Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
This is an important and insightful book that tackles an incredibly challenging problem, namely, how to balance the commitment of gender equality with the commitment of multiculturalism. Drawing on a wide range of resources, including feminist literature, anthropology, and political and legal theory, the answer by Anne Phillips partially turns on how we understand culture. Phillips wants multiculturalism to dispense with essentialist understandings or "strong" notions of cultures and to place human agency at its center. Instead of understanding cultures as depriving minority women entirely of their agency, we need to recognize the diverse ways that minority women can embrace, struggle with, and reject their cultural practices, norms, and values. A defensible multiculturalism should, according to the author, be grounded on individual rights, not group rights. She does not wish to deny that people are cultural beings. Rather, her claim is that a defensible multiculturalism treats cultures more akin to current treatments of class and gender.
Phillips illustrates this point by discussing Price v. Civil Service Commission (1978). This case found that an age limit of 28 for applicants to an executive grade of the Civil Service did discriminate against women inasmuch as many women bring up children in their twenties and, therefore, start their careers later. This case demonstrates that the British courts can acknowledge constraints on women without denying their autonomy. Public authorities ought...