WOMEN'S RIGHTS, RELIGION AND MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES: THE POLITICS OF COMPETING CLAIMS

In recent years, political philosophers have been tempted to conclude that defending the human rights of women is incompatible with granting minority cultures protection from state intervention. The apparent problem is that some non-Western cultures in liberal societies do not value individual rights as much as they do conformity to community customs and norms. Feminists, in particular, have therefore been worried that commitments to multiculturalism can result in women being harmed. For instance, multicultural policies might mean that minority women are unable to appeal to state laws if they suffer gender discrimination within their cultural groups. The conflict between feminist and multicultural justice is thus often presented as inevitable.
The aim of this research is to undermine this standard view on the feminism-multiculturalism debate, and, moreover, to respond to it by using a political language that might seem contentious - that is, the language of human rights. This language is controversial because some defenders of cultural diversity have argued that to support the notion of universal human rights involves making a culturally-biased assumption that that all world-views prioritise, for instance, individual liberty. I respond to this concern first by defending the entitlement of representatives of minority groups to publicly express the group's understanding of how its practices relate to important human values such as economic wellbeing, freedom or social status. The right to mediation, then, entitles minority groups to enter a sympathetic dialogue with representatives of the majority liberal-democratic culture. An important consequences of appreciating the need for such dialogue is that it compels liberal governments to remain open-minded towards different interpretations of human values. This open-mindedness, in turn, entails the view that human rights should not be taken to universal in a strong sense.
As critics might observe, however, the difficulty with the right to mediation is that women sometimes suffer discrimination and inequality, and are thus often unable to make their voices heard effectively within or outside their communities. For instance, some Muslim women may have had little say in how powerful members of their communities have interpreted the Koran's perspective on marriage or divorce rules. To address this problem, I shall defend the individual human right to autonomy. Women in minority religions and cultures should be encouraged, I argue, to develop sufficient capacities to think critically about their inherited norms and customs. While it is true, therefore, that my account will place value on individual freedom, this does not mean that it is unfairly biased towards Western cultural values. For instance, it does not assume that, after reflecting on their true commitments and desires, all women should choose a strongly egalitarian or freedom-promoting lifestyle. Rather, the right to autonomy as defined in this project is compatible with non-liberal practices such as arranged marriage or gendered dress-codes such as the Muslim veil. To this extent, I shall aim to show that the right to autonomy is not only compatible with the right to autonomy, but also promotes it. This is so, because it is unclear how the activity of listening sincerely to other cultures' interpretations of value can be just and fair without ensuring that all individuals have at least some opportunity to contribute to shaping those cultural meanings. I reach this conclusion by analysing a range of issues affecting minority women in contemporary multicultural and multi-faith societies. These include religious divorce laws in India, forced marriage in the UK, parents' desires to exempt their children from school for religious reasons, and the rights of young Muslim women to wear the Islamic veil (hijab) to school in France.