By looking at historical material from 19th-century France, Joan Scott shows that secularization was not synonymous with women’s emancipation, but
with the articulation of new justifications for their exclusion from male public worlds. This
is an important point to make these days because the word secularism is bandied about loosely in public debate, with
little attention to its variable
and complex history. Especially
in discussions of Islam and its treatment of women, the secular, the modern, and sexual liberation are touted as the “primordial values” of progressive, democratic states while the religious, the traditional, and the subordination of women designate arenas of authoritarian backwardness.
New York City, NY; NYC