Legal Pluralism, Customary Law and Women’s Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1&2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muna B Ndulo
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Societal Needs ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

This article examines the challenges legal pluralism poses in legal systems, especially in relation to conflicts between customary norms and the Bill of Rights and the need to contextualise customary law in order to resolve the need to adapt it to changing societal needs and values. The article focuses on African customary law, African legal systems and women’s rights because it is a burning issue in Africa and was the subject-matter in several of the cases that came before the South African Constitutional Court during the time Justice Ngcobo was on the Court. Cases involving conflicts between customary law and gender rights are not unique to South Africa. These are issues that have engaged African courts and those elsewhere in the world. In Africa, the coexistence of customary law and received law is as old as colonial rule. Like all other systems of law, customary law has been influenced by various other forces in an ever-changing world. The article focuses on customary law and women’s rights. Justice Ngcobo’s approach to resolving conflicts between customary law and the Bill of Rights in constitutions is instructive and makes a significant contribution to the jurisprudence in this area of the law. In his opinions on customary law, especially in the Bhe case, he implores us to look at the social context in which customary rules originated and, before discarding them, to examine the possibility of developing them to meet the changing needs and circumstances of society.

State, Islam, and Gender Politics

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
Main Site ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Economy And Education

The existing literature on women’s rights and Islam falls short of addressing the relationship between the religious debate on women’s rights and the existing rules of law in Muslim-majority countries. This chapter will bridge this gap by analyzing the status of women in the legal systems of Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco. It will evaluate the influence of Islam on the shaping of these laws, compared to other factors like culture, socioeconomic development, and education. Except in marginal cases like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban, women’s rights in politics, the economy, and education have advanced in all Muslim countries. But there are some limitations placed upon women’s rights using religious arguments. Everywhere, personal rights about family life, sexuality, and dress code remain discriminatory against women. In this regard, the woman’s body has become the main site of the politicization of Islam, by state and non-state actors alike.

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Shed Light

This volume reframes the debate around Islam and women’s rights within a broader comparative literature. It examines the complex and contingent historical relationships between religion, secularism, democracy, law, and gender equality. Part I addresses the nexus of religion, law, gender, and democracy through different disciplinary perspectives (sociology, anthropology, political science, law). Part II localizes the implementation of this nexus between law, gender, and democracy, and provides contextualized responses to questions raised in Part I. The contributors explore the situation of Muslim women’s rights vis-à-vis human rights to shed light on gender politics in the modernization of the nation and to ponder over the role of Islam in gender inequality across different Muslim countries.

Feminism, Pragmatism or Both? Czech Radical Nationalism and the Woman Question, 1898–1914

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-552
Author(s):  
T. Mills Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
National Society ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Social

During a debate on the franchise reform bill in the Austrian Reichsrat on 12 September 1906, the Czech National Socialist Party deputy Václav Choc demanded that suffrage be extended to women as well as men. Otherwise, Choc asserted, the women of Austria would be consigned to the same status as “criminals and children.” Choc was certainly not the only Austrian parliamentarian to voice his support for votes for women during the debates on franchise reform. However, his party, the most radical of all the Czech nationalist political factions, was unique in that it not only included women's suffrage in its official program, as the Social Democrats had done a decade earlier, but also worked hard to change the political status of women in the Monarchy while the Social Democrats generally paid only lip service to this goal. Moreover, Choc and his colleagues in the National Socialist Party helped change the terms of the debate about women's rights by explicitly linking the “woman question” to the “national question” in ways entirely different from the prevailing discourse of liberalism infin-de-siècleAustria. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, liberal reformers, whether German or Czech, tried to mold the participation of women in political life to fit the liberal view of a woman's “proper” role in society. By contrast, the radical nationalists who rose to prominence in Czech political culture only after 1900, attempted to recast the debate over women's rights as central to their two-pronged discourse of social and national emancipation, while at the same time pressing for the complete democratization of Czech political life at all levels, not merely in the imperial parliament. In so doing, and with the active but often necessarily covert collaboration of women associated with the party, these radical nationalists helped extend the parameters of the debate over the place Czech women had in the larger national society.

Women and Gender

2008 ◽  
pp. 495-510
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bunch
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
And Gender

This article discusses women and gender, and first identifies the differences between the concepts. It moves on to a critical examination of the norms and their institutional manifestations, along with selected UN system efforts to promote women's rights in development, peace and security, human rights, and health. The article also provides a balanced evaluation of how much things have changed for girls and women over the last sixty years.

scholarly journals Perempuan dan Hukum dalam Masyarakat Hukum Adat Lampung Sebatin

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-125
Author(s):  
Zuhraini Zuhraini
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
Inheritance Law ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
Fair Principles

The interpretation of the Qur'an is often disputed. The terms of custom, culture and ideology is not one thing that descends from the sky. It is shaped by humans and socialized from one generation to other. Biological determinism has also reinforced the view. In such situations, the differences, discrimination, and injustice resulting from mistakes in understanding and interpreting the universal doctrine, create injustices against women, including the women’s rights and position in Lampung Sebatin customary law community. This article discusses the rights and position of women in Lampung Sebatin customary law community and the form of injustice for women in the society. The conclusion shows that, firstly, women's rights and position in Lampang Sebatin customary law community are far from fair principles. Not fair either in marriage law or inheritance law. Second, the form of injustice for women in indigenous communities of Lampung Sebatin, from gender analysis is marginalization, penomorduaan and labeling, violence, and excessive workload. 

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