In an era when rights are regarded as an answer to injustice and inclusion is the cornerstone of liberal democratic legitimacy, we need to know whether rights advance the meaningful inclusion of the marginalized in politics. Drawing on intersectionality theory I posit that multicultural rights and women’s rights hinder minority women’s influence over public policy that is about them. This happens because political actors (e.g., politicians, rights advocates, minority group leaders) frame multicultural rights and women’s rights as unitary, meaning that they refer to minority groups and women as homogenous, and thus displace the minority women at their intersection. After developing this argument I use critical framing analysis to evaluate how political actors framed the right to religious diversity and women’s rights in four courts cases heard by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) between 2001 and 2014.
What research exists indicates that Muslim women’s influence over national laws restricting their dress has been limited. Given this limited influence and their preference to choose what to wear, a few Muslim women have turned to the ECHR for relief. In all four court cases, however, the ECHR denied the plaintiffs and upheld legislation curtailing the headscarf and burqa in public. What influence, if any, did Muslim women exercise in this premier human rights court? How did they frame rights and represent themselves? How did the justices and other political actors involved frame the right to religious diversity and women’s rights? How did they depict Muslim women? The answers to these questions will not only inform our understanding of the relationship between rights and minority women’s influence over the adjudication of public policy, they also will reveal how rights conflicts are shaping Europe’s discursive environment and whether liberal courts use rights to entrench the domination of minority women.
