Western Feminism
While feminist writing in the US is still marginalized (except perhaps from the point of view of women of colour addressing privileged white women), western feminist writing on women in the third world must be considered in the context of the global hegemony of western scholarship - i.e., the production, publication, distribution and consumption of information and ideas.
Marginal or not, this writing has political effects and implications beyond the immediate feminist or disciplinary audience. One such significant effect of the dominant 'representations' of western feminism is its conflation with imperialism in the eyes of particular third-world women.5 Hence the urgent need to examine the political implications of our analytic strategies and principles.
The first analytical presupposition I focus on is involved in the strategic location or situation of the category 'women' vis-a-vis the context of analysis. The assumption of women as an already constituted and coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial location, implies a notion of gender or sexual difference or even patriarchy which can be applied universally and cross-culturally.
The second analytical presupposition is evident on the methodological level, in the uncritical way 'proof of universality and cross-cultural validity are provided. The third is a more specifically political presuppo- sition, underlying the methodologies and the analytic strategies, i.e., the model of power and struggle they imply and suggest that all third world women look the same.
All women have a sameness in oppression, no matter where you are from. Women are seen as material objects in society, along with being described as powerless, exploited, and sexually harrassed.
Women's sexuality is being controlled by men through genital mutilation. "this procedure takes away sexual pleasure for a woman."
Defining women as "objects who defend themselves," and men as,"subjects who perpetrate violence," gives society that men equal powerful and women equals powerless. The only way to change this societal norm is going based off of historical and political background.
Women are seen as the dependent group compared to men.
the marriage ritual of the Bemba as a multi-stage event 'whereby a young man becomes incorporated into his wife's family group as he takes up residence with them and gives his services in return for food and maintenance' This ritual extends over many years, and the sexual relationship varies according to the degree of the girl's physical maturity. It is only after the girl undergoes an initiation ceremony at puberty that intercourse is sanctioned, and the man acquires legal rights over the woman. This initiation ceremony is the most important act of the consecration of women's reproductive power, so that the abduction of an uninitiated girl is of no consequence, while heavy penalty is levied for the seduction of an initiated girl.
The Women in Development Movement focuses on the fact that 'development' is synonymous with 'economic development' or 'economic progress'. omen are seen as being affected positively or negatively by economic develop- ment policies, and this is the basis for cross-cultural comparison.
The Women in Development feminists assume that all third world women have the same problems. wever, the interests of urban, middle-class, educated Egyptian housewives, to take only one instance, could surely not be seen as being the same as those of their uneducated, poor maids. Development policies do not affect both groups of women in the same way.
To assume that the mere practice of veiling women in a number of Muslim countries indicates the universal oppression of women through sexual segregation is not only analytically reductive, but also proves to be quite useless when it comes to the elaboration of oppositional political strategy.
the concept of the 'sexual division of labour' is more than just a descriptive category. It indicates the differential value placed on 'men's work' versus 'women's work'.
If the concepts are assumed to be universal, the resultant homogenization of class, race, religious, and daily material practices of women in the third world can create a false sense of the commonality of oppressions, interests and struggles between and amongst women globally. Beyond sisterhood there is still racism, colonialism and imperialism!
Discourses of representation are confused with material realities, and the distinction between 'Woman' and 'women' is lost. Feminist work on women in the third world which blurs this distinction (a distinction which interestingly enough is often present in certain western feminists' self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of'Third World Women' by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices on the one hand and their general discursive representations on the other.
this focus on the position of women whereby women are seen as a coherent group across contexts, regardless of class or ethnicity, structures the world in ultimately binary, dichotomous terms, where women are always seen in opposition to men, patriarchy is always necessarily male dominance, and the religious, legal, economic and familial systems are implicitly assumed to be constructed by men. Thus, both men and women are always seen as pre-constituted whole populations, and relations of dominance and exploitation.
Without the 'third-world woman', the particular self-presentation of western women mentioned above would be problematical. I am suggesting, in effect, that the one enables and sustains the other.
complicit Sisters
Brah and Phoenix provide a useful definition of “intersectionality,” which captures its multidimensionality, as denoting “the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation— eco-nomic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential— intersect in historically specific contexts”
Feminist writings from the 1980s empha-sized that in contrast to mainstream research where the power differen-tial between researcher and research participant was significant, feminist research with female researchers interviewing female participants nar-rowed this power gap. Later interventions acknowledged that it is too sim-plistic to attribute the “coziness” between researcher and participants to shared gender and that such experiences were the result of a combination of other common positions, such as class and “race”
The thematic span of the women’s work ranged from reproductive issues, health, development, peace, and trade, to politi-cal leadership and participation, sex work, and migration. The interviewed women occupied different hierarchical positions and had various roles, at the time of interview as well as in their previous jobs, including secretary, general, interim director, policy director, advocacy officer, technical officer, network officer, and project worker.
Western relief NGOs, still maintains a distinc-tion between international humanitarianism or development and national work with migrants.
the different generations of women in this study reflect distinct feminist and work trajectories and that their positioning demonstrates the continued relevance of key debates within feminism concerning institutionalization, backlashes, essentialism, and inclusion/separatism.
the women’s sense of responsibility and their self- understanding as professionals who make choices about their private time as well as about the location from which they work. Drawing on global citizenship theory, suggest that many women articulate their sense of responsibility with reference to the oppor-tunities they have enjoyed, disregarding the relationality between privilege and marginalization. The narratives of the women show their awareness of and their implication in the persistent discourse critical of professionaliza-tion of (feminist) NGO work, in which careerism is seen as incompatible with “moral work.”
engages with representation, which has raised critical issues that include but are not limited to concerns with distance. that representation, as well as alternative models, inevitably implies dynamics of construction.
Relationality, focusing on the women’s understanding of the relation between themselves and the women in or from the global South whom they support. that the contested notion of “sisterhood” still has currency and connect this to a “race to innocence” in which women foreground their own subordinate position when reflecting on the implications of their own identity for their work practices.
how the women’s unprompted references to the colonial era, which tend to situate colonialism firmly in the past, reconfirm its persisting presence.how the predominance of (racial) cultural lenses to interpret Otherness obscures socioeconomic structures as well as power dynamics. this is the focus on (not) understanding cultures introduces a language of knowledge that legitimizes, on the one hand, a distancing based on cultural relativism and, on the other hand, facilitates quick-fix solutions that bring the ambivalent Other under control.
Focuses on migration and development and focuses on women's and gender issues, it also focuses on feminist and postcolonial perspectives, global citizenship/ civil society theory, and critical development approaches.