Abstract:The idea of women's rights as human rights can facilitate our identifying the causes, consequences, and potential remedies for the current quagmire in which we find themselves, but it needs some reformulation. To the traditional understandings of human rights, I add four conceptual tools:(1) Mahatma Gandhi's idea of the counterparts of rights and duties, (2) Eisler's concept of partnership (as opposed to dominator) societies, (3) Johan Galtung's expansion of our conception of violence to include its structural and cultural forms, and, finally, (4) the literature on nonviolence as a path to mobilization and transformation that resists existing social structures and builds new ones.Keywords: women's rights; human rights; violence; nonviolence; partnership; domination; patriarchy; structural violence; cultural violence A first hurdle to be surmounted in creating a caring democracy is to address the twin crises of massive inequality and climate change. The current social system, now loosely organized through networks of relationships, power, and communication at the global level, is simply unsustainable. Inequality has already led to a veritable holocaust of human suffering in terms of malnutrition, as well as widespread structural, cultural, and direct violence; in short, a scandalous violation of human rights and a threat to all species as well as life on the planet itself. One core issue in this crisis, and a productive place to begin, is the rights of the half of humanity that is widely suppressed.In addition to Riane Eisler's call (Eisler, 2017, in frameworks by rethinking the concept of human rights that has had so much traction in prodemocracy mobilizing in recent decades. In this article, I hope to further a dialogue about ways in which the human rights and duties frame can facilitate identifying the causes, consequences of, and potential remedies for this current quagmire in which we find ourselves. Although the foundation of this article is sociological (my disciplinary home), I draw upon a variety of disciplines and studies that inform my thinking.To the traditional understandings of human rights, I will add four conceptual tools: Mahatma Gandhi's idea of the counterparts of rights and duties, Eisler's concept of partnership (as opposed to dominator) societies, Johan Galtung's expansion of our conception of violence to include its structural and cultural forms, and, finally, the literature on nonviolence as a path to mobilization and transformation that resists existing social structures and builds new ones.The idea of women's rights has been one of the more recent chapters in the development of human rights theory and action, and a crucial step in democratizing human culture; I will focus attention on this important area.
PREREQUISITES FOR A CARING DEMOCRACYIn order to consider how to create what Riane Eisler calls "a caring democracy," I suggest that we rethink the ubiquitous concept of human rights with a special emphasis on rights for the most vulnerable, especially women and girls as one of...