JS-59.1
The Cosmopolitan Future: A Feminist Approach
Our study questions the approach according to which world society is shaped by "the clash of civilizations". For that purpose, referring to Beck and Sznaider (2010), we analyze what we call the cosmopolitanization of feminism, i.e. this process which enables the gradual recognition of "the others's others", the women, through the evolution of the political rights of women at the global level.
In this context, the descriptive representation of women (understood as the increase in the number of women elected in order to reflect the composition of the electorate), as well as their substantive representation (women's political representation which advances women’s human rights), and their voices within civil society in the North and the South highlight the fact that feminism is undergoing a process of cosmopolitanization, albeit very slowly and in a sporadic way.
In order to present our argument, we adopt a postcolonial feminist reading together with a research method based on national, regional or transnational NGOs' data or on data provided by the Inter-parliamentary Union, UNIFEM and U.N.-Women.
Our article is divided into four parts. In Part One, we precise the meaning of the process of cosmpolitanization as applied to feminism. In Part Two, we describe this process and the way it is articulated “from above” (top-down cosmopolitanization), referring, among other things, to electoral data from around the world and to International Law which, today, guarantees the political rights of women - more or less successfully. Part Three analyzes the cosmopolitanization of feminism “from below” and refers to feminist theories, cyberfeminism and to the global civil/feminist society . Finally, in Part Four, the conclusion, we discuss the common future of feminism and cosmopolitanism.