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3 |
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Focal point 3 |
Fundamentalismen and Women's Rights |
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Workshop 3.1 |
"Unity versus Plurality" |
Friday, 09.09.2005, 2.45-4.30 pm
Offices of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Thailand, Turkey
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| Speakers
By forcing the society in a Unitarian concept, there is no room left for different concepts and understanding. By defending fundamentalist policies as the only true one, political opposition is tried to be silenced, to be oppressed as illegitimate. Therefore, fundamental human rights are neglected. There is a need to develop a strategy against a holistic concept of society that denies diversity inside societies. There will be no room left for multi-cultural understanding and for different interests. These concepts have one main element in common: the neglect of any rights to individuals. Individuals are seen as part of the smallest unit of the society – the family. Their rights are restricted to their role in this unit. As a special understanding of family is underlying these ideologies, it is based mainly on special roles for women and men: it denies different sexual preferences, it denies different concepts of living together, it denies the right of women not to marry and it denies the right of different social and political concepts of society. It tends to become an authoritarian concept, based on the role of women and men in society, that does not allow any alternative ways of living and of politics.
Different fundamentalisms target different ways of living, of groups that are considered “outsiders”. We have to understand the underlying forces and interests of these fundamentalist groups to develop strategies against these concepts of unity. As these ideologies mostly argue with ethics, with morality, feminist movements have certain difficulties to foster their demands. Therefore, we have also to ask ourselves in how far these fundamentalist concepts are affecting our political strategies. We have to be aware of the effect on our own concepts. Very often one can observe that feminists are withdrawing certain political demands because of the moral attacks they are confronted with. There is a need to develop strategies against this morally and ethically dominated attack from the fundamentalists.
| Contact
Ulrike Dufner, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Istanbul, Türkei
E-Mail udufner@boell-tr.org, Homepage http://www.boell-tr.org/
Aktualisiert: 23.08.2005, hbr
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