Nussbaum Universalism
Women around the world experience varying degrees of oppression and inequality and Nussbaum believes that there should be basic rights for women that applies to every country and culture. She argues that there are universal obligations to protect human functioning and its dignity, and that is the dignity of women is equal to that of men. Different cultures should not have their own standard of what is right and what is wrong, rather, there should be one universal standard of what is right and what is wrong that is the same for every culture around the world. For example, women in India should have the same rights and capabilities as women in Canada. Nussbaum argues for a capabilities approach that is supposed to be universal. The capabilities
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The culture in India and its influence on how women are treated is different from the culture in China and its influence on how women are treated there, etc. and it is a factor that should be taken into account. However, the universal capabilities approach fails to do so because there are differences in each culture’s history and traditions. Universalism assumes that everyone around the world is the same. Evidently, it does not make sense to treat Indian or Chinese women of today as bound by things in the past that we are not. That is, women today are not as heavily influenced by culture and historical events as they were back in time; therefore, women of India and China, despite historical differences, should be treated the same as women of Western cultures. Therefore, there should not be a universal list of fundamental properties and functions of human beings that should be more important than others. Doing so, disrespects the actual historical and cultural differences that exists between cultures. Furthermore, it is most likely that people of the West would create these supposedly universal values. These are people with an upbringing following Western values and have no experience as to what it is like to be a woman in Eastern cultures. Such a list of universal values will not be universal at all, as it would not be applicable to Eastern cultures because, though it can be said that women around the world are oppressed, the ways of which women are oppressed differ and each culture has different ways of how dictating how women of that culture is to be
The culture in India and its influence on how women are treated is different from the culture in China and its influence on how women are treated there, etc. and it is a factor that should be taken into account. However, the universal capabilities approach fails to do so because there are differences in each culture’s history and traditions. Universalism assumes that everyone around the world is the same. Evidently, it does not make sense to treat Indian or Chinese women of today as bound by things in the past that we are not. That is, women today are not as heavily influenced by culture and historical events as they were back in time; therefore, women of India and China, despite historical differences, should be treated the same as women of Western cultures. Therefore, there should not be a universal list of fundamental properties and functions of human beings that should be more important than others. Doing so, disrespects the actual historical and cultural differences that exists between cultures. Furthermore, it is most likely that people of the West would create these supposedly universal values. These are people with an upbringing following Western values and have no experience as to what it is like to be a woman in Eastern cultures. Such a list of universal values will not be universal at all, as it would not be applicable to Eastern cultures because, though it can be said that women around the world are oppressed, the ways of which women are oppressed differ and each culture has different ways of how dictating how women of that culture is to be