Cultures and Gender: Harmful Practices, Feminist Interventions and Women’s Rights

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of the making of reactive cultural identities in a particular and sensitive case: the female genital mutilation (FGM) in an African context. This case is framed in the debate between feminism and multiculturalism and in the controversies about the feminist transnational interventions to defend women’s human rights. Alice Walker, the Afro-American writer and activist promoted an international campaign against FGM that was strongly contested by African activists. There has been a main criticism against sensationalism in the media that reduces Africa as alterity to a barbarian and uncivilised rite. We try to analyse all this in relation to the need of promoting an intercultural feminist ethics in order to fostering the process of empowerment of local women. Contexts and means are relevant if we try, first, to eradicate cultural practices that damage women’s lives and rights and, also, to consolidate a transnational and intercultural feminism.