Ethical Relativism vs. Women's Rights

I read two things recently on the issue of the individual rights of women around the world. First, the November 27th issue of US News and World Report had a brief item in their "The World" section. Titled "A Limited Win for Women in Pakistan", here it is in full:

Despite strong opposition from Islamic religious parties, Pakistan's National Assembly adopted the much-anticipated women's rights legislation reforming rape laws, which previously made it all but impossible for a woman to successfully bring charges against her attacker. Now, judges will have the discretion to send a rape case for trial in secular court under criminal laws rather than in an Islamic court using the Hudood laws that require a rape victim to produce four male Muslim witnesses or potentially face adultery charges herself based on her own testimony.

The new law maintains consensual sex outside marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison, reduced from the old maximum punishment of death. A leader of the six-party religious alliance-which is threatening to create a political crisis by pulling its 53 members out of the 342-seat National Assembly-fretted that the legal changes will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society."

This is good news, I guess... but the title is correct, as this is a very limited "win" for the individual rights of women in Pakistan. The rights of both men and women are still being violated on a massive scale though, since the new law "maintains consensual sex outside of marriage as a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison." And the notion that this new law, which eliminates the death sentence as punishment for having such sex, will turn Pakistan into a "free-sex society" -- that would be laughable if it weren't so sad and ridiculous.

The other item was the brief writeup titled The Condition of Women, on page 7 of the latest issue of The Independent, the newsletter of The Independent Institute. It summarizes the work of Michelle Fram Cohen's "The Conditions of Women in Developing and Developed Countries" (Fall 2006), which is 13 pages long and includes figures. Cohen explains how in the 19th and 20th centuries, the status of women improved the most in economically progressive areas dominated by Western culture. In developing areas dominated by non-Western culture, however, women remain more or less subjugated, and in some countries they are stripped of any rights. And here is a bit more from the summary:

Oppression can take several forms, including the denial of property rights, “honor” killings, dowry-related subjugation, and lack of legal protections. Often these injustices are widely accepted norms handed down from generation to generation.

Poverty and custom in developing countries drive extended families to live together under the same roof, making young couples subordinated to the traditional values of their parents and grandparents.

Unattached women, in particular, face stiff economic disadvantages. In some countries where subsistence farming is the main source of livelihood, customary law prevents women from owning land unless their fathers have no male heirs. If widowed, a wife loses access to her husband’s land, and must therefore spend even more hours each day fetching water.

Shockingly, “honor” killings, committed by relatives for “shame” brought on a family, claim the lives of thousands of women each year, mainly in predominantly Islamic countries. “In 2005, the Pakistani government rejected a pro-women bill that sought to strengthen the law against the practice of honor killing,” Cohen writes. Although Turkey has passed a law imposing life sentences on those convicted of honor killings, a survey shows that almost 40% of respondents supported the practice.

The overall picture of women in developing countries contrasts sharply with the growing educational and professional opportunities for women in developed countries. “Sweeping legal reforms have opened many doors for women in Western countries, but women have not always taken full advantage of these reforms,” Cohen writes. “As in developing countries, customary law may still prevail over the formal law. It is up to both men and women to challenge the traditional norms to bring about a genuine change in women’s condition.”

Indeed it is. But I'd like to make another point here, which is that far too often people, especially some on the political left, will excuse horrors around the world by resorting to ethical relativism. This is the notion that what is "right", or what is at least morally permissable, is entirely relative to a culture or a society, and that people from outsideof it cannot assess moral blame using their (equally relative) norms and pronouncements. This is most often stated indirectly, as an implicit charge against the West, the developed world, or even more specifically the United States, who are still portrayed as imperial powers, trying to oppress the rest of the world in various ways -- including through cultural or ethical bullying.

What this kind of view denies of course is that individuals -- qua individual persons -- have absolute rights, ones that are not relative to a society, a culture, or anything else. But individuals do have such ethical rights, have always had them, and will always have them -- based on their status as moral persons, and regardless of whether any particular government, culture, society, or legal system recognizes those rights or not.

Women have such individual rights -- qua individuals persons -- just as much and as fully as men do. This is true in the same way that brown-eyed people have them just as much blue-eyed people do, or blondes as much as brunettes as much as red-heads. People of each racial group, ethnic group, nationality, religious belief -- all individuals have individual rights. These are not rights based on group membership either, as moral rights are not collective-based, but are rather individual-based, and are hence identical for all individual persons, for all times.

As a thought experiment to see just how horrific the unequal treatment of women in Pakistan and elsewhere really is, just think how absurd it would be if a society or culture decided that any people (male or female) born each year between January and June would for all times have far fewer rights -- and would have all the injustices perpetrated on them as described by Cohen above -- as compared to those born between July and December. Assume that this splits the population roughly in half and you have the same split in numbers that we have between men and women in the world. Is there any more logic or good reason to limit the rights of women as there would be people born between January and June? Of course not! The fact that some religions or other cultural institutions "have always done it this way" is not one bit of reason to make it anything less than a horrific injustice.

So I urge you... if you ever find yourself saying or thinking something like "Well, that is just how that society or culture does things. We have no right to object, that is just their way."... remember this thought experiment and think carefully about the nature of individual rights.