Culture, as I said, is often used as a handy tool to be dismissive of them and to tell people they are totally irrelevant. For example, I was once in a meeting at the United Nations and the topic was genital mutilation of women, which some people purport is a cultural activity. This one particular chieftain stood up and started berating women for saying that there's anything wrong with that, how dare you tread on our culture? He was promptly asked by a woman from his own country, “Who do you speak for? Are you speaking for the women of your country or are you speaking for your power over women in your country?” It was quite a comeuppance for him, because he was using culture and his own definition of culture in his power base to promote an abusive practice.
That's not western culture imposing itself, that's the culture in itself saying we don't want this any more. On the one hand where it wasn't very successful for western human rights advocates to condemn genital mutilation, it was very effective for western nations to support women in their own countries to say to the men in their own countries, or to their government or to their organizations that would either turn a blind eye or support this kind of activity, “We don't want this. It's harmful to our health. It's harmful to our future children. It's harmful to our society to have this kind of practice.” The most effective way western countries could support that is by supporting the local women.
Another good example was stoning. Remember when there was that big exposé about stoning a woman who had committed adultery or something. What was very damaging in that scenario, because Rights and Democracy supported the local lawyers in Nigeria who were assisting that woman, was western countries condemning the government structure, saying “You're so brutal, you're so savage, imagine stoning someone.” That was very unhelpful, because all it let the chieftains do was say look at these western people trying to corrupt our culture, and they're even more punitive.
What was helpful in that situation was to empower the lawyers working for that woman, give them the resources and support that they needed so they could bring to the Muslim court the arguments to show the judges that they were wrong in interpreting the Koran the way they were. It turned out to be a local solution to a local problem rather than a western culture imposed one. At the end of the day it promoted gender equality, because the judges then said this law is wrong; it's being interpreted wrongly. That did more to support the equality of women in Nigeria than western culture being imposed to say that these people are savages and they shouldn't be doing this. It just makes the local people feel bad and in fact turns some women against people saying that locally.
This is what I mean when I say that cultural relativism can be used as a sword and it shouldn't be used that way. But on the other hand, those who are providing assistance have to be very sensitive to acknowledging local people being able to solve these problems themselves, and empowering them to do so, giving them the resources they need to do so but not necessarily imposing the way we would solve the problem through using human rights as a sledgehammer, for example.
The genital mutilation thing, just to finish that story, was solved, and is being solved in many countries by promoting health, promoting good practices, and educating people about how women's reproductive capacities work and how this can damage those reproductive capacities. As opposed to name calling or suggesting that they have a primitive culture, it's enriching that culture to respect the integrity of the woman's body, the role of the woman in society, and how important a role they play. They should be elevated, as opposed to being able to treat them in this manner that hurts them physically, emotionally, psychologically, and in every other way.