This essay explores the tension between group rights and individual rights within liberal theory, focusing on how cultural protections can perpetuate gender-based harm. Using examples from female genital mutilation, forced marriage, tribal sovereignty, and military service standards, the paper argues that prioritizing group identity and cultural preservation over individual freedoms disproportionately affects women and minorities. The author contends that while group rights may seem progressive in theory, they often enable patriarchal systems to restrict personal autonomy. The essay concludes that individual rights should take precedence over group rights when the two conflict, as personal agency and self-determination are fundamental to human dignity.
The idea of equality and what is fair and just is complex and contested. In the struggle for equality, the groups that have suffered the most are women and ethnic minorities. Combating this inequality, however, is not as straightforward as granting each specific group their own rights. Doing so would sacrifice the rights of one group to benefit another.
In theory, group rights seem like a necessary function to protect and preserve ethnic groups. When one thinks of group rights, examples include a person of Islamic faith being allowed to take a break during work to pray, or the Amish community being granted rights to maintain their way of life. As someone who values equality among different cultures, I previously held the belief that group rights were essential.
A compelling example is the right of tribal sovereignty among Native Americans, which allows tribes the right to govern themselves rather than be governed by the federal government. This group right seems sensible because the Native American culture predates that of any other group in the United States. Although the idea of group rights is progressive in theory, in practice it can have adverse effects.
Feminism is defined as "the belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having human dignity equally with men, and the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely chosen lives as men can." While group rights can be non-gender related, the vast majority of legal cases involving group rights concern gender. Almost every culture has past and present cultural customs that are oppressive to women. These oppressive customs are found in every major religion and even Greek mythology: "Think of Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus, and of Romulus and Remus, reared without a human mother. Or Adam, made by a male God, who then made Eve out of part of Adam" (Okin 4).
Group rights can protect customs such as female genital mutilation, the marriage of children, forced marriages, and polygamy. Granting group rights puts more power in the hands of the men who head patriarchal cultures and strips women of any possibility of freedom. The scale of this harm is staggering: "More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where FGM/C is concentrated. If current trends continue, as many as 30 million girls are at risk of being cut before their 15th birthday. However, the data also show that the majority of girls and women in most practising countries think FGM/C should end" (Unicef.org).
It is debated that FGM is a "cultural practice" based on factors such as tradition, religion, preservation of virginity and chastity, social acceptance, cleanliness, increasing sexual pleasure for the male, and family honor. Upholding cultural group rights also promotes the atrocity of female infanticide, which is overwhelmingly prevalent in China and India—both countries defined by patriarchal family units. In these cultures, women are considered inferior and of much lower status than males. Families prioritize having male babies; female babies are seen as useless to the family.
If one practices cultural relativism, judging these acts based on "western beliefs" would be considered wrong. However, cultural gender inequality is also illustrated in how some legal systems treat rape victims. In fourteen countries of Latin America, rapists are legally exonerated if they marry or (in some cases) even offer to marry their victims. In Peru, this law was amended for the worse in 1991: the co-defendants in a gang rape are now all exonerated if one of them offers to marry the victim. As a Peruvian taxi driver explained: "Marriage is the right and proper thing to do after a rape. A raped woman is a used item. No one wants her. At least with this law the woman gets a husband" (Okin 5). The message is clear: after being raped, ensuring the woman has a husband is the least a society can do.
The idea of cultural relativism is fundamentally illogical. Is it acceptable to condone such atrocities in the name of considering situations within their cultural context? Just because something is a historical cultural practice does not mean it is right. The United States offers an example: for most of the nation's history, inequality among minorities was part of American culture. Owning slaves could be thought of as part of Southern culture in the 1800s. If we examine such events now, most people agree that such a "cultural norm" is ludicrous.
It can be argued that "the West" attempts to impose its views and way of life on other cultures. However, I believe it is more important to argue the imperative nature of valuing the individual above the group to which he or she belongs. As human beings, our individual rights should far outweigh any kind of "group right." Granting someone a group right assumes that the person completely identifies with their group. For instance, I am Catholic. According to traditional Catholicism, using contraceptive is a sin. If I lived in a society or country where my religious affiliation was the law of the land—such as in some Middle Eastern countries—I would not want the ideology of my religion to outweigh my individual freedom not to agree with all of its practices.
It is a group right for Islamic nations to force women to wear a hijab. In my experience with women of Islamic faith, I have talked to women who cherish the cultural practice and feel "naked" and exposed without their hijab. I have also spoken with women who are too afraid to hold their own personal beliefs that stray from cultural norms—afraid of what their friends, family, and especially their husbands will say or do. Many assume that people within a culture are willing participants in traditions, but this assumption often masks coercion and fear.
During the 1980s, the French government quietly permitted immigrant men to bring multiple wives into the country, to the point where an estimated 200,000 families in Paris became polygamous. However, when reporters finally interviewed the wives, they discovered what the government could have learned years earlier: "that the women affected by the polygamy regarded it as inescapable and barely tolerable institution in their African countries of origin" (Okin 1). Granting group rights ignores the rights of subcultures within cultures. In such instances, it would make far more sense for the individual to have the right to choose their attire or not to be part of a polygamous marriage, rather than for the group to dictate these choices.
Some women within a culture may genuinely appreciate traditions, possibly because these practices are so deeply ingrained in their cultural upbringing, while others wish these traditions did not exist. Individuals first and foremost belong to themselves before they belong to anything bigger than that.
"Women's group rights can undermine equal treatment and individual ability"
While protecting culture, we simultaneously have to protect the individuals within that culture. When we must choose between preserving a culture and protecting individual rights, individual rights should trump group rights every time.
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