Gender Parity and Multicultural Feminism: Towards a New Synthesis

Around the world, multicultural societies face the challenge of reconciling legal pluralism with gender equality. To accommodate religious and ethnic diversity, increasing recognition has been accorded to customary law, religious law, and indigenous law. However, women within minority groups are often discriminated against within these traditional legal orders, and excluded from the positions of authority that interpret customary and religious law. Multicultural feminists have proposed a wide range of strategies to strengthen the voice of women, both at the state level and in decisions about the interpretation and evolution of minority cultural and religious practices. This volume explores the connection between gender parity and multicultural feminism, both at the level of theory and in practice. The authors explore a range of cases from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.