Response Paper

Legal and Political Rights of Women Response Paper

            Out of the past several units, I have not found there to be as many parallels to my daily life as in this unit. Two distinct parallels that I have noticed focus on shifting the culture of disengagement in the local government and discovering the relationship between customary and formal law in cultural attitudes. Regarding the first parallel, governments in developing countries often struggle to engage women in their politics because they do not make women feel like their agenda is relevant to women or that they would be necessary to the process. This reminds me very much of the student government situation at the University. Students outside of SGA seldom feel like SGA is accomplishing anything of importance to them and even if they did care about something, they are not given the impression that anything would be done about it. In both sides of the parallels, though the governments want to engage their populace, there is a lack of communication and a general failure at proving relevance.

            The second parallel is related to how customary and formal law are intertwined and how they effect change in cultural attitudes. In developing countries, it is difficult to change any norm without both kinds of law following suit. One may begin with changing formal law out of necessity or some outside pressure, but customary law will follow suit usually soon after that and then there will be a shift in the cultural norm. Or, the customary law will change and then the formal law will respond to the desires of its populace and then the shift occurs. This situation is fairly similar to that of Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Movement in the South. During the 60’s, formal law was changed as a result of pressure and then customary law, or the behavior of some individuals and the change in expectations, began to transform over time. Granted, the issue of racial equality is not resolved completely in any way by this point in history but it must be acknowledged that times have at least changed.