Cultural Relativist And Feminist Summary

The most prevalent and popular stereotype of the post World war II era in America is one filled with women abandoning their wartimes jobs and retreating into the home to fulfill their womanly duties. In Joanne Meyerowitz’s Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, she shows how far women departed from this one dimensional image. While Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is reflexive and focused on the mainstream, Meyerowitz’s analysis is a broader and more inclusive exploration of media, as she draws upon multiple sources. Although Friedan effectively unveiled the thought process and reasoning behind society's belief that the message of media was to make women think that their place was to be the happy housewife, Meyerowitz expanded her media archives and found a differing message in analyzing both female responses to media and exploring their stories.

Based on Western philosophical traditions, human rights are understood to be universal and objective (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948), an understanding that poses unique challenges when imagining human rights in the 21st Century. Over the last fifty years, critique of human rights discourse has evolved into discrete areas, which include feminism and cultural relativism. Feminists and cultural relativists often take opposing positions, with cultural relativist views seen as dominant over feminist discourse (Byrnes 1992). Not surprisingly, this creates tension between the two and limited their ability to collaborate and create more inclusive human rights discourses.

At present, women’s issues have occupied a special place in periodicals, literature and art. In spite of the fact that both international and national legislative acts proceed from the principle of equality, in practice women do not enjoy equal rights in public life. There is a noticeable contradiction between the new needs and the lack of conditions in society for their satisfaction: the social consciousness of women increases, they no longer satisfy the stereotype of social roles imposed on them, where the family and motherhood are the only values. The answer to the existing contradictions is found in the women's movements. I'm not an adherent of feminism because I do not think that now women have less rights than men. Several decades ago, there really was a division between men and women, when women were without human rights. In modern society, most women have the right to vote, the right to choose and enjoy the same rights as men; hence the movement itself, in my opinion, is not relevant in the 21st century. On the other hand, there are a couple of religions that consider women unequal with men, and only in this case I support feminism as a movement for women’s rights. So, I do not consider women worse than men and I do not think, that a woman can be used as a thing. “This is particularly clear when cultures openly discriminate against women and attempt to deny them the rights to

Marilyn Frye has universal definition of oppression as being “a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize, and mold people who belong to a certain group and effect their subordination to another group” (7). Feminists are working to dismantle the restrictive powers to create equivalent opportunities for all people. On paper, it seems black and white because everyone is working together towards the same goal of equality. On the ground, the divisions of gray can be seen between the vast variety of methods and opinion. As the tension builds, there are two main camps formed: The Western feminist and the Non-Western feminist. (While I personally object to this terminology because of its Eurocentrism, I have yet to find alternatives that encompass the same meaning so it will have to stay standing as imperialist as it is.) Both sets of activists have different roles within these current predicaments facing the unjust treatment of women. Western feminists find themselves in a stalemate of passing critical judgement on another culture or standing aside and letting the injustice continue. Non-Western feminists are working against the oppression in their society as well as the overreaching Western feminists before they can make their voices heard. Therefore, my argument is that Western feminism needs be revised into becoming the megaphone for Non-Western feminist issues. That way ideas from people on the ground are not disregarded and those on the outside who

On the subject of feminism, there must be broader look at the unique circumstances that people have encountered throughout their lives and how each of them deals with such matters. According to the authors, a transnational feminist analysis requires intersectionality between race and gender. A call to action will be to form of new perspective on the issues that surround women and specially women of color. Instead of focusing on analyzing feminism through a western lens, such as global sisterhood, feminism should ensure the integration of all the aspects of women in different regions of the world. This sisterhood then leads to the concern of basing the western experience upon non-western people and it creates more internalized stereotypes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to main questions. The first part of the paper will define transnational feminism and identify key factors within a transnational perspective. Another part will be discussing some transnational feminist critiques of mainstream “white/Western” feminism and will also give ideas that a transnational feminist would suggest in order to make positive changes for women. The second part of the paper will choose two concepts to define, as well as discuss how they relate to one another from a transnational perspective. In addition, the relation of how they related to gender or affect the political, social, and/or economic status of women in the world will be analyzed.

All of Richard Rorty – Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality – Fernando Tesón – International Human Rights and Cultural Relativism – and Charles Taylor – A World Consensus on Human Rights? – believe or concede to some degree that the notion of what Taylor defines as descriptive relativism is one that accurately describes the varied realities of individuals in differing cultures; that there exists in the world some measure of diversity of culture. In their respective thought processes that follow from that point, however, the three thinkers diverge considerably.

In the first reading, “Women’s Studies and Transnational Feminism,” the author discusses how beneficial it would be to have a global perspective from women all around the world and their personal stories. It would bring greater change if women’s stories weren’t only heard mainly from the U.S, but rather told by international women about their experience with oppression and way of living. According to the author the viewpoint of all the women globally is described as “transnational”, a way of challenging current basic understandings of supposed everyday women (specifically western women) and fighting to reconstruct this system to become an advantage to other women around the world. Rather than focusing on “global feminism” which doesn’t

That human rights should be available and potentially useful to everyone is an aspiration, not a moral truth. It is the promise of human rights that makes them so appealing, especially to those who have no other recourse.31 One reason I dislike accounts of human rights that are not inclusive—such as the argument from autonomy—is that the mere admissibility of some justified exclusions opens the door to the possibility of others. The exemptions also become ripe for abuse, as with arguments about the limited "rationality" of all of those historically excluded from natural rights arguments. Such accounts undermine the promise, and thus the appeal and the legitimacy, of human

According to a pole done by CNN 50% percent of men aren’t feminist. Feminist is a movement that started back up in 1948. The goal of feminism was to have equal rights for all the genders, But modern day feminism has changed. Modern day feminism haven’t been looking away from men’s issues, blaming men for their own problems, and tearing themselves apart.

Feminism are generalized concepts that idealize social life and human experience developed from a women-centered perspective. Feminism seeks to observe all situations and women in society. Second, it seeks to describe and critically evaluate the world from the distinctive points of women ( Lengermann and Niebrugge 195). Most feminist sociological theorists analyzes both a sociological understanding and contributing factors of the feminist theory by shaping the concept of gender

This obviously doesn't make anyone a cultural relativist, but people based their positions on a specific case where universal values would have been in tension with a particular culture. It took us working out our questions on a case by case basis to think further about how much weight these positions should have. Since any position in the middle of the spectrum requires discrimination and specificity regarding what is universal and/or relative, case studies are necessary to to uncover these positions. The class seemed reluctant to make these distinctions, as if they were already obvious(I only heard two claims expressing skepticism of group rights when we were asked if they should exist). However, when we began to discuss case studies in small groups, the question was shifted away from asking “Should groups have their own rights?” or “Are human rights universal or relative?” in the broadest theoretical sense to specific human rights dilemmas. This gave us the ground to respond to each other's claims on the same terms. We would have had a difficult time responding to any claims made between cases. Once we knew those cases however, it was easy to think through the dilemmas in a constructive manner. I learned a lot more about cultural relativism through those case studies and how they compared than I did reading arguments for and against cultural relativism. We could make the distinctions between what could have been universal and what could not based on our experiences in our own culture(s) and that of the cases

A review of the available literature provides a wealth of examples of authors advocating women movement or feminism essential for defending the rights of women in a vast array of society across the globe. Feminism reflects “a world view that values women and that confronts systematic injustices based on gender” (Chinn & Wheeler, 1985, p. 74). The oppression of women had existed a long time ago and is still evident today and it is not a new issue in today’s society. Radical feminism attributes the oppression of women to men. Male power must be analyzed and understood and not reduced to other explanations, such as labor relations. Cultural feminism has been critiqued, because it provides moral grounding for

Feminist theory encompasses feminism into the subjects of philosophy, theoretic principle, economic levels, sociology and anthropology. The theory spotlights the analysis of gender discrimination and the acceptance of supremacy relations, sexuality and gender politics. Gender egalitarianism is the core objective that feminists want to accomplish. To achieve this target, there are distinctive forms of approaches; socialist feminism, liberal feminism and radical feminism, in which will be mentioned later.

Journal Article Review: Cultural Relativist and Feminist Critiques of International Human Rights – Friends or Foes?