The AFFs investment into strengthening IPR not only erase forms of care work taken on by feminized bodies but are also epistemologically bankrupt – vote NEG to embrace an egalitarian public domain which values all work and reconceptualizes the idea of property.

Intellectual property rights are meant to encourage and stimulate creativity and innovation.176 Yet, not all forms of creativity are considered valuable enough to be worth promoting. Creativity that is considered new, novel, and industrial is what is prized. More “traditional” forms of gendered and indigenous labor such as cooking, making clothing, and producing indigenous plant medicines do not count as new, novel, and industrial. Thus, these forms of creativity are deemed less valuable and remain in the public domain. Mechanisms of globalization in fact depend upon the location of gendered and indigenous forms of creativity within the public domain. It ensures that access to indigenous knowledge and resources remains open for appropriation and possible commercialization by others. It also ensures that gendered forms of creativity related to homemaking also remain devalued, thus reinforcing discourses of feminization that contribute to keeping labor costs low.

Scholars in this section envision egalitarian public domains where gendered social relations are taken into account. Women’s relationship to patent law is problematized through recognizing the individual and structural systems of subordination that shape their lives. Critique is leveled against patent law as resulting in unfair practices against women. What emerges are egalitarian public domains where patterns of discrimination are taken into account. This is where the public sphere meets the public domain. Feminist theorizing of the public sphere and its exclusion of female labor becomes a useful tool for examining conceptions of the public domain. Better understandings of the public domain come into view and what emerges is a sense of how certain forms of creativity are included in the public domain (and hence unprotected) in inequitable, discriminatory ways that bring fewer benefits to marginalized groups. A desire for egalitarian public domains therefore emerges, and relations of power are considered. The public domain and its inclusion of certain forms of creativity over others are critically taken into account. Different values of egalitarianism, however, emerge. Equality for some women might mean a reduction of the public domain and expansion of patent law to include more women’s scientific work. Yet, equality for others might entail an expansion of the public domain and limitation of patent law to protect the creative work of women who do not desire to become IP owners. Visions of egalitarian public domains therefore differ from the other conceptions of the public domain discussed thus far.

Theorizing around an open public domain suggests that stronger intellectual property rights protections are not necessary to stimulate innovation. The public domain should be expanded and creativity should be encouraged to flourish through other incentives besides intellectual property rights. A protective public domain also argues that intellectual property rights are too expansive, but that the public domain should be constructed to protect indigenous knowledge from being privatized. Such protection is advanced by calls for a growing regulatory environment related to genetic and biological material in the form of prior informed consent agreements, access and benefit sharing contracts, bioprospecting permits and the like. In contrast, as will be discussed, scholars in this section embrace egalitarian public domains with similar values of openness and protectiveness. However, they structure such values differently by considering gendered social relations. An egalitarian public domain might embrace values of openness and seek alternative “commons” arrangements to facilitate creativity, but acknowledge that such arrangements may need to be configured differently. Patterns of discrimination must be taken into account in order to encourage the production of historically devalued forms of creativity. Another version of the egalitarian public domain may look to regulatory regimes such as benefit sharing agreements to protect indigenous communities by giving them legal tools to demand compensation when their cultural resources are privatized. Benefit sharing agreements must also address the needs and concerns of indigenous women explicitly. Although this emerging scholarship makes important contributions, it also has its limitations. In what could be called a liberal feminist approach, this scholarship often highlights gendered social relations without considering their dynamic interaction with other social relations such as race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and class. Can feminist intellectual property law scholarship truly benefit women if it fails to address gendered social relations in a more complex manner? This section will briefly introduce some of this emerging scholarship and demonstrate how it informs concepts of the public domain and its relationship with patent law.