably a major cultural change of how motherhood is perceived. Notwithstanding how insurmountable these challenges might seem, we should not shy away from trying.