Women and the Family Home

This book places case law in its social context to demonstrate that from the 1940s to the present, English property law has discriminated against women in respect of the family home. To acquire a share under an implied trust a woman had to make a financial contribution, yet women were denied access to jobs with which to earn the money to make it. The law assumed that housework and child care were women's work, but assigned that work no economic value. The law espoused the ideology that women's place was in the home and then took away their sphere of activity, responsibility and identification. Though Family Law has changed the way property is distributed on the breakup of a marriage, in Land Law the rules continue to empower men and disempower women.