Multiculturalism from gender perspective

The aim of this study is to evaluate and re-read the multiculturalism from gender perspective. This requires that the definitions and practices of multiculturalism are examined. In this context, the tension between multiculturalism and gender relations in particular will be revealed and approaches to avoid this tension will be addressed in a comparative way. This study will be focused on the concepts of liberal, communitarian and feminist multiculturalism in the relationship between multiculturalism and gender. Examples such as polygamy, headscarf, female circumcision are especially experienced in terms of women. The main argument is that these experiences are free elections or are protectionist imperatives that keep culture and tradition alive. While these experiences are assessed in the liberal multiculturalism approach in the context of ensuring integration with neutral or universal policies, communitarian multiculturalism is regarded as a secondary to ensure the continuity of cultures and group interests. Feminist multiculturalism, on the other hand, demonstrates the tension between the "unencumbered self" underlying liberal theory and the communitarians' "positioned subject" and what can be done to overcome this tension. The focus of this work is on Susan Moller Okin and critiques of his arguments. Feminist politics theorist Okin emphasizes that the culture is not only valuable because it exists, but the value of a culture must be measured by the values it gives to individual autonomy. Okin asserts that women should not be disadvantaged by their gender, should have freely chosen lives. Liberal and communitarian approaches to the theory of multiculturalism in the gender context are unsatisfactory. Of course no de facto proposal/model can be found. But there is absolutely a third way that enables us to become a party to human existence and that involves women. In this context, it is necessary to develop a transformative and re-regulatory.