Women, Culture and Human Rights

Feminism, culture and human rights have always been a controversial mix. In recent years, tensions have intensified. The popular press and politicians have appropriated feminist concerns about religious and cultural harms in a way that feeds into racist discourses in the post-9/11 environment. This presents a dilemma for feminist lawyers and activists committed to using legal and, more specifically, rights-based strategies. Two House of Lords cases decided in 2006, in different areas of the law, illustrate the way in which the courts can use rights and equality-based approaches to negotiate some of these sensitive conflicts. Both cases concern issues that have, perhaps disproportionately, occupied the attention of feminist scholars and activists, namely the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) (Fornah) ¹ and religious dress (Begum). ² Both practices have contested cultural, social and religious meanings, and raise questions of autonomy. The intention is to situate the analysis of these cases within the context of the debate by feminists on the utility of human rights law. It is argued that the potential of human rights law should not be underestimated. The analyis draws on the concept of democratic iteration posited by Benhabib to demonstrate the way universal norms are absorbed into the domestic legal setting. By democratic iterations Benhabib means the ‘[…] complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and exchange-through which universal rights claims are contested and contextualised, invoked and revoked, posited and positioned-throughout legal and political institutions as well as in the associations of civil society’. ³