For at least a decade, legal scholarship on gender bias in intellectual property rights has acknowledged the engagement of almost no one. Every academic paper published notes how small the field is; each researcher cites the two or three others they can; conferences feature the same key figures annually. Intellectual property rights is not a policy area to which women have paid much attention; nor have their cheerleaders, feminists.

Widespread feminine disinterest in this particular form of law is matched nearly equally by its disinterest in women. Current and historic protection under intellectual property legislation has restricted access to economic and cultural viability along gender lines. In recent decades, similar bias has been found and corrected in civil rights, family and employment law, and domestic violence legislation. IP laws sit at the crux of several debates raging right now: concerns regarding women in the literary arts, for example, and the wage gap. The paucity of strong female roles in TV and film. Gender bias in post-recession job hiring. The skimpy costumes of female characters in comic books. The global economic condition of women.

As women, we can no longer pretend that certain laws, because they do not adequately protect us, do not affect us. Under neoliberalism, poverty has grown more severe for women, as well as for trans and non-binary gender folk worldwide. IP laws don’t just quaintly reflect traditional gender roles, they reinforce them, valuing certain forms of cultural production but devaluing others. These values are then spread around the world through US media exports.