Introduction
\"The Female equally with the Male I sing.\"
Walt Whitman， Leaves of Grass
IT SVILL NOT come as a surprise to anyone even cursorily
acquainted with the work of courts and legislatures to be told that
the law has often accorded markedly different treatment to men
and women solely because of sex. Voting rights， jury service， right
to a separate domicile， causes of action for loss of consortium， ca-
pacity to enter into binding agreements and to sue and be sued，
change in citizenship upon marriage to an alien， change of name
upon marriage， age of attaining majority-these are only a few of
the many areas in which a person s sex has at times made the sole
difference in the treatment he or she would receive under tile law
in .the United States and other countries.
What is more， sexually discriminatory rules of law are by no
means relics of the past， mere historical curiosities. Despite file re-
moval of legal barriers to the right to vote by American women in
19zo， despite the passage of Married Women s Property Acts
throughout the United States in the latter half of the nineteentb
century， and despite the prohibition against sex discrimination
in employment contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1964，1 sex-based
legal inequality continues to be a fact of life both here and abroad.
In most of the cantons of Switzerland and in Afghanistan， Iraq，
Jordan， and other countries， tile fundamental right to vote was，
as of 1964， still withheld from women.2 In France， as recently as
1965， jurists and nonjurists alike were heatedly debating govern-
client proposals aimed at eliminating major instances of le，~，
lSCrlrumation affainst French .-，，~.， s a.~A ~ .t ，. . ~ -\"
~... ~，~u m the united States，
as a result of piecemeal legislative enactments， the interpretive
role of judges reared in tile tradition of \"natural male dominance，\"4
and the existence of other complex factors to be examined here-
after， separate rules of law for men and women continue to reg-
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