Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Susan Moller Okin - “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?”

I wanted to wait to do this writing assignment until after our Tuesday class because truth be told, I had a hard time coming up with a critique of this essay. I thought Okin made a lot of valid points, many of which I myself have wondered about since I do believe that there are certain cultural standards that we should abide by. However, I did have one problem with her argument. To advocate taking a closer look at a particular group’s culture and traditions is perfectly fine, but it appeared that she took this one step further by stating that multiculturalism as a whole is a danger to the many goals of feminism, and that it does little more than “exacerbate the problem” (p. 22). Her solutions are to either hope for the extinction of said group’s sexist culture, or to encourage these groups to alter their culture in ways that will hopefully lessen any overt sexual discrimination. I am curious as to how Okin proposes we go about doing all of this without completely crushing the very cultural identity of these groups. What precisely constitutes as sexism in Okin’s view, and how do we decide which cultures need to be altered? I suppose my primary problem with these solutions is that the end result seems to be total assimilation into Western culture, which leaves little room for cultural awareness within these different groups. I don’t know how we as Westerners could possibly encourage groups to alter themselves without appearing paternalistic, and to hope for the extinction of a culture strikes me as being an overly dramatic solution.