Gender, Law, and Social Change: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Justice and Equity

Abstract Law has historically operated as both an instrument of gendered subordination and a vehicle for emancipation. This paper examines the evolving relationship between law and gender through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on feminist jurisprudence, sociology, and public policy to interrogate how legal systems construct, entrench, and increasingly contest gendered hierarchies. Beginning with a theoretical mapping of formal versus substantive equality, the paper traces key legislative and judicial trends across constitutional, criminal, labour, and family law that have reshaped the gender-justice landscape in recent decades. It argues that despite significant normative progress, including the global diffusion of anti-discrimination frameworks and the judicial recognition of gender identity as a protected attribute, a persistent implementation gap separates formal legal entitlement from lived social reality. This gap is attributed to structural barriers including patriarchal social norms, uneven access to justice, weak enforcement architecture, and the law's continued reliance on a binary conception of gender. The paper concludes by proposing a governance-oriented, interdisciplinary reform agenda, encompassing legal literacy, intersectional policymaking, judicial training, and participatory law reform, for translating gender justice from statutory text into social transformation. The analysis is intended to contribute to interdisciplinary conference dialogue on law's role in advancing equitable and sustainable governance.