Publication:
The UN Approach to Harmful Traditional Practices: Some Conceptual Problems

dc.contributor.author Winter, Bronwyn en_US
dc.contributor.author Thompson, Denise en_US
dc.contributor.author Jeffreys, Sheila en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2021-11-25T13:43:13Z
dc.date.available 2021-11-25T13:43:13Z
dc.date.issued 2002 en_US
dc.description.abstract Although we support UN initiatives to combat those cultural practices it has identified as harmful to women and children, we have some reservations about the way in which those initiatives have been conceptualised. We are concerned that the UN emphasis on 'non-Western' cultures gives the impression that the metropolitan centres of the West contain no 'traditions' or 'culture' harmful to women, and that the violence which does exist there is idiosyncratic rather than culturally condoned. The paper gives a brief historical overview of UN initiatives in relation to 'harmful traditional practices' (HTPs). It then goes on to discuss what is involved in the notion of 'culture'. In the next section, we turn the focus of attention to 'the West', applying the UN schema to illustrate the point that the wealthy industrialised nations have their own traditions harmful to women. Although these traditions differ in crucial ways from those identified by the UN, they, too, are a consequence of a culture of male supremacy. In a final section, we discuss briefly some other problems we see arising from the UN approach to HTPs, namely, the oddness of the category 'violence against women', the lack of consideration given to prostitution as a HTP, and the difficulties of including Western HTPs within a human rights framework. We conclude by pointing out that unless harm to women is situated within a world-wide culture of male supremacy, it can seem as though the problems are elsewhere than the wealthy, metropolitan centres of the West. en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/40419
dc.language English
dc.language.iso EN en_US
dc.rights CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 en_US
dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/ en_US
dc.source Legacy MARC en_US
dc.title The UN Approach to Harmful Traditional Practices: Some Conceptual Problems en_US
dc.type Journal Article en
dcterms.accessRights metadata only access
dspace.entity.type Publication en_US
unsw.accessRights.uri http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_14cb
unsw.identifier.doiPublisher http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616740110116191 en_US
unsw.relation.faculty Arts Design & Architecture
unsw.relation.ispartofissue 1 en_US
unsw.relation.ispartofjournal International Feminist Journal of Politics en_US
unsw.relation.ispartofpagefrompageto 72-94 en_US
unsw.relation.ispartofvolume 4 en_US
unsw.relation.originalPublicationAffiliation Winter, Bronwyn en_US
unsw.relation.originalPublicationAffiliation Thompson, Denise, Social Policy Research Centre, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW en_US
unsw.relation.originalPublicationAffiliation Jeffreys, Sheila en_US
unsw.relation.school Social Policy Research Centre *
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