Gender and Tax Law: Bias, Discrimination and Inequality

This book provides a critical evaluation of existing tax rules through a gendered and human rights-oriented lens.

Pursuing a comparative analysis of provisions within tax systems that exhibit explicit and implicit gender bias, the book examines their compatibility with legal principles such as equality and non-discrimination. By applying a normative legal framework grounded in human rights, the book exposes the structural inequalities embedded in tax law, as well as examining the positive obligations of states, and what they can or should do to promote gender justice through fiscal policy. The book then goes on to develop a critical, normative and doctrinal approach for gender-responsive taxation that, by addressing underlying power imbalances, explores how tax systems can be transformed into tools for advancing substantive gender equality. In so doing, the book offers a fresh, law-centred approach to tax that not only highlights its gender bias, but also proposes concrete legal solutions.

This book is aimed at academic researchers, postgraduate students, and legal practitioners working in the fields of tax law, gender studies, and human rights.