Is secularism so good for women ?

Abstract

The paper reverse the famous question of Susan Möller Okin "Is multiculturalism bad for women" and asks the question of the supposed "natural alliance" between secularism and democracy. It takes as an illustration the relation between secularist movement and women's claims in the history of Belgium from the Belgian revolution until now. It presents a first, sketchy description of the alliance, trying to show that three periods can be distinguished : until the end of the schoolwar, the relations between the secularist movement and women's claim are rather weak and the secularists tend to distrust women, they consider as allied of the clerics; during the period of 1960-2000, the alliance is stonger over the claim of "self-disposal of one's body'" ; then, from 2000 until now, there is a strong division between both secularist and feminist movements, and so there are two alliances : radical secularism and mainstream feminist movement are allied against islam while, radical feminist and tolerant secularism are allied against neo-colonialist position. ; Peer reviewed