Manisha Mathews

Manisha completed her LLB Law and LLM International Human Rights Law degrees at the University of Leicester. She was later awarded the College of Arts and Law Doctoral Scholarship to complete her PhD at the University of Birmingham. During her PhD, she worked as a Teaching Associate in Equity, Trusts, Wills and Formalities, Land Law and Gender and Law at the University of Birmingham in 2020-23. After the completion of her PhD, Manisha was employed as a Teaching Fellow at the University in 2023-25, where she delivered lectures on Land Law, acted as a co-module lead for Land Law, and taught seminars on Family Law, Land Law, Legal Solutions, and Legal Skills and Methods. Currently, as an Assistant Professor, Manisha lectures on Family Law and leads seminars in Family Law, Land Law, and Legal Solutions.

In addition, Manisha has worked as a Research Assistant to Professor Fiona de Londras at the University of Birmingham in 2022-23 where she particularly assisted with projects on access to abortion under Ireland’s reformed abortion law. Manisha has also worked as a Research Assistant on the ‘Fragmented Families’ project that was created by Dr Charlotte Bendall and Dr Samantha Davey in 2023. The project sought to uncover grandparents’ experiences with engaging with mediation and/or the legal system when seeking contact with their grandchildren.

Manisha’s research interests broadly centre on human rights law, family law and employment law. Her research focuses on exploring strategies to reduce the workplace discrimination faced by mothers and fathers who deviate from the traditional “male breadwinner” model through prioritising caregiving and breadwinning roles, respectively. Her PhD particularly expanded the research on parental discrimination by exploring the often-overlooked discrimination experienced by UK fathers when they seek to actively engage in childcare. She also investigated how promoting shared caregiving with fathers could reduce pregnancy and maternity discrimination, as mothers would have greater freedom to participate in workplace activities if the disproportionate childcare responsibilities typically placed on mothers were redistributed. Her PhD research uncovered that the primary ways in which fathers were stigmatised as carers were through: (i) the provision of limited entitlements under family-friendly policies; (ii) the workplace harassment encountered by fathers from colleagues and managers when fathers used their entitlements; and (iii) the judgments that were established in response to claims initiated by fathers in the court system that they had experienced discrimination when provided with less support than mothers to fulfil childcare responsibilities. Her thesis ultimately advocated for the inclusion of “paternity” as a protected characteristic under s.4 of the Equality Act 2010 and as a ground of discrimination under art.14 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to protect fathers as carers in the home and, consequently, mothers as employees in the workplace.