Women are often treated badly or unequally. It raises the issue of interfering with other cultures when we don't agree with the way they are treated; it is difficult to interfere because we do not want to “impose our will”. Nussbaum examines the utilitarian approach to valuing all individuals involved, which would obviously include women. This approach would allow us to criticize the practices of other cultures. It also discusses the capabilities approach, according to which preferences may not always be indicators of quality of life. It has a list of capabilities, which were generated to determine which activities are so central as to seem definitive of a truly human life. Without these, a life would be considered not fully human. He further explains that this approach is Aristotelian in theory. Nussbaum addresses this issue by asking whether that woman in another culture (and compared to that culture's norms) “after due consideration, and with the full range of capabilities at her disposal, makes that norm her own.” When human beings receive the right educational and material support, they can become fully capable of performing major human functions. The capabilities approach questions whether a woman possesses capabilities. If so, and she is still holding on to a tradition that we might consider wrong or harmful, then we must let her live like that.
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