Abstract/Description

Politicians, pundits, activists, and scholars have long debated what to do about cultural practices that clash with women’s rights, such as Muslim women’s dress. Conventional wisdom suggests that when the two clash, liberal states must prioritize one set of rights at the expense of the other or negotiate a compromise that fulfills neither. But is a clash ever inevitable? What do people in these policy debates say? And how can justice for the women these controversies are about be advanced? To answer these questions, this book compares three dissimilar rights controversies: the adjudication of the so-called French “burka ban” at the European Court of Human Rights, the legalization of polygyny in South Africa, and the elimination of the marrying out rule for Indigenous women in Canada. This chapter addresses the question of how to advance justice for colonized women by discussing the indivisible approach. This approach is distinguished by five characteristics: it forges relations of agreement among rights, avoids cultural essentialism, bridges cultural differences, centers the lived experience of colonized women, and attacks imperial sexism. The chapter illustrates this approach and provides guidelines on how to apply it to any contested cultural practice.