ABSTRACT
Multiculturalism is harder to pin down, but the particular aspect that minority cultures or ways of life are not sufficiently protected by the practice of ensuring the individual rights of their members, and as a consequence these should also be protected through special group rights or privileges. The French accommodation of polygamy illustrates a deep and growing tension between feminism and multiculturalist concern for protecting cultural diversity. Most cultures are suffused with practices and ideologies concerning gender. Most cultures are patriarchal, then, and many of the cultural minorities that claim group rights are more patriarchal than the surrounding cultures. Some defenders of multiculturalism confine their defense of group rights largely to groups that are internally liberal. Even with these restrictions, feminists—everyone, that is, who endorses the moral equality of men and women—should remain skeptical.
