Fundamentalism, Women's Empowerment and Reproductive Rights

Abstract

Reproductive Health Matters has until this issue of the journal focused almost exclusively on secular threats to women’s reproductive rights. However, given the extent of the influence of politically motivated fundamentalism intentionally, not least at the Cairo and Beijing conferences, this seemed an important moment to focus on the influence and dangers of the many faces of fundamentalism for women and women rights.

The term ‘fundamentalism’ originated in relation to 19th century Christianity to describe Protestant religious and political movements, which attempted a literal or ‘fundamental’ interpretation of Biblical scripts, but it has acquired a much broader usage today. As several of the papers here illustrate-Feldman and Clark, Freedman, Hoodfar - there are distinct definitions of fundamentalism as well as many hesitations about using the term at all.