Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-r5qjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-07T09:41:21.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Getting to the Root of Gender Inequality: Structural Injustice and Political Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Serena Parekh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that there is a philosophical basis for the claim that states can be held responsible for structural injustices such as gender discrimination and violence—a claim that has been made in international human rights documents, but one that has not gained much normative force. To show this, I draw on and develop Iris Young's notion of “political responsibility.” The purpose of political responsibility is not to find fault or blame the state for a past wrong, but to encourage the state to make things more just in the future. I argue that the state is able to take responsibility in this sense and can discharge the duty of political responsibility in a more systematic way than individuals can. Further, I show that taking political responsibility would entail changing how states think about their human rights obligations. Rather than focusing on cataloguing abuses, states would be required to work toward changing conditions so that human rights violations are less likely to occur in the future. Consequently, I show that it does make sense to say that the state can be held accountable for structural injustices that lead to women's human rights violations.

Information

Type
Responsibility and Identity in Global Justice
Information
Hypatia , Volume 26 , Issue 4: Special Issue: 2nd FEAST Special Issue , Fall 2011 , pp. 672 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

An‐Na'im, Abdullah Ahmed. 1994. State responsibility under international human rights law to change religious and customary laws. In Human rights of women: National and international perspectives, ed. Cook, Rebecca J.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. Collective responsibility. In Responsibility and judgment, ed. Kohn, Jerome. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 2004. The rights of others: Aliens, residents and citizens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2009. Injustice, evil, and oppression. In Dancing with Iris: The philosophy of Iris Marion Young, ed. Ferguson, Ann and Nagel, Mechthilda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, Rebecca J., and Cusack, Simone. 2010. Gender stereotyping: Transnational legal perspectives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.10.9783/9780812205923CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copelon, Rhoda. 1995. Gendered war crimes: Reconceptualizing rape in time of war. In Women's rights, human rights: International feminist perspectives, ed. Peters, Julie and Wolper, Andrea. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dauer, Sheila. 2001. Indivisible or invisible: Women's human rights in the public and private sphere. In Women, gender, and human rights: A global perspective, ed. Agosin, Marjorie. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Hertel, Shareen. 2006. Unexpected power: Conflict and change among transnational activists. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Liebmann, Marian. 2007. Restorative justice: How it works. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2006. Are women human? And other international dialogues. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2009. Iris Young's last thoughts of responsibility for global justice. In Dancing with Iris: The philosophy of Iris Marion Young, ed. Ferguson, Ann and Nagel, Mechthilda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pogge, Thomas. 2001. How should human rights be conceived? In The philosophy of human rights, ed. Hayden, Patrick. St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 2001. The law of peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2008. Boundaries and allegiances: Problems of justice and responsibility in liberal thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schiff, Jacob. 2008. Confronting political responsibility: The problem of acknowledgment. Hypatia 23(3): 99–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A secular age. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations. 2007. Ending violence against women: From words to action, study of the Secretary‐General (E.06.IV.8). New York: United Nations Publications.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2002. Structural injustice and political responsibility. Unpublished draft presented at the American Political Science Association meeting, Boston, Mass. August 30.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2004. Responsibility and global labor justice. Journal of Political Philosophy 12(4): 365–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2006. Responsibility and global justice: A social connection model. Social Philosophy and Policy 23(1): 102–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar