The Politics of Multiculturalism and Women's Rights

• In Event: States, Feminism and Advocacy

Abstract

For over four decades politicians, pundits, and scholars have argued about whether to prioritize multiculturalism or women’s rights. Should liberal states ban face veils? Ban polygyny? Legalize both? Why or why not? Instead of rehashing this old debate I identify and analyze the stories that policy actors tell when they argue about these issues. I find that it is always possible to advance both multiculturalism and women’s rights at the same time and that a clash is never inevitable. This finding is drawn from my current book project, which is a cross-regional, comparative analysis of three dissimilar cases: the French ban on Muslim women’s full veils adjudicated at the European Court of Human Rights in 2014, the legalization of polygyny in South Africa in 1998, and the reform of the marrying out rule for Indigenous women in Canada in 1985. Given that a clash is never inevitable, instead of arguing for or against multiculturalism or women’s rights, liberal states can pursue policies that advance both. This is unlikely to happen, however, because during these debates politicians use racist tropes that do three things: pit groups against one another, legitimize greater exercise of state power, and weaponize multiculturalism and women’s rights against the people that they are supposed to protect. The result is bad for multiculturalism, bad for women, and bad for democracy.

Author

• Denise Marie Walsh, University of Virginia