Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

This is a fabulous book if you're interested in multiculturalism and feminism and the inter relational between them. Susan Moller Okin explains that in order for women's rights to be upheld in all cultures, multiculturalistic attempts must maintain those respects and dignities for women in spite of a culture's specific beliefs. For instance, Olin talks about genital cutting and how it violates women's rights. She feels that if adult women want to make this decision to undergo genital cutting for their own cultural or religious reasons, that's fine but when you submit an infant who can't make their own choices to genital cutting this is wrong and that's where feminism is violated. Those cultures, according to Olin, should become extinct and not allowed to flourish. I agree with her philosophy. It's a rather sociological book with a lot of feminist and sociology-based theories from well know people but it's more suited to an academic reading if you need to write a paper or for a course at the college level. (Which is what I read the book for).

The structure of this book was incredibly helpful for setting the tone for one of my classes. As our first text, this collection of essays modeled argument and criticism that students were able to support, dismantle, and contribute to. It opened up discussion by allowing students to respond to Okin, and then agree or disagree with her respondents. It set the stage for how we would engage with each other through critique, while also learning to listen, read, and adjust in research writing. Was helpful in the academic setting.

I bought this as my course's textbook and it is great!

For me I liked that it seemed brand new, it hadn't been read thouroghly anyway. However there was a little friendly star drawn on one page which was only to please me :) I don't know how others would like it but I loved it :)

It's difficult to review a book like this. It's set up as a lead essay (by Okin), followed by several short response essays by other public intellectuals, and finally a reply essay by Okin. I guess to be successful such a book should have at least an interesting lead essay, and then a diversity of responses that span the possibilities.The lead essay is indeed fertile for commentary, if quite imperfect on its own. Okin is entirely correct to note a tension between multiculturalism and feminism, but her navigation of this tension is not very deft. She tends to essentialize other cultures by their patriarchal public face without delving into the heterodox or dissident voices within those cultures.A number of responses correct this mistake, however, so I'm quite happy with the book overall. The contributions by Martha Nussbaum, Joseph Raz, and Cass Sunstein all treat the fundamental tension with the care its irreducible difficulty requires. (Nussbaums's contribution is even titled "A Plea for Difficulty"). I was also impressed by Azizah al-Hibri's response, which was a defense of feminist interpretations of Islam. Learning about al-Hibri is probably the most valuable thing I'm taking away from the book.Some of the responses were not so great, but this is to be expected from a book like this. Some were downright absurd. For a good lol, e.g., read Sander Gilman's response, which argued among other things, that clitoridectomy isn't detrimental to women's sexuality because not all sexual pleasure comes from the sex organs.

"Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" consists of Okin's initial essay addressing that question, followed by a collection of essays commenting on her thoughts, followed by another essay by Okin in defense of her thesis. I admittedly was slightly disappointed the first time I read Okin's initial essay. Although her thesis is clear enough (that the liberal values of feminism and multiculturalism must necessarily come into conflict considering that a large number of cultures encourage the oppression of women), she fails to rigorously define her terms or to support her thesis with more than a few anecdotes. She also tends to conflate culture with religion at times when it is not appropriate, a tendency on which a number of respondents comment. Although I was initially disappointed by Okin's essay, I came to appreciate it more as I continued reading the book. Although her refusal to define her argument rigorously or to specify at what point multiculturalism should give way to feminism leads some authors to talk past one another, it also allows a number of bright minds to express a variety of viewpoints on different aspects of Okin's essay. The comments range from absurd to brilliant, from obvious to unique and insightful. Fortunately, more of the essays fall into the brilliant and insightful categories than in the obvious or absurd categories. The contributing authors' comments address a number of issues, including: support for specific cultural practices; the empirical validity of some of Okin's claims; the importance of group rights versus individual rights; the practical political and legal problems involved in placing women's rights above certain group rights; and many others. The final essay in the book, Okin's last word on the topic, is well-reasoned and spelled out. She adequately addresses most of the criticisms provided by the contributing authors, and, perhaps more importantly, she clarifies her position and provides more concrete guidance regarding when she would advocate the rights of women and when she would defer to cultural practices. The whole book is an excellent (and quick) read, beneficial not for the answers that it provides but for the debate it encourages. In a world that is growing smaller and more connected by the day, and especially in a country to which many oppressed women from around the globe look for a better life, few debates could be of more importance.

Susan Okin begins this work an essay where she gives her opinion that, in answer to the titular question, multiculturalism is indeed bad for women, and so-called cultural justifications are often used as an excuse to violate the rights of women. Her essay is short, bombastic and puts her point across well - and the rest of the book is made up of responses from various academic and political philosophers who either take umbrage or write in support of her position. It's clear, as Okin acknowledges in her response to the various works, that she has offended many of the responds but it makes for a fascinating and enlightening read.

Most of the lines were maked but clean generally

Interesting book that raises good points. However, the number of collaborators leads to a lack of depth and some of the pieces end up being more polemical than enlightening. Moreover, the Reply in the end that Okin makes to all the pieces ends up being rather awkward, somewhat offensive, and has borderline personal attacks that lack academic polish. Furthermore, a number of the pieces have rather un-academic way of arguing points, drawing on newspaper articles to make broad statements, etc. Overall, I do recommend it for a start in looking at some of the issues that arise between feminism and multiculturalism because it is one of the first works to talk about this but more recent works do a better job.