The Assessment Of Individual Rights Within Cultural Groups Essay

In the world today, women have a say in what they want to do and things that they desire to do. Back in the day, before the 1800’s, women had to be submissive to their male counterparts and do according to what was required of them. In the end, this led to the demeaning of the woman and the concept that women were inferior to men. Even though this concept and perception changed, there have been some countries and regions of the world that have not yet recognized the equality that women deserve. Such areas do not allow women to vote, attend school, have a say in the community, and the women are at the mercy of their husbands, fathers or male superiors (Hartmann, Susan M).

In Chapter Thirteen, “Grassroots vs. Treetops” of Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn the act of genital mutilation is discussed. It starts off by giving gory details on genital mutilation, stating that every ten a girl is mutilated. Despite the medical problems surrounding female genital mutilation, it thrived in parts of Africa as a serious problem for young girls. FGM is sometimes described as a female circumcision, it’s cultural significance is to reduce sexual trends and to make the girls more marriageable. However, often these procedures are done with no new medical supplies and are performed with dirty materials leading to infection and sometimes death for girls partaking. A woman in Illinois is doing her best to stop female genital mutilation by working closely with each village and getting to the main source of the problem. Most people were under educated about what was wrong with female genital mutilation, it was a cultural rite of passage. But through working with each individual village, this woman could help ban female genital mutilation is thousands of villages and increased school attendance at the same time.

In the story written by Frances A. Althaus’s “Female Circumcision: Rite of Passage or Violation of Rights? She explores female circumcision within African Culture and the health complications after the ritual is completed. Female circumcision is the practice of partial or total removal of the female external vaginal area and is still practiced in several countries today , dut was ruled as illegal in America in 1997. Females did not have the option to chose if they wanted to have the procedure performed, mothers often made that decision for them. The practice is to transition a girl into womanhood and to ensure that virginity is not lost before marriage, prevention of infidelity and

Since the dawn of American culture, women have been oppressed. Due to inequalities in the hierarchy of social power, women have been targeted for discrimination. However, women have not sat quietly and let the “man” dictate their lives. Through movement raised through women of all cultures, change has come to all American women. Racism, homophobia and classism created hardships for the American women who rebled through reproductive justice organizations, anarcho-syndicalism, and embracement of their sexual orientation. These helped efforts created the foundation that we live in today and continues to inspire and mold the environment .

Rights for women has become a norm in today's society that often goes unnoticed by people who life has changed. They often take it for granted the hardship that woman had to endured. For example, during the 1800s African American women were more than likely to be destined to be slaves or indentured servants. In comparison, the first white women settlers were treated as an object of reproduction, as well as servants. In today’s culture women’s treatment has improved over the last decades. The way culture has changed, allowing women to have more power to voice their opinion. From the hardship that woman had to endure, women’s right in the American Culture has evolved, which has led for women to thrive for success.

Within Okin’s “Vulnerability by Marriage” article her thesis is similar to Beauvoir’s idea in previous readings that the oppression of women in contemporary liberal societies is primarily continued by the gendered division of labor (GDL) in a family, for the most part the fact that women are assigned responsibility within the home and are not paid. Also, Okin believes that women’s oppression is caused by feminine gender socialization but she also adds that she believes that a major contribution to the oppression of women in liberal societies is due to women’s role inside the home. Even if women do work a full time job, they truly aren’t done working when they get home after work, they tend to do necessary things around the house such as laundry, washing dishes, taking care of children, etc., and women on average work more hours per week than a man even though they may not be paid for it. Even though I think that Okin’s view is true and her arguments are acceptable, I do think that there are some additional arguments she could have made that would have made her case better. In this paper I will address Okin’s arguments as well as present some of my own additional arguments that I feel could have beneficial.

For this paper, I watched a video on C-Span on women’s right call Women’s Right are Human Rights”The subject matter was how important was empowering women, and such women’s right as reproductive rights, equal pay, and equal representation. The significance of the forum with Rep. LLeana Rose- Lehtinen was that we need to promote the rights of women because women have been subjective to harassment, discrimination and denial of equal rights.

Thesis: Female Genital Circumcision is a cultural procedure that is performed on young girls for a variety of reasons. Members of this culture chose to continue these traditions because they believe they will gain sociological, health and marriage benefits for their daughters, ensuring these young girls a better future is mandatory.

Female genital mutilation may be currently reaching a changing point in its history. It is a cultural practice that is considered to have long standing importance but female genital mutilation presents to most developed nations a need for education and a need to clarify ethical dilemmas regarding it. In most cases, the push for female genital mutilation to be eradicated comes from within individual cultures and communities but internationally there is also support for eradication of this problem. The main dilemma is that most groups that actively practice female genital mutilation see it as a necessary or even obligatory ritual that defines them as a culture and gives their culture or religion autonomy. It is (at the time that this paper was written) illegal to perform female genital mutilation on a child in the United Sates but not on an adult woman, which includes anyone who is who is older than 18 years old. However, ultimately, female genital mutilation is unethical regardless of who it is performed upon, so the United States’ health care providers and the laws governing them need to step beyond their traditionally followed roles on this issue. In fact, health care providers ought to join the ongoing worldwide efforts to completely eradicate female genital mutilation. Health care providers

In the diverse society of today, the topic of equal rights and equal treatment of every person is a heavily focused and pronounced topic. With time and tremendous amount of effort by many advocates of civil rights, the enormous rift between races and genders have minimized to fractions of what it used to be. This change of belief from the white male supremacy to the diverse equality is a significant turning point of the world history. Not even 100 years ago, women were not able to vote and were supposed to stay at home while the husband, the man of the household, went out and worked for the family. Within the past few decades, women and men

These gendered practices often take the form of the subjugation of women to men. Often, as this subjugation occurs in the private sphere, which is the central to most cultures. Okin also believes that most cultures have the control of women by men as a central focus. This means that as a minority group seeks group rights to protect its culture, these group rights are likely to have the direct effect of continuing the subjugation of women.

In Elusive Equality: Women 's Rights, Public Policy, and the Law, Susan G. Mezey touches several topics that highlight the trials and tribulations women have face over the year just to get one step closer to being considered “legally equaled” to a man. The author talks about the origin behind the discrimination of women rights using examples from multiply court cases and relates them to situations that women faced today such as women in the workplace, sexual harassment, abortion rights, and eliminating gender bias in education. The authors main point was to inform and stress the importance of seeking constitutional equality, and she used those topics as an example to where women were discriminated against and treated unfairly. She exemplified how such laws were used with sex-based classifications and that men and women were treated different but ironically the laws disadvantaged men more than women. Discussing the topic of women’s rights, the author exemplified many strengths and weakness throughout the book.

"I remember the blade. How it shone! There was a woman kneeling over me with the knife. I bit her; it was all I could do. Then three women came to hold me down. One of them sat on my chest. I bit her with all my might." These words reflect Banassiri Sylla’s account of her experience undergoing female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation (FGM), at the young age of eight in the Ivory Coast. This disturbing description of her struggle makes it hard to understand why any culture could support such a practice. Yet, it is estimated that about 132 million women and girls in about thirty African countries have undergone the same, or at least similar, cultural

Imagine this! Being either a young girl or a woman forcefully bound against your will while elders perform a procedure called Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The young girls and women who are forced to have this procedure done not only loses their rights to sexual pleasure but their rights are sliced, chopped, punctured, and finally burnt away. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) otherwise known as Female Genital Circumcision (FGC) is also a controversial topic in Western societies. This paper will examine the history of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), hegemonic perspective on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), health consequences of having this procedure done, how Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) affects women’s sexual function, and women who

In this essay I argue that multiculturalism and establishing group rights for cultures is not as harmful to the interests women as Okin implies in her essay, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?”. (587). First I will outline Okin’s examples which she uses to frame her view of the control of women by men in their cultures. I will also outline her arguments that group rights and multiculturalism should be viewed skeptically. I will then define multiculturalism. Then I will argue that Okin uses vague ‘tunnel vision’ examples to support her ideas that multiculturalism is bad for women. I will also provide stories and examples in cultures where women are respected.