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Women, Legal Aid and Social Inclusion
Author(s) -
Hunter Rosemary,
Simone Tracey
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2009.tb00154.x
Subject(s) - inclusion (mineral) , government (linguistics) , project commissioning , citizenship , publishing , social exclusion , inclusion–exclusion principle , variety (cybernetics) , sociology , political science , element (criminal law) , law , public relations , gender studies , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , politics , computer science
This article examines access to legal aid for women in light of the Australian government's social inclusion agenda. It is notable that the government's image of social citizenship does not include the ability to invoke and enforce legal rights, and that discourses of social exclusion have paid relatively little attention to gendered patterns of exclusion. The article reports on a study of applications for and refusals of legal aid for family law, domestic violence and anti‐discrimination matters by socially excluded women in Queensland. It demonstrates the variety of ways in which Legal Aid Queensland's grants process operated to further exclude and marginalise these women. It argues that effective access to legal aid is an important element of social inclusion, but that this goal cannot be achieved by reliance on the tools of New Public Management.