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  • Title: Women and culture. The case for universal rights.
    Author: Ruether RR.
    Journal: Conscience; 1996; 16(4):13-5. PubMed ID: 12178863.
    Abstract:
    As the movement for women's human rights has become globalized, the charge that feminism is a form of Western cultural imperialism has emerged. An African Anglican priest used this as a response to the author's lecture on Christian feminism and added that "you can't challenge culture." The author responded that since racism could be considered a part of traditional White culture, does this mean that racism can't be challenged. The priest's argument is a common one used by Third World men, Third World women, and First World men to denounce the concept of human rights as women's rights. The Vatican used this argument during recent international conferences to oppose such things as the international approval of family planning and safe abortion, the diversity of notions of family, and an acknowledgement of homosexuality. In UN forums, Islamic nations also argue against women's rights and against the universalization of human rights, which they feel are properly superseded by local cultures. These concepts translated into debates at the Fourth World Conference on Women on topics such as conflicts between religious laws and women's inheritance rights. The culture-human rights argument is also used to defend the practice of female genital mutilation, which is used to control female sexuality in some traditional societies. Western feminist theory must guard against postmodernist critiques of modernity in the name of cultural diversity, since such critiques can make women vulnerable to right-wing male exploitation under premodern patriarchal norms. Classical philosophies of natural law, on the other hand, assume that the cosmos is a whole and that its nature implies ethical norms which govern human well-being. In this tradition, culture is a particular version of the common whole and must constantly be tested against discernment of the universals of human nature in order to be corrected. Feminists must temper their zeal for cultural diversity with an underlying acceptance of this principle of human commonality in order to help women achieve greater justice based on universal human rights.
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