Michael McCann, Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization

Via a case study of the pay equity movement’s legal mobilization in the 1970s and 1980s, Michael McCann’s Rights at Work demonstrates how litigation can provide empowering, identity-constituting experiences for social movement participants even when it fails to produce large-scale, top-down changes in public policy. Specifically, although the struggle for pay equity emerged following women’s increasing participation in the labor market, within unions, and via the feminist movement, it was ultimately the turn to litigation that had the most profound and long-lasting impact on female workers. While early courtroom victories were quickly replaced by repeated defeats following the rise of the conservative legal movement in the 1980s, the beneficial legacy of legal mobilization was captured by its ability provide politicizing experiences for women workers, to legitimize their claims via a familiar rights discourse, to forge political opportunities for collective action by raising expectations, and to cultivate an enduring legal consciousness. Legal mobilization may seldom be able to foster large-scale, top-down policy changes, but it is extremely effective in providing a forum for the reconstitution of social relationships and identities. And while law may well represent an unprincipled source of priviledged power, it can simultaneously capture the aspirations of those most in need, thereby becoming a source of entitlement, inclusion, and empowerment.