“Human Rights Protection, Democratic Deliberation”
65
has in fact wound up giving sustenance to a traditional practice, an
age-old institution that preserves the subordination of women. In
particular, Okin endorses polygyny for “the women of various South
African peoples” (88); polygyny is showed to be supported by
participants of democratic deliberations for “pragmatic, largely
economic reasons” (88), which turn out to be financial “protection”
for vulnerable women and dependent children.
35
But this solution
ends up perpetuating rather than mitigating dependency. In so doing,
this sort of protection can corrode and truncate individual agency once
we realize that the continuation of this tradition of polygyny holds out
little more than frustrated ambitions and unfulfilled lives for young,
ambitious women (wives) whose interests in life might include, and for
some probably do include, living independently and pursuing interests
other than supporting husbands and raising children. Let us recall that
these interests form the cornerstone of the personal autonomy
argument that Okin herself once defended: some women might
“choose to live independently of men, to be celibate or lesbian, or to
decide not to have children” (1999: 14).
The riposte from defenders of the contextually complex and
democratic-deliberative approaches might be along this line: “One
should not lament solutions that reinforce the status quo.
Deliberative-democratic solutions are by nature emergent from
imperfect but viable compromise. Successful resolutions of some of
the most contentious cases of the multicultural dilemma, which
overlap with some cases of VAW, stand in contrast to dogmatic,
even doctrinaire, application of equal rights. A single-minded
defense of autonomy, as if it were the only value worth defending,
speaks ill of liberalism, e.g., its impoverishment. Some of our most
important and enriching relationships such as friendship, romantic
love, and family relations put us at risk of painful loss, personal
completed study of the outcome of the reform of customary marriage in South
Africa.
35
The President of South Africa Jacob Zuma is a polygynist; “South African
President Zuma Marries for Sixth Time” (Herskovitz, 2012).
