Is the Law Empowering or Patronizing Women? The Dilemma in the French Burqa Decision as the Tip of the Secular Law Iceberg
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
The article analyses a French seminal legal award which served as a stepping stone in the recent French debate concerning the legislation banning women from wearing the Burqa headscarf in public. Under this wording— Burqa —a special style of the hijab —a scarf donned by Muslim women—is being targeted. It represents a more extreme form of covering: The Burqa is worn by the Pashtun women of Pakistan and in Afghanistan and covers the body from head to toes in a continuous piece of fabric, whereas the veil banned in France also includes the niqab which may or may not cover the entire body, and allows visibility of the eyes but not the entire face. In the relevant debate, gender equality has been the banner hoisted by court and parliamentarians purporting to protect women against the unsettling impact of the Burqa . This article represents a critical study of this claim. The article describes and analyses the ambivalent tenor of the Burqa Decision and arrives at two main conclusions. First, having distinguished two key values addressed (directly and indirectly) by the Conseil d’État—equality and freedom—the article concludes that although hailed as defying gender discrimination, the judgment must also be construed as contributing to inequality among women. The award remains just as unclear in regards to the protection of freedom of religious expression suggesting that women equality offers only one among other explanations for this ruling. Second, the article’s analysis applies several feminist approaches to the Burqa Decision and finds that the pluralist feminist discourse results in different and inconsistent potential resolutions to the case. The upshot is that the Burqa Decision, which was taken as a strong condemnation of a practise said to be symbolising the subjugation of the female to male domination, was confirming a view espoused largely by Western secular women. In doing so, and given the approval by France’s mainstream society, the award appears to have empowered this particular segment in the female population. At the same time however, the tribunal also stated the obvious namely, that gender equality has been serving as a powerful tool in the adjudicative struggle between secularism and religion. While women’s struggle for gender equality, especially in politics and the economy, has been protracted and not yet fully achieved, the comparatively brief and hurried commitment to gender equality at the intersection of religion and secularism, suggest that gender equality was not the only priority on the adjudicator’s mind, hence is not necessarily the ultimate winner of this award.
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,003 | 0,001 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».