THE FRAMING of an argument matters. Susan Okin’s argument hinges on the fact that group rights tend to be cultural rights, and that the norm in most cultures is an inequality between men and women that works to the overwhelming disadvantage of women. This framing makes her argument persuasive and well-supported by an enormous body of evidence. Thus organized, the debate between feminists and supporters of group rights is resolutely won by the feminists, and I would place myself squarely in the latter field.
Even if we consider group rights as a way of protecting the importance of “culture” for one’s sense of self and for richness of experience/norms/rituals, I agree with Okin that the price for women and girls of ensuring this “richness” through an oppressive culture is too high, and indeed many women in such cultures have in some way said so.
Consider the case of immigrant women in the United States. The individual rights that the culture grants to women can help immigrant women become empowered and develop stronger senses of self. A large literature shows the impact of immigrant women’s regular wage work and improved access to various public realms on their gender relations.1 Women gain greater personal autonomy and independence while men lose ground. Women gain more control over budgeting and other domestic decisions, and greater leverage in requesting help from men in domestic chores. Also, their access to public services and other public resources gives them a chance to become incorporated into the mainstream society—they are often the ones in the household who mediate in this process. (It is likely that some women benefit more than others from these circumstances; we need more research to establish the impact of class, education, and income on these gendered outcomes.) Group rights did not help these immigrant women achieve a greater sense of self and confidence.
But even a small shift in the frame of Okin’s argument leads to important questions. What if “culture” cannot be made to pivot so exclusively on the oppression of women? Having worked with a number of disadvantaged, poor immigrant groups in the United States, mostly originating in the types of cultures (for example, Latino culture) that Okin centers on, I find that the oppression of the men and boys is in some cases so severe (on their jobs, in school) that the minority culture serves as an instrument for their engaging with or escaping from the dominant culture. This can engender forms of solidarity between men and women that aid survival in a hostile or discriminating host culture. Similarly with the presumption of moral superiority as mothers I have seen deployed by some middle-class women in the United States and Germany vis-à-vis poorer immigrant women: here, too, the site of pain and anger shifts away from intracultural gender inequalities to intercultural dynamics of domination/discrimination. We know that for many immigrants in Europe, both men and women, not becoming citizens is a way to protest racism. We have seen similar choices in the United States before the new 1996 immigration law. (This law has resulted in an explosion of naturalizations because the new law discriminates against those with immigrant status; under these conditions, becoming a citizen emerges as a defense of last resort to protect some basic entitlements.) Under conditions of such intercultural tension and discrimination, cultural affirmation is not simply a way to preserve intracultural gender inequality, and the analysis of culture cannot be centered analytically exclusively on the organization of gender, even if the latter is enormously important.
To be sure, in most cultures women are at an enormous disadvantage. So I am not disputing Okin’s major conclusion about group rights. But if we overlook the joint presence of (and relations between) a dominant (or “host”) and minority culture, we may be overlooking the many sources of pain and rage produced by intercultural engagements. Engaging, whether by necessity or by choice, with a dominant culture may lead in turn to the “need” (in both men and women) for the refuge of one’s culture also in areas other than gender. Further, the pain and rage produced by this engagement with the dominant culture may change key aspects of gender organization in the minority culture. The case of Latino immigrant women in the United States indicated earlier is an instance.
In raising these issues, I have not addressed the question of group rights per se. I agree with Okin that group rights are a problematic (and mostly) unnecessary vehicle for achieving greater gender equality—or, if you will, a less gendered society. Instead I want to emphasize the risk of centering culture exclusively on the organization of gender, especially when (as in the contemporary United States and Europe) both the men and the women of many minority cultures may feel oppressed by a dominant/host culture. Recognizing the importance of dynamics other than those of gender in a context of discrimination/persecution against one’s group may well be strategic for eliminating or reducing the conditions that led to the demand for group rights in the first place. Rather than rejecting group rights as such, the analytic and political focus may well have to negotiate intracultural gender inequalities at the center of Okin’s concerns and intercultural oppression that frequently lies at the origins of the experienced need for group rights.
In the global cities where I have done much of my research and fieldwork, intercultural battles and alliances are a marking condition for men and women and children.2 Isolating their culture of origin as an equally marking and exclusive condition becomes almost impossible. Women and children emerge often as the carriers or the agents of this new, hybrid condition of negotiation. This negotiation may turn out to be crucial in the fight against the norms that legitimate the oppression of women (and children) in many of the minority cultures described by Okin.