Introduction

A crucial limitation, then, of deliberative democratic strategies that aim to respond to conflicts of culture is that women, as a historically vulnerable internal minority, might often struggle to voice their needs in the public sphere. In light of this problem, a theory that responds equitably to the interplay between the universal and the particular should supplement the defence of group rights to deliberation with a commitment to enhancing women's capacities to participate in their communities and in democratic consultations over time. While liberal democracy's commitment to treating people as equals requires that individuals have a voice in governing collective affairs, bringing this situation about involves equipping them with certain capacities for self-direction, even if traditional sectors of minority groups might often prioritise collectivist goods over the ability of individuals to decide for themselves. In this chapter, I defend a universal normative commitment to individual self-direction which I frame in terms of a right to autonomy. I contend that a commitment to this universal right sometimes justifies special protective measures for women of non-liberal cultures, for reasons that stand free of the deliberative process, but which support its inclusive nature in the long term. This approach to protecting women's interests, as will be demonstrated, is consistent with Young's awareness of women's serialised location in different cultures.

One might initially resist this claim on grounds that, while the idea of autonomy has been widely praised by political theorists and has been called the ‘lodestar of much modern liberalism’ (Mendus 2000a: 127), its meaning is highly contested and elusive (Dworkin 1989: 54–5).