Thursday, January 29, 2009

Solidarity sister

At the core of chapter four was the friction between individuals and groups and individuals and society. Wolgast argues that human rights are individual and create a kind of social atomism, that rights are inextricably bound to self interest and not dependent on society. Minow would add the social context back into the discussion because she argues that rights are an indication from the community around the individual.

The debate over women's rights straddles that line between the individual and society. Women, as being biologically different than men now boast certain rights that men can never claim - maternity leave, abortion, etc. But yet these individual rights don't alleviate the problems inherent in the societal structure we live in. Smart argues that legal resources like new civil rights will never be enough, the underlying social concerns must be addressed and molded to underwrite these rights. By that logic, Wolgast's idea that rights are individual and independent of society founders. Rights are inextricably bound the the social context in which they exist.

While the women's rights discussed in the first chapter could be considered first generation rights because they are civil and political, the rights might be more effective if they were filtered through the notion of solidarity rights. Because "no appeal to individual rights can ever adequately remedy the sexual discrimination of women as a group," (80) perhaps women's rights need to be approached as group rights, tantamount to solidarity rights. If women were kept from jobs and equal pay because they were women, and not determined on an individual basis, doesn't that appeal to the core logic of solidarity rights, that the whole of the group is more important than the collection of individuals?

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