Oonagh Reitman Cultural Relativism

Journal Reviews
Oonagh Reitman, “Cultural Relativism and Feminist Critiques of International Human Rights - Friends or Foes?” The International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo discussing about the family planning and the population control and the fundamental question of womwn’s right to control their bodies free from the limitation of others. The conference is mostly attended by the cultural relativist and mostly motivated by religious objections such as Islam and Catholics. In this conference, several countries with culture varied is standing on the same place to opposed certain women’s right. This conference is become the right place to adress each opinion against certain women’s right. In the reservations to Convention

He found that the critiques between both of them are opposing each other in women’s international human rights. However, even they are opposing each other but the similarities also exist between them. Reitman suggesting both to cooperate with each other instead of opposing each other since they have the similarities. The author proposed 2 approaches which are the substantive and strategic. First, the author argue that feminist and cultural relativist need to take each other standpoint and respect each other’s position due to several reasons such as opposing the same opponent which is international human rights, they use the same arguments against each other, and they are emphasizing the same essential value which is respecting the difference based on sex or culture. The author using these similarities for each party to consider to make a

Cultural realist see that the women right that they proposed must be related to the culture and religion and some aspect regarding to women’s right is being limited by the religion or culture. Feminist which didn’t have any barriers like this indicate that they are having very different view with cultural realist. Clearly, in their appeal for women’s rights, feminists face the challenge of trying to strike a delicate balance between the requirement that women’s rights be universal for all women, and the particularities of cultural diversity which acknowledge the differences amongst women (Nayak, 2013 : 86). This is a difficult balance for feminists who must avoid both elevating the experience of a specific group to the human ‘norm,’ and the relativistic paralysis of endorsing all pluralities and differences as morally and politically valid’ (Brems, 1997:159). Even though its hard but in the author explanation. Feminist still can oppose the cultural relativist by the notion of universality and argue for the substantive results of mainstreaming. Bell (1999:151) argues that feminist theory is beneficial as it succeeds in evading both ‘homogenizing universalism or the paralysis of cultural relativist. Pragmatically, feminist theory allows for human rights to be universally held by all women, however, it also allows for the acknowledgement of cultural diversity,