Culture and Women's Rights Don't Clash
What should democracies do about cultural practices like polygyny that clash with women’s rights? For over forty years politicians, pundits, activists, and scholars have asked this question. But is a clash between culture and women’s rights ever really necessary? If not, why do so many people think so? And what can be done to advance justice for the women at the center of these controversies? To answer these questions, I compare three dissimilar controversies: the French full-face veil ban upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, the legalization of polygyny in South Africa, and the end of the marrying out rule for Indigenous women in Canada. I argue that a clash between culture and women’s rights is never really necessary. Instead, it is always possible to forge agreements among cultural, religious, and women’s rights. Further, while arguments and policies with a clash presumption at their core undermine pluralism and harm marginalized women, those that presume compatibility buttress pluralism and improve these women’s lives. I explain these patterns, why so many people presume culture and women's rights clash, and how to advance compatibility among these rights to promote justice for marginalized women.
Obstruction to Political Participation
What actions limit marginalized women's political participation? I seek to answer this question by using the concept of obstruction. I explain what obstruction is and why it is useful for identifying, studying, and challenging the many ways marginalized women's political participation is limited even in robust democracies. The first set of articles in this project is the symposium "Backlash and the Future of Feminism," (Signs, 2020) that I co-edited with Jennifer Piscopo, and includes an introduction we co-authored. Work in progress includes a paper on violence against women in politics and another paper that explains the concept of obstruction.
A Complementary Approach to Critical Frame Analysis and "What is the Policy Represented to Be?
Critical Frame Analysis (CFA) is a method for analyzing policy framing by excavating rhetorical meaning. In contrast, ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) is a method for critiquing common assumptions underpinning public policy by questioning unexamined knowledges. Although the founders of CFA suggest it spans both the constructivist and constructionist research paradigms, it is constructivist. WPR is constructionist. Can the two policy methods be used in tandem, and if so, how and why? Scholars do not agree if this is possible; those who do say little about why and how to do it. I argue that although CFA and WPR have distinct metatheoretical foundations, process-oriented researchers doing single case and small n studies can use both to produce more trustworthy and critical scholarship. In this article, I explain why using them in a complementary fashion is not only possible but also desirable and illustrate how to do it by drawing on examples from three dissimilar policy debates about controversial gender practices.
What should democracies do about cultural practices like polygyny that clash with women’s rights? For over forty years politicians, pundits, activists, and scholars have asked this question. But is a clash between culture and women’s rights ever really necessary? If not, why do so many people think so? And what can be done to advance justice for the women at the center of these controversies? To answer these questions, I compare three dissimilar controversies: the French full-face veil ban upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, the legalization of polygyny in South Africa, and the end of the marrying out rule for Indigenous women in Canada. I argue that a clash between culture and women’s rights is never really necessary. Instead, it is always possible to forge agreements among cultural, religious, and women’s rights. Further, while arguments and policies with a clash presumption at their core undermine pluralism and harm marginalized women, those that presume compatibility buttress pluralism and improve these women’s lives. I explain these patterns, why so many people presume culture and women's rights clash, and how to advance compatibility among these rights to promote justice for marginalized women.
Obstruction to Political Participation
What actions limit marginalized women's political participation? I seek to answer this question by using the concept of obstruction. I explain what obstruction is and why it is useful for identifying, studying, and challenging the many ways marginalized women's political participation is limited even in robust democracies. The first set of articles in this project is the symposium "Backlash and the Future of Feminism," (Signs, 2020) that I co-edited with Jennifer Piscopo, and includes an introduction we co-authored. Work in progress includes a paper on violence against women in politics and another paper that explains the concept of obstruction.
A Complementary Approach to Critical Frame Analysis and "What is the Policy Represented to Be?
Critical Frame Analysis (CFA) is a method for analyzing policy framing by excavating rhetorical meaning. In contrast, ‘What is the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) is a method for critiquing common assumptions underpinning public policy by questioning unexamined knowledges. Although the founders of CFA suggest it spans both the constructivist and constructionist research paradigms, it is constructivist. WPR is constructionist. Can the two policy methods be used in tandem, and if so, how and why? Scholars do not agree if this is possible; those who do say little about why and how to do it. I argue that although CFA and WPR have distinct metatheoretical foundations, process-oriented researchers doing single case and small n studies can use both to produce more trustworthy and critical scholarship. In this article, I explain why using them in a complementary fashion is not only possible but also desirable and illustrate how to do it by drawing on examples from three dissimilar policy debates about controversial gender practices.