From human wrongs to universal rights: communication and feminist challenges for the promotion of women's health in the Third World

Abstract

This article argues that in the quest for global bioethics in its relation to the promotion of women's health and women's rights, the main challenge is to, first, rise above the relativist trap and second, to solve the false dilemma between individualism and collectivism. Particularly in order to improve women's position and advance their well-being in many developing countries with patriarchal cultural practices, there is an urgent need to introduce modern medicine and to share more evenly and efficiently the health care resources of the industrialized societies. This presumes that we can find a normative bioethical approach that promotes the rights of individuals without striving for cultural assimilation and disrespect. From the philosophical point of view this means that we have to overcome the debate between the rival views of justice, and rather find the shared features of the various approaches, thus diminishing the exaggerated polarizations between them. The author claims that despite its importance in women's rights protection, feminist bioethics cannot remain as a normative alternative that can replace either liberal or communitarian approaches. Instead feminism needs to be part of both liberal and communitarian ethical thinking. Communitarianism, for its part, cannot offer an alternative to either liberalism or feminism, but it can function as an essential critical balancing force within these approaches. Individualist liberalism, on the other hand, has to find its way into collective social structures and accept their maintenance, instead of exhausting itself in its attempts to lift individuals above or beyond their social contexts. All in all, the article shows that in finding the global bioethical norms the incompatibility between universalist and relativist reasoning or between individualist and collective ethical positions per se is not the main problem. Rather the problem is in our persistent tendency to believe that such an incompatibility exists. However, if we overcome the debate on whether one cultural background is superior to another, we can find a way to agree on some common norms that are based on shared values of very different traditions. Finding globally acceptable values, however, is not enough unless we pay more attention to their promotion in practice, in very different economic, social and political circumstances.