A survey of Nigerian women who have undergone female circumcision (female genital mutilation) revealed a majority in favour of the practice. Are Western feminist bioethicists entitled to condemn it?

The recent global movement for women's human rights has achieved considerable re-thinking of human rights as previously understood. Since many of women's rights violations occur in the private sphere of family life, and are justified by appeals to cultural or religious norms, both families and cultures (including their religious aspects) have come under critical scrutiny.

The article interrogates transnational feminisms as a concept and as a practice. It frames its analysis using contemporary theories of globalization and the older concept of global sisterhood as a backdrop to the concept of transnational feminism. To assess the practical dimension of transnational feminisms, the analysis focuses on women's rights as a human rights movement and the transnationalization of Latin American feminisms. The article suggests that, although transnational feminisms (particularly feminist postcolonial theories) envision themselves in a new frame and (...) see themselves as committed to intersectional analysis and transversal politics, there are important gaps between the intentions (theory, tactics) and outcomes of their theory and practice. (shrink)

L'étude des rapports entre féminisme et philosophie politique présuppose une classification des principales tendances du féminisme contemporain. l'article présente d'abord la typologie proposée par Alison Jaggar et indique les problèmes qu'elle pose. Il examine ensuite un ensemble de textes consacrés, expressément ou non, à la taxonomie de ces tendances, pour dégager une grille d'interprétation permettant de les rassembler dans un même cadre théorique explicitant les enjeux qu'elles abordent,mais aussi ceux qui sont ignorés.

Feminism controversially, but fundamentally, influences why and how women's groups become implicated in politics. The debates around the meaning of feminism and the practice of feminist activism have established a discourse and created common melodies as well as some dissonance among women's groups in Hungary. This article discusses different interpretations of women's status that affect how Hungarian feminism has developed in what the author sees, contrary to a more common view, as an East—West continuum. The article analyzes how women's groups (...) in Hungary create affiliations and relate to the West, both ideologically and materially. The article unfolds the many different forms of Hungarian women's groups according to different `layers' of feminist consciousness. A vital element in forming these layers has been anti-feminism and how it has sometimes hindered consciousness or perhaps made some `differently sensitive'. Subsequently, the article uses a feminist reinterpretation of politics — women's interpretations of what belongs to the private and public spheres — without which, the author claims, contemporary women's activism in Hungary cannot be understood or even seen. The author argues that the interlocking forms of political actions among women's groups shape the postCommunist arena, although this shaping may be less immediately visible to the casual observer. (shrink)

Global feminism has been criticized as a form of cultural imperialism, whereby a white, western model of feminism is imposed upon women in non-western contexts under the banner of universal sisterhood. In order to provide this theoretical critique with some empirical grounding, this article focuses on the worldwide impact of one of the most influential books ever to be published in the US, Our Bodies, Ourselves. This book not only had a decisive impact on how generations of American women felt (...) about their bodies, their sexuality and their health, but it was translated and adapted in 20 languages, both within and outside Europe. The dissemination of Our Bodies, Ourselves, particularly in the so-called `third world', makes it a perfect site for exploring the possibilities and the pitfalls of the globalization of feminist knowledge. After showing how Our Bodies, Ourselves travelled and was adapted to meet the needs of women in specific contexts, conclusions are drawn about the viability of the `feminism-as-culturalimperialism' critique as well as about the empowering potential of transnational feminist alliances in the field of body/politics. (shrink)