Religion, culture and women's human rights: Some general political and theoretical considerations

SynopsisReligious and cultural rights, generally expressed as collective or ‘group’ rights, are perceived by some as being frequently asserted at women's expense. For others, the assertion of the supremacy of individual rights is a Western concept incompatible with the dynamics of non-Western societies. Caught within the real or perceived tensions between group rights and individual rights, women may feel pressured to choose between gender and ethnicity (involving culture/religion) as the site of their primary loyalty. Even when women refuse to be forced into such choices, the polarisation can be such that the discursive or strategic spaces available to them to express an alternative stance are limited.This article, in looking at these issues with relation to Muslim-background women, not only identifies current tensions between ‘culture/religion’ on the one hand and ‘women's individual human rights’ on the other, but asks, in doing so, to what extent these tensions are real or manufactured, and whose interests are being served by maintaining them. The article will refer, among other examples, to the French debate over the Islamic headscarf and to discourses and realities of women's rights in Afghanistan.