Gender Equality and Cultural Justice: The Limits of 'Transformative Accommodation'

Although Shachar's model of joint governance is well placed to address many of the tensions between gender equality and cultural justice in the family and personal law arena, she is mistaken to assume that the principles of `transformative accommodation' can be applied equally well to questions of criminal justice and disputes regarding the education and upbringing of the young. While a system of joint governance may well be one of the most effective means of resolving conflicts between cultural justice and gender equality, the difficulties inherent in Shachar's approach point towards the need for a sophisticated theoretical framework that recognises the distinctions between different social arenas, identifies the considerations that are pertinent to each, and establishes the fundamental principles that should govern the allocation of jurisdictional authority in each social setting.