“Drawing the Line of Equality”: Hannah Mather Crocker on Women's Rights

2006 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
EILEEN HUNT BOTTING ◽  
SARAH L. HOUSER
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Sex Equality ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Political Radicalism

Hannah Mather Crocker was the leading American political theorist between 1800 and 1820 to engage the controversial question of sex equality. In the wake of the postrevolutionary backlash against political radicalism, she became a subtle rhetorician of women's rights. She accepted how her cultural context placed limits on the realization of women's rights, yet she did not analytically conflate these temporal limits with women's capacities to contribute to their polity. She sought to normatively defend and gently extend American women's ongoing informal political participation in the postrevolutionary era and challenged the separate spheres discourse that aimed to restrict it. Through the first comprehensive study of Crocker'soeuvre, this article provides new insight into the political role and rhetorical style of women's rights discourse and women's activism in the early republic and uncovers Crocker's philosophical legacies for scholars who seek to reconcile the standpoints of equality and difference feminism.

scholarly journals Gender Equality and Legal Mobilization in the United Kingdom: Using Rights for Lobbying, Litigation, Defense, and Attack

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (02) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Millns ◽  
Charlotte Skeet
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Right

Abstract This article analyzes women’s contemporary use of rights to mobilize and pursue claims for gender equality and gender justice in the United Kingdom. Empirically, the paper explores the growth of rights discourse and activity against the backdrop of a stronger constitutionalization of women’s rights at national, European, and international levels. It does this through an exploration of individual and collective lobbying and litigation strategies in relation to violence against women. The paper first examines this in the context of the right to bodily integrity through examples of the ways in which sexual violence and domestic abuse are addressed within the criminal justice system. The paper then addresses the right to be free from violence for women seeking refuge and asylum. The research reveals the need for varied strategies that target all aspects of the legal and political systems in order to ameliorate the protection and implementation of women’s rights.

scholarly journals The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-117
Author(s):  
Abbas Barzegar
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Legal Anthropology ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Post Colonialism

Firmly situated in the field of legal anthropology, Arzoo Osanloo’s ThePolitics of Women’s Rights in Iran is an ethnographic treatment of women’srights discourse in contemporary Iran. It is concerned with unraveling theassumed paradoxes involved in administering a republican theocracy thatattempts to incorporate both divinely inspired legal injunctions and representativeforms of governance.Whereas many conversations concerning human rights and Islam aredrowned in contention, normativity, and exegetical speculation, Osanloo’scontribution steadily manages to remain above the fray. This is done by placingthe discourse of women’s rights within the cultural context of globalizationand post-colonialism and yet still identifying its local, embodiedpractice within the shifting political dynamics of post-revolutionary Iran. Tothis end, through exploring the lives of upper-middle class women in Tehranand their encounters with the emerging Islamo-republican state, the authorexplores the “conditions [that] have allowed for the discussion of rights tomaterialize in a language that was unacceptable just after the revolution…”(p. 7), while paying close attention to the ways in which contemporary Iranrepresents a vernacular modernity expressed through “a hybrid discoursethat locates a distinctive form of modernity at the juncture of Islamic revivalismand Western political and legal institutions” (p. 8).Her theoretical and methodological approach, which incorporates elementsof post-colonialism and post-modernism, is presented in a shortintroudction. Guiding concepts such as “rights as discursive practice,” “dialogicalsites,” and “subjectivization” thus readily inform her mobilizationand treatment of the data. Thankfully, her concern for methodological precisiondoes not obscure or consume the narrative form through which she putsforth her thesis in the remainder of the text ...

scholarly journals The Women Activism in Pakistan: An Analysis of ‘Aurat March

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-69
Author(s):  
Syeda Mehmoona Khushbakht ◽  
Munazza Sultana
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Analysis Approach ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Current Time ◽  
Religious Transformation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

In Pakistan, although women’s activism was initiated since the country came into existence, but a diverse activism was observed by the nation in the form of ‘Aurat March during 2018-2020. The current study examines the Western feminism, what it was initiated for and its accomplishments in the current time. By employing a discourse analysis approach to the ‘Aurat March event, this study highlights the women’s activism in Pakistan, ‘Aurat March and the antipathy faced by organizers and supporters from the public because of its strange slogans and ridiculous placards. It also observes the relationship between western feminism and ‘Aurat March activism from the perspective of the social, cultural, and religious transformation of society. The study finds the need to raise a constructive and logical voice for women’s rights with support of the public to eradicate social evils instead of focusing on insignificant matters. It has further recommended that there is a need to build a framework in which one may be able to differentiate women’s rights in the context of western feminism and the limitation of women’s emancipation in Islamic context.

scholarly journals Teaching “Islam and Human Rights” in the Classroom

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (01) ◽  
pp. 101-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fait A. Muedini
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Media ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

AbstractThis article discusses my approach to teaching a course on Islam and human rights. I begin by examining the attention Islam has received in the media and classroom. Then, I discuss how I structure lectures on Islam and human rights, the various readings associated with the lectures, as well as common themes discussed in class that include but are not limited to Islamic law, women's rights, and minority rights. From there, I discuss a range of different approaches to the Islam and human rights discourse. I then describe how I test the students' knowledge of the material.

scholarly journals Lost Opportunity

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth A. Jones ◽  
Sarah Thomas de Benítez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Child Trafficking ◽  
Child Rights ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Lost Opportunity

This paper provides a close analysis of a scandal that broke in Mexico following publication of a book that accused businessmen and politicians of involvement in child trafficking and paedophilia. The book’s author, Lydia Cacho, was abducted, imprisoned, threatened with violence and charged with defamation. As further evidence of complicity in the protection of paedophile rings surfaced, a firestorm of public anger and media scrutiny focussed on the plight of Cacho and key political figures including a state governor. A rare political space was thus opened for a debate on child rights. Yet it was a space that csos and child rights networks failed to exploit. This paper examines how child rights discourse had limited salience in circumstances where csos were compromised, uncommitted and disunited. Developing the concept of a ‘rights effect’, we argue that advocacy for child rights must not assume a natural fellowship with discourses of human rights generally, or with women’s rights, press freedoms and rule of law.

The politics of universal rights claiming: Secular and sacred rights claiming in post-revolutionary Tunisia

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Borg
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Efficacy ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Rhetorical Force

AbstractThis article contributes to a theoretical understanding of rights claiming as a specific form of political practice. The article develops and defends a post-foundationalist understanding of rights discourse as a way of making a claim to social change through appealing to a universal and illustrates such an understanding with the contestation over women’s rights in post-revolutionary Tunisia. To develop this argument, the article draws on Jacques Rancière’s notion of political subjectification and Ernesto Laclau’s engagement with the relation between the universal and the particular. To examine the relevance of such conceptualisation, the article turns to the struggle over women’s rights in post-revolutionary Tunisia, where secular and sacred understandings of the universal have been invoked frequently through rights discourse. In this context it is shown that claims to the universal give rhetorical force to rights discourse, and instead of depoliticising social relations, which rights discourse is often charged with, such claims are vital for political efficacy. However, whereas Laclau’s position helps us to understand rights as a language of resistance, a more robust defence of the universal is needed to defend rights in terms of emancipatory political change. To pursue this argument, the article turns to Rancière’s defence of axiomatic equality.

scholarly journals Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei’s Contribution to the Discourse of Women’s Rights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 535
Author(s):  
Ali Akbar
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
English Language ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Independent Basis ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Blood Money ◽  
Over Time

Ayatollah Yusef Sanei was a prominent contemporary Shia scholar whose particular methodological approach led him to issue some of the most progressive Shia fatwas on the subject of women’s rights. However, the ideas he expressed in the last decades of his life have scarcely been addressed in the English language scholarship. This article explores Sanei’s broader jurisprudential approach and how he applied it to analyzing and often challenging traditional Shia rulings related to gender issues. The article first differentiates Sanei’s approach towards jurisprudence from established methodologies, particularly in relation to his consideration of the Sunna as secondary to the Qurʾān, his rejection of the practice of using consensus as an independent basis of legal rulings, his idea that Sharia rulings may change over time, and his strong emphasis on the Qurʾān’s messages of justice and human dignity. The article illuminates how this combination led Sanei to challenge traditional ideas about men’s authority over women, a fixed socio-political role for women, and men’s superiority in the areas of divorce rights, testimony and worth in blood money (dīya), while concurring with earlier scholars on the unequal division of inheritance. Notwithstanding this latter exception, the article demonstrates that Sanei drew upon jurisprudential approaches in arguing in favor of equality between men and women in many areas.

scholarly journals The “Woman Question” and Western Neo-Imperialism in Harold Pinter’s the New World Order

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-213
Author(s):  
Lilijana Burcar
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global South ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
New World Order ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Indirect Control ◽  
Rights Discourse

Abstract Pinter’s short dramatic piece questions the women’s rights discourse that USA-led Western hegemonic powers rely heavily upon when justifying their incursions into the territories of the Global South. The play blasts this posture apart by pointing to the patriarchal paradigm and gendered hierarchies that inform the structuration of Western capitalist societies and which neo-imperial Western powers in their search for bigger profits and new markets inevitably transplant into annexed territories under their direct or indirect control.

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