Different but Free: Cultural Relativism and Women’s Rights as Human Rights

Abstract

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the greatest challenge to in- ternational human rights comes from cultural relativism and religious extremism. In fact, it could be argued that there are two mutually an- tagonistic discourses that challenge the international human rights frame- work as it is constructed today. The first is feminism, and the second is cultural relativism. Both argue that their voices have not been recognized by the dominant paradigm of human rights. Though feminism attempts to strengthen the human rights framework by making it apply to a larger seg- ment of the population, cultural relativism seeks the opposite. It often chal- lenges the very substance and basis of human rights as a Eurocentric world view that ignores the diversity of the world’s cultures.³

“Torture is not Culture”

—Alice Walker¹

“Conceptions of human dignity tend to be indeterminate and contingent, and what may appeal to one school as torture, may be absolved and ap- proved of by another as culture.”

—L.Amede Obiora²