Is Cultural Relativism At Odds With Women's Rights?

At what point are clitoridectomies, honor killings, domestic abuse, rape, and polygamy cultural values to be protected?  And, more importantly, who controls and establishes these values -- whose culture, exactly, is being protected?  These are the questions many feminists and women's rights activists have asked. At what point does "culture" become an excuse for egregious violations of women's rights?

Proponents of cultural relativist philosophy and policy argue that the preservation of distinct cultures and traditions supersedes the protection of "universal rights," which have been defined and codified according to Western, individualistic, and, some insist, imperialistic traditions. For cultural relativists, morality should be judged according to distinct cultural traditions, not according to universal definitions of right and wrong, justice and injustice.

Culture, however, is not a homogeneous entity developed and sustained by consensus, but often a hegemonic and absolutist structure that marginalizes women. This is where cultural relativism and women's rights clash directly. For, as Susan Muller Okin points out, virtually all of the world's cultures have patriarchal roots, and the most ardent defenders of cultural relativism tend to be the men whose cultures naturally, necessarily, subjugate women. According to Okin, the vast majority of requests for special legal treatment or "special cultural treatment" in criminal cases in the U.S and Britain are gender-related, dealing with abortion, harassment, abuse, polygamy, and so on.

Cultural relativists would argue that veering too far into the universalist view means perpetuating racist and imperialist stereotypes about minority cultures, and threatening their precarious existence by dismissing them as backwards and invalid. Oftentimes, I myself cringe at the rhetoric that suggests we must save Afghan or Chinese or Somali women from their cultures and governments, or that we must go in and educate them. Carry universalism too far and it starts to look a lot like the French "civilizing" Algeria or American "democracy-building" efforts that attempt to impose U.S cultural, political, and moral systems on vastly different cultures and traditions with devastating and demoralizing effects.

So what's the middle ground here? Perhaps something called the capability approach. Developed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum, the capabilities approach advocates offering women (and all individuals within a particular culture) a wide range of choices in order to enhance their capabilities to lead dignified and just human lives. Nussbaum defines the capabilities necessary for a just life as, among others, the ability to reason, think, and reflect critically; to imagine, laugh, and play; and to connect emotionally with others. the responsibility of women's rights activists should be to increase access to these capabilities.

This is the most sensitive and seemingly navigable way to diffuse the tension between women's rights and cultural relativism -- by seeing the struggles for women's rights not as a way to save women from their cultures, but rather as a means to to increase their choices and opportunities, so that they can play greater roles in shaping their cultures and their lives. Of course, going about this is the hard part, and I won't claim that I know precisely how to do it. But being aware of the perils of both universalism and cultural relativism will give women's rights struggles greater depth and validity, increased strength, and a wider reach.

Photo courtesy of Ianr's Flickr photostream.