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Using Rights to Counter “Gender-Specific” Wrongs

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Abstract

One popular strategy of opposition to practices of female genital cutting (FCG) is rooted in the global feminist movement. Arguing that women’s rights are human rights, global feminists contend that practices of FGC are a culturally specific manifestation of gender-based oppression that violates a number of rights. Many African feminists resist a women’s rights approach. They argue that by focusing on gender as the primary axis of oppression affecting the African communities where FGC occurs, a women’s rights approach has misrepresented African women as passive victims who need to be rescued from African men and has obscured the role of certain international institutions that have perpetuated the oppression of African women. In this paper, I defend these critiques by arguing that the use of a women’s rights framework to combat practices of female genital cutting among African communities has often been practically ineffective and morally inappropriate.

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Notes

  1. For example, Susan Okin notes that, while slavery is now widely recognized as a human rights violation, the practice of bride selling has rarely been viewed as an instance of slavery. Rather, “if a husband pays a bride price for his wife, or marries her without her adult consent; if he confines her to their home, forbids her to work for pay, or appropriates her wages; if he beats her for disobedience or mishap; these manifestations of slavery would not be recognized as violations of human rights in many parts of the world,” but as culturally appropriate behavior that is protected (p. 29).

  2. Beijing Platform, p. 59.

  3. Ibid, p. 60.

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  1. Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Theresa W. Tobin

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  1. Theresa W. Tobin
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Correspondence to Theresa W. Tobin.

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Tobin, T.W. Using Rights to Counter “Gender-Specific” Wrongs. Hum Rights Rev 10, 521–530 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0096-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0096-9

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