This book attempts to reconfigure feminism in a way that responds to cultural diversity. The book contends that a discourse of rights can be formulated and that this task is crucial to negotiating a balance between women's interests and multicultural claims. The book reconfigures feminism in a way that responds to cultural diversity, by drawing on Iris Young's idea of ‘gender as seriality’. It argues that a discourse of rights can be formulated and that this task is crucial to negotiating a balance between women's interests and multicultural justice. The book works through a set of dilemmas in ... More

This book attempts to reconfigure feminism in a way that responds to cultural diversity. The book contends that a discourse of rights can be formulated and that this task is crucial to negotiating a balance between women's interests and multicultural claims. The book reconfigures feminism in a way that responds to cultural diversity, by drawing on Iris Young's idea of ‘gender as seriality’. It argues that a discourse of rights can be formulated and that this task is crucial to negotiating a balance between women's interests and multicultural justice. The book works through a set of dilemmas in modern liberal democracies including: the resurgence of the feminist controversy over the Hindu practice of widow-immolation (sati); gender-discriminatory Muslim divorce laws in the famous Shah Bano controversy in India; forced marriage in South Asian communities in the UK; the rights of evangelical Christian parents to exempt their children from secular education; and the recent controversy about the rights of Muslim girls to wear the hijab in state schools in France.