J oan W allach S cott . Sex and Secularism

The primary goal of Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism is to counter the notion that secular societies inherently promote gender equality more than religious—particularly Muslim—ones. While implicitly acknowledging the dangers of religious extremism, Scott argues that secularism is not in itself a guarantee of equality. As such, her latest book is a direct intervention in contemporary political debates and a rebuttal of views she summarizes as a “clash of civilizations” (1). Scott, however, goes well beyond refuting such visions. She offers both a critique of secularism and a broad reinterpretation of gender and power in Western nation-states since the late eighteenth century. To do so, she builds on her 2007 The Politics of the Veil. That book focused on laws forbidding French Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in public schools on the grounds of laïcité (a French version of secularism). Scott looks here at more general workings of secularism. Rejecting “objective definitions” of the term, she instead explores how it has been deployed and what its effects have been (4). She begins by arguing that gender inequality, rather than equality, was built into secular states. She then seeks to determine how and when sexual emancipation and gender equality came to be associated with secularism.

Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Secularism · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies