Laïcité, gender equality and the politics of non-domination
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885111430615 |
| Date | 01 July 2012 |
| Author | Eoin Daly |
| Published date | 01 July 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
11(3) 292–323
!The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885111430615
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Article
Laı¨cite
´, gender equality
and the politics of
non-domination
Eoin Daly
Dublin City University, Ireland
Abstract
The relationship between constitutional secularism and gender equality acquires pecu-
liar dimensions in the context of the laı
¨cite
´project in republican France – particularly, in
the contemporary conflict between a laı
¨cite
´interpreted as a politics of emancipatory
social transformation, and the more minimalist liberal conception prevailing in French
law. The dominant narrative in the republican establishment, shared between left and
right, has been that laı
¨cite
´will lead to gender emancipation not only by dissolving any
sectarian dimensions of women’s citizenship – that is, by sustaining a religiously neutral
public sphere – but also, by preventing the domination as well as the coercion of
religious choice in the intimate and private spheres of family and community. In this
narrative, laı
¨cite
´represents a more ambitious project of gender emancipation than that
promised by the liberalisms more redolent of the Anglo-American world. The apogee of
this expansionary interpretation of constitutional secularism is expressed in the 2004
prohibition on conspicuous markers of religious affiliation in the public schools, and the
recent debate on the ‘full’ Islamic veil. This article considers the relationship of laı
¨cite
´to
gender equality through the lens of the broader theoretical debate surrounding the
relationship of political liberalism to the politics of non-domination. The elusive chal-
lenge is to craft a constitutional secularism that can sustain a viable politics of non-
domination – going beyond the formalist voluntarism redolent of classical liberalisms,
offering undominated as well as uncoerced religious choice – yet also avoiding an
overzealous emancipatory stance that itself assumes a regulative role for women’s
religious choices.
Keywords
burqa, gender, laı¨cite
´, neo-republicanism, political liberalism, religion, secularism
Corresponding author:
Eoin Daly, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland
Email: eoin.daly@dcu.ie
In France, we must resist the New Republican dogma according to which the
Republic being ‘one’, equality should take care of itself. (Jacques Delors
1
)
Introduction
This article considers the relationship of gender equality to constitutional secular-
ism through the prism of the laı¨cite
´concept in French law and political thought. In
a broader optic, constitutional secularism is widely assumed as a necessary condi-
tion of gender equality – and specifically, of women’s equal religious liberty – in its
claim to create a status of citizenship dissociated from any religious dimension or
definition. This assumed link is given particularly forceful expression in contem-
porary France, in the context of an ongoing oscillation between a laı¨cite
´interpreted
as a politics of emancipatory social transformation, and the more minimalist prin-
ciple, redolent of a liberal logic of neutrality, which tends to prevail in French law.
In denying any religious dimension to women’s citizenship by protecting the formal
equality of their rights, laı¨cite
´is considered to protect women’s right of self-deter-
mination with respect to religion.
2
In terms ostensibly similar to Rawlsian liberal-
ism, it protects their exercise of moral personality against any presumed non-public
identity upon which their public status might otherwise be defined.
3
Their religion
then being irrelevant to their standing in the political community, their freedom of
conscience is protected as against any imposed, assumed link to a particular com-
munity or religious affiliation. Laı¨cite
´, as a pillar of French republicanism, thus
underpins a universalist definition of citizenship, with citizens’ public identities
transcending ‘particularist’ identities, abstracted from ‘pre-political’ cultural and
religious differences.
4
Thus, part of laı¨cite
´’s legitimacy-claim is its basis in a rela-
tively open, republican conception of national identity, resting on the idea of
‘vouloir vivre ensemble’
5
– on terms of social cooperation that do not presuppose
any ‘blood and soil’ link, involuntary and organic, ethnic or religious, in the vein of
romantic nationalism.
6
Laborde attributes this to ‘the Rousseau-influenced revo-
lutionary hostility to intermediary groups and ‘‘factions’’ – associated with privi-
leges, divisiveness and corruption’.
7
Thus, within the prevailing narrative of French republicanism, women are rec-
ognized as free and equal citizens because their citizenship or public identity is
abstracted both from their gender identity, but also from any religious identity
that might be assigned to them through a politics of recognition. With the quality
and terms of their citizenship dissociated from religion, religious precepts cannot be
imposed on them through the machinery of the state, in the form of cultural or
group rights. As Laborde points out,
8
laı¨cite
´is positioned close to Brian Barry’s
egalitarian critique of multiculturalism,
9
hostile to any politics of recognition,
eschewing the recognition of religious or cultural identity as itself a basis for deter-
mining individual rights. Its insistence on a unitary and singular public identity
echoes Rawls’s formulation of a right of persons ‘to view [themselves] as indepen-
dent from and not identified with any particular conceptions of the good, or
Daly 293
scheme of final ends’.
10
Therefore, while some have claimed that laı¨cite
´represents
something of a ‘comprehensive’ liberalism, assuming, within Rawls’s terms, a ‘reg-
ulative role for all of life’,
11
it may alternatively be seen as inscribed within the
‘liberal principle of legitimacy’, in that it claims to ground the ‘terms of social
cooperation’ not on any particular conception of the good, but rather, on a
shared ‘political’ basis for justification that may be embraced by those holding
conflicting ‘comprehensive’ views.
12
Thus, laı¨cite
´is posited as a republican bulwark
against normative multiculturalism and communitarianism: it follows that
women’s equal religious liberty is to be secured not through recognition of their
religious difference, but rather, the assertion of a unitary political and legal status
transcending such difference.
13
Yet the narrative of laı¨cite
´also seeks to set it apart from the fastidious non-
interventionism of liberal policies.
14
The discourse surrounding the 2004 prohibi-
tion on ‘conspicuous’ religious attire in public schools claims that laı¨cite
´offers a
more ambitious project of equal liberty than a project of formal state neutrality. It
claims to guarantee a range of goods, capacities and resources necessary to the
effective and independent exercise of undominated religious choice – by ensuring,
for example, that schoolgirls are not subject to inordinate pressure to veil them-
selves.
15
The aim of a religiously neutral public school environment was rational-
ized by the need to ensure not only that religious observance was uncoerced, but
also that it could be intelligently and effectively exercised independently of the
power relations operating within private, familial and associational spheres.
16
Therefore, it represents a rather expansive interpretation of the background
social and institutional conditions needed for the free exercise of religious
choice – not only as against coercive interference by the state, but also the
potentially overwhelming pressures of family and community. Moreover, it was
according to this same narrative that the measure was able to find a good deal of
feminist support. This dominant narrative holds that freedom from religious pres-
sures and influences within the public school environment will enable child-citizens
to exercise self-determination with respect to beliefs, whatever their circumstances
of origin,
17
endowing them with the goods, resources and capacities to resist intim-
idation and domination of religious choices.
In this article, I argue that this narrative positions laı¨cite
´close, at least in its
contemporary conception, to the neo-republican account of freedom as
non-domination. Associated with ancient, Renaissance and Commonwealth thin-
kers such as Cicero, Machievelli and Harrington, the republican conception has
been revived in the modern era by Skinner and Pettit in particular. It is conceived
as an alternative to the classically liberal conception of ‘liberty as non-interference’
associated with Hobbes, Bentham and Berlin. It claims to offer a more expansive
and egalitarian account of freedom than liberalism, while also eschewing any per-
fectionist foundation, not being rooted in any conception of the good, of human
flourishing or excellence. This argument surrounding the parallels between laı¨cite
´
and neo-republican thought applies with particular force to issues surrounding
gender equality: As Kahn notes,
18
laı¨cite
´has been recast in recent decades as not
294 European Journal of Political Theory 11(3)
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