No, Zeriel, it is that in western democracies women for the most part have the ability to make their own decisions (albeit they tend to get paid less and have difficulty breaking into certain occupations), but there are also significant communities within these nations in which the women are very much unable to make their own decisions. For example, herein Canada, we have a lot of first generation immigrants, many of whom come from highly patriarchal cultures. Thus we have a problem with honour killings in some Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities. Simply being in Canada does not immediately solve the problem of severe gender oppression. Give it a generation or two, and the problem fades away as the families integrate into Canadian culture, but for the first generation, often there is little integration.
Now let’s apply the concept of isolation within a highly patriarchal culture to polygamy in Canada – specifically fundamentalist Mormons and Muslims immigrants.
The fundamentalist Mormons deliberately isolate themselves from Canadian culture, to the degree that they are geographically separate, have their own schools, do not intereact much with nearby communities, and ship in teenage girls from the USA to be brides to their patriarchs.
Muslim immigrants are isolated due to language and finances. Often they find the support that they need to establish themselves in Canada in Muslim communities, where the cultural norms of their original country still apply. Muslim women who immigrate to Canada from cultures that are severely gender biased are unable to simply get up and leave their families, and instead continue social and family life much as they had in their original country.
The "poor harem women"problem is real in Canada. At issue is how we try to deal with the problem. Obviously there is no single solution. One approach has been to criminalize polygamy. This falls short, for with the rise of acceptance of unmarried people living together in conjugal relationships, it is no big deal for there to be poly relationships in which the parties are married in everything but name. While I respect the BC Chief Justice’s analysis of the problem, I am concerned that it does little to deal with the underlying problem, for prohibiting polygamy will not prevent cultural isolation.
In a perfect world, we would accept polygamous marriages, and thereby be more socially and financialy accomodating of distict cultures, which in turn would make it easier for people in those cultures to relate to the Canadian mainstream, and by doing so, be in a better position to reject severe gender inequity. We do not live in a perfect world.
What we do live in is an overall culture that had matured to the point that women are almost equal, and for the most part can make their own decisions. We look around at “poor harem women” cultures, and do not want people in Canada to be subject to such inequity. We do not want women from those cultures to continue to be subjugated when the move to Canada, but we find that for the first generation here, they remain subjugated by their own families and their own relocated communities.