Introduction to “Harmful Cultural Practices”

“Harmful cultural (sometimes ‘traditional’) practices” is a term increasingly employed in the last three decades by organisations working within a human rights framework to refer to certain discriminatory practices against women in the Global South, especially in Africa and Asia. In UN policy documents such practices are linked to “cultural traditions” of gender inequality, in violation of women’s rights to “health, life, dignity and personal integrity” (UN 1995). A wide range of practices has been labelled as harmful cultural practices (HCP), including female genital “mutilation;” child and forced marriages; unequal marital and inheritance rights; gender-based violence; nutritional taboos and traditional birth practices; honour crimes; polygamy, etc. However, despite the proliferation of HCPs as a categorical term in activist and policy circles, it is seldom applied in research reports and academic literature. This volume is among the first to addresses this gap and the questions it raises. Is HCP a viable and useful category of comparative analysis and theorisation of gender discriminatory practices across cultural contexts, and if so, what does it cover?