Public Man versus Private Woman: A Debate on Theory and Practice (original) (raw)
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The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Theory and Practice, Present and Future , 2015
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has emphasised the right to privacy as it includes an obligation not to interfere in private life. As the Court has expanded upon the definition of the right to privacy, it has determined that as much as there is an inherent negative obligation for the State to respect the right to privacy, there is equally a positive duty for the State to protect and promote the right to private life. In the context of women’s rights, where a considerable number of rights violations occur in the private sphere, regulation of the private in the form of protection from discrimination and violence is fundamental to the promotion of women’s human rights. However, as it stands, regulation in the private sphere is most often concerned with interference in women’s decision-making and autonomy. While the Court has included in the definition of the right to privacy provisions for women such as reproductive health services, it has failed to apply this definition to subsequent women’s rights violations. Despite developments in rhetoric, the Inter-American Court has been reluctant to traverse the divide that exists between the public and private spheres, which can ultimately prove detrimental to the advancement of women’s enjoyment of their rights in the region.
The Panoptic State, Privacy, and Politicized Women
Baku Research Institute, 2021
Violations of privacy in political and social relations, such as interfering in private life, the sharing of private information, and unauthorized access to private space, are widespread in Azerbaijan. In political relations, some of these tactics were employed by the government in March 2021 against five female citizens. In the article, I will criticize the patriarchal and panoptic state from three aspects, referring to these privacy violation cases as the 4+1 March Incidents.
Acta Iuridica Resoviensia, 2023
The democratic society strives for rules to maintain peace and well -being of the citizens. Rules may limit individuals but shall also give them freedom and safety. Human rights are an essential basis of the democracy; therefore, the European Human Rights Convention plays a pivotal role in ensuring these special and necessary rights and freedoms. Right to private life expressed in Art. 8 of the Convention secures a boundary between a public image and a private one, which, however, tends to be breached. The special bond between an individual and the State strives for balancing their separate interests. Even though the d ichotomy of such a relationship perpetuates around public and private matters, a single person is still a separate being in the society build within a State. According to the European Court of Human Rights’ case-law, the State can interfere with a private life in a way that is prescribed by law, necessary in a democratic society, while pursuing a legitimate aim that falls into certain margin of appreciation. However, there is a lively discussion concerning secret surveillance and monitoring of the individuals by the public authorities via obtaining CCTV footage and recordings from street cameras. Data processed in this way falls within the scope of Art. 8 of the Convention and constitutes a private life element. The role of the State is to protect and give freedom to, not freedom from, whereas the role of an individual seems to be to adjust and respect the regulations for the better good. The usage of juxtaposing terminology such as “private” and “public” is crucial, deliberate, and intentional when discussing individual rights in a democratic society. Private life and public society shall be understood and learnt about together, not separately, as the boundaries between them tend to disappear when it comes to the protection of human rights. private life, privacy, human rights, freedom, European Human Rights Convention, European Court of Human Rights, case-law analysis, monitoring, secret surveillance, street cameras
Feminism, Democracy and the Right to Privacy
Minerva 9. Nov. 2005, 2005
This article argues that people have legitimate interests in privacy that deserve legal protection on democratic principles. It describes the right to privacy as a bundle of rights of solitude, intimacy and confidentiality and shows that, so described, people have legitimate interests in privacy. These interests are both personal and political, and provide the grounds for two different justifications of privacy rights. Though both are based on democratic concerns for the freedom and equality of individuals, these two justifications for privacy can be distinguished because the one is principally concerned with protecting the personal freedom and equality of individuals, while the other is principally concerned with their political equivalents. Feminists have often been ambivalent about legal protection for privacy, because privacy rights have, so often, protected the coercion and exploitation of women, and made it difficult to politicise personal forms of injustice. However, interpreting the content and justification of privacy rights in light of the differences between democratic and undemocratic forms of politics can enable us to meet these concerns, and to distinguish a democratic justification of privacy rights from the alternatives.
Chi Kent L Rev, 1999
* I would like to thank the participants at faculty workshops at both the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and at Fordham Law School who provided valuable insights and suggestions. I would also like to thank the participants at the Cornell Law Review Symposium in October 1999 who challenged me to think again about the significance of the public/private distinction in feminist theorizing. 1. Carole Pateman, Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy, in PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IN SOCIAL LIFE 281,281 (S. I. Benn & G. F. Gaus eds., 1983). 2. The categories can be usefully subdivided further, see Anita L. Allen, Coercing Privacy, 40 WM. & MARY L. REV. 723 (1999) (listing physical, informational, and proprietary privacy in addition to decisional privacy); however, these two categories describe reasonably well the scope of feminist concerns with privacy for my purposes. 3. See, e.g., RONALD DWORKIN, FREEDOM'S LAW: THE MORAL READING OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 25-26, 250-54 (1996) (justifying privacy by arguing that government "must not dictate what its citizens think about matters of political or moral or ethical
Private v Public, Gender Equality
Questions of private and public spaces and of gender roles and equality in the Muslim world are widely discussed. Frequently this happens from a perspective of sociology: by critically describing existing structures and channels of interaction between men and women in family and society, or by analyzing problems of protection and sexual control that become obstacles to women's activities. They are also discussed from a perspective of law: this may be in an attempt to navigate an assumed codified law system or one that is actually in force in some Muslim country in order to find solutions to urgent problems of marriage, divorce, inheritance, domestic violence etc. especially when there seems to be a conflict between "Western" norms and expectations on one hand and what is perceived as Islamic on the other; or it may come with a suggestion to reform an existing law code. There are various philosophical attempts to explain phenomena in Muslim societies based on specific anthropological premises and, accordingly, with an emphasis on the differences or similarities of women and men, justifying an outlook on their equal or unequal tasks in society respectively. For educational purposes, we are presented numerous accounts of achievements of individual Muslim women scholars, scientists, writers, traders, or politicians in history-but they hardly ever address the question of how these women reached their position. There are also various visions of men and women cooperating constructively and peacefully in an ideal society in the future, a utopia called Islam that leaves plenty of space for dreams and aspirations.
International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on the Dialogue between Sciences & Arts, Religion & Education, 2018
A major issue in contemporary society, one that engenders debates and disputes among philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, jurists and other specialists refers to the drastic change of the structure and functions of the traditional family. Due to the great number of people who prefer to live alone, divorce, in single-parent families or consensual unions, the values of the traditional family are questioned and often seem totally outdated. In this article we aim to analyze the changes produced into the content of the notion of family in the contemporary society in contrast to the traditional family ideas and values. We believe that, as society and the state evolved becoming increasingly complex, the role of the state in the individual's life grew and the family's influence diminished. From our point of view, one of the reasons why the contemporary family is so different from the traditional family is due to the increased influence of the state in the individual's life through its institutions and the legal order: social protection, ensuring a decent living standard, education etc. In order to support this idea, we will present a series of philosophical and legal arguments through which we will try to demonstrate that the major influence of the state and the law in the individual's life constitutes an essential element that has led to a decrease in the influence of the traditional family.
The Changing Meaning of Privacy, Identity and Contemporary Feminist Philosophy
Minds and Machines, 2011
This paper draws upon contemporary feminist philosophy in order to consider the changing meaning of privacy and its relationship to identity, both online and offline. For example, privacy is now viewed by European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as a right, which when breached can harm us by undermining our ability to maintain social relations. I briefly outline the meaning of privacy in common law and under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to show the relevance of contemporary feminist thought, in particular the image of selfhood that stresses its relationality. I argue that the meaning of privacy is in the process of altering as a result of a number of contingent factors including both changes in technology, particularly computer mediated communication (CMC), and changes in the status of women. This latter point can be illustrated by the feminist critique of the traditional reluctance of the liberal state to interfere with violence and injustice within the ''privacy'' of the home. In asking the question: ''how is the meaning of ''privacy'' changing?'' I consider not only contemporary legal case law but also Thomas Nagel's influential philosophical analysis of privacy. Nagel's position is useful because of the detail with which he outlines what privacy used to mean, whilst bemoaning its passing. I agree with his view that its meaning is changing but am critical of his perspective. In particular, I challenge his claim regarding the traditional ''neutrality of language'' and consider it in the context of online identity.
Between public and private environment: genders in dispute
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023
The statements about the feminine permeate the times and regulate a memory about the woman in the social bosom, having as some of its effects the institution of social practices, frequently associated with the place that the woman can (and should) occupy in the social sphere. Taking as a theoretical-analytical basis the assumptions of Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux), we propose a brief reflection on the intertwining between history and memory in (and for) the regularization of an imaginary about the feminine today. In this path, we take a historical-analytical path about the feminist movement led in its first moment by suffragettes, taking into account the antifeminist discourses then in force. In this perspective, we seek to better understand the way in which ideology works in these senses in order to (re)signify certain social practices.