Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Designer gowns

Three out of 10 Muslim women were skipping appointments at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, because they did not want to wear the revealing, immodest hospital gowns. So -- the hospital redesigned them to give extra coverage.
This is wonderful news, long overdue, and I hope that the new gowns -- which are clearly acceptable to healthcare workers -- are adopted elsewhere, quickly.
My question is why it had to take a minority group, in this case Muslims, to bring this about. The fact is, the gowns were revealing, immodest, embarrasing and at times humiliating for everyone -- not just religious Muslims, not just religious people from other faiths, but for everyone, religious and secular. And there is no way that doctors and hospitals everywhere don't know this.
The fact is that if your grievance has the words, 'cultural concern' attached, it is much more likely to be taken seriously than an identical or similar grievance which doesn't. Just one more indication, I think, that Western society is beginning to respect cultural rights over human rights.

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