“Secularist Dreams” and “Women’s Rights”: Notes on an “Ambiguous Relationship”*

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of the manipulation of the religious and the secular in women’s rights discourses and practices. It problematizes the concept of secularization and desecularization in light of the recognition of the limits of modernity. It also addresses the possibility of a postcolonial and post-secularist discourse on human and women’s rights, opening up the way for the recognition of the emancipatory potential of some forms of religiously inspired feminism. For this, it is necessary to consider the contribution made by various types of feminism to alternative understandings and practices from the point of view of an emancipatory and ecological interpretation of human rights.