Gender issues and other applications of the equality principle in Portuguese Law

Keywords:

Gender
Equality
Discrimination
Disability

Participating institutions to which the research group belongs:

NOVA School of Law

Researchers:

Helena Maria Matias Pereira de Melo (Principal Investigator)
Maria Teresa Couceiro Pizarro Beleza
Frederico Augusto Gaio de Lacerda da Costa Pinto
Teresa Maria da Silva Bravo
Marta Maria Amaro da Costa Luz Carneiro

Doctoral Students:

Ana Sofia de Magalhães e Carvalho
Diana Paraíso Barbosa Vicente
Paula Juliana Chagas Rocha Fernandes
Maria Margarida Amadinho da Paz
Marlene Alexandra Ferreira Mendes
Núbia Nascimento Alves

Collaborators:

Zamira de Assis
Teresa Aguado Correa

Structure of the research group:

Depending on the subjects, the work will be developed in sub-teams specialized in the area, namely:

Point 1: Teresa Pizarro Beleza, Helena Pereira de Melo and Zamira de Assis.
Point 2: Teresa Bravo, Teresa Aguado and Diana Vicente

Point 3: Helena Pereira de Melo and Núbia Alves
Point 4: Helena Pereira de Melo, Margarida Paz, Marlene Mendes and Paula Juliana Fernandes

In any of the points, according to the issue under analysis, other specialists on the subject may be called upon.

Periodically, a general meeting of the group will be scheduled to present the achieved results, as well as to debate strategies and to design future systematizations.

At the end of each year of the group’s duration, its members will decide the manner and coordination of a general presentation of the results produced by the working papers edited during that time, either in the form of a conference, a seminar or even a debate to be included in a publication.

Objectives of the research group:

Research Context

In a society like Portugal, where discrimination on the grounds of sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, disability and illness persists despite the existing legal provisions, it is important to study the existing rules and assess their impact on changing people’s behaviour. The aim of the research focuses on the area of gender discrimination. However, other factors of discrimination will also be examined, both in terms of the applicable legal instruments and the relevant national and international case law. Particular attention will be paid to the problems of multiple discrimination.

Questions to be answered:

Point 1: What are the concepts of gender and sex underlying existing international and national law on the subject?
Point 2: To what extent do these concepts reflect a concept of Justice present in our society and enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic?
Point 3: What are the consequences of multiple discrimination, i.e. the existence in the same person of several characteristics negatively valued by society? We propose to study, for example, the impact of imprisonment on the exercise of motherhood by a woman serving a prison sentence.
Point 4: How should the principle of equality be reinterpreted in order to effectively combat situations of negative discrimination?

Disclosure of research findings:

The format chosen for the disclosure of the results relies on a system of Working Papers. However, as the creation of this Research Group is the first stage of a long-term project, we present below the format envisaged for the progressive disclosure of the research work carried out, reflecting not only the medium-term (2015-2020) but also the long-term objective, in order to reveal the seriousness of the work that this Group proposes to carry out in the panorama of Portuguese Equality Law.

1st stage: Construction of a Working Papers system which aims to present the Group’s research results (2015-2020)
2nd stage: Construction of a peer review system within the scope of the aforementioned Working Papers system (2020-2025)
3rd stage: Stabilisation of the platform for scientific reflection on “Gender issues and other applications of the equality principle in Portuguese Law” reinforcing the recognised merit of the platform in the area, assuming continuous scientific production on the subject, in an open and available manner to the Scientific Community (2025-…)