The Canadian Law and Society Association has awarded the W. Wesley Pue 2024 prize to Émilie Biland-Curinier, university professor at the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CSO) and member of the gender studies program at Sciences Po, for her latest book.

The W. Wesley Pue Prize is awarded annually for the best book on law and society published the previous year in English or French, highlighting new work in the field of law and society in Canada or by Canadian authors.

Émilie Biland-Curinier, a member of Sciences Po's permanent faculty, was awarded the prize for her book published in 2023 by the University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press), entitled: Family Law in Action Divorce and Inequality in Quebec and France (EN).

In 2019, she published in French: Gouverner la vie privée. L'encadrement inégalitaire des séparations conjugales en France et au Québec(ENS-Editions).

This book reveals class and gender inequalities in the marital separation process in Quebec and France. Drawing on empirical research conducted on the Quebec and French judicial and social welfare systems, Émilie Biland-Curinier analyzed how men and women interact with the law and its representatives, and how this affects their personal and professional lives. While gender inequalities are less marked in Quebec than in France, but social inequalities are more pronounced, in both contexts, post-separation inequalities are fuelled by three similar mechanisms: access to law and justice, interactions with legal professionals, and the way these two factors shape lifestyles and living standards. Several decades after the liberalization of divorce, this book sheds light on the legal precedents and mechanisms that continue to generate glaring inequalities.

LEARN MORE

• Émilie Biland-Curinier is a university professor at the Centre de sociologie des organisations and a member of the gender studies program at Sciences Po.
• Listen to an episode of the podcast Genre, etc. in which Émilie Biland-Curinier analyzes the mechanisms that frame the private lives of individuals during marital separations, in particular alimony and child support.

Source Programme de recherche et d'enseignement des savoirs sur le genre, Sciences Po