The feminist movement that started out with the suffragettes has gone through multiple waves of changes to become what it is today. From the fight for women’s political rights to the modern discourse on gender and sexuality, the impact of feminism has extended well beyond the Western shores to the Third World. In this essay, the term ‘Third World’ broadly refers to developing countries and its people, including diasporas, who may or may not have been subjects of colonisation.
With the success of Western feminist movements over the decades, the global focus began to shift in 1990s, towards addressing the oppression faced by Third World women. However, as argued by Chandra Mohanty (1991), this exportation of Western feminism was not one without problems. Not only did it generalise all Third World women as a single subject group, it also assumed the universality of women’s experiences of oppression. Hence, in this essay I seek to access how feminist anthropology can help us understand contemporary gender issues faced by the Third World.
I will be focusing on two different groups of women with different social backgrounds and affiliations. Namely, women in China by their location, and Muslim women by their religion. I will first look at Western feminism and its problematic application in the Third World, and then move on to explore the idea of intersectionality put forth by feminist anthropologists. Lastly, I will conclude that the exportation of Western feminism was pivotal but there is a need to remain critical, even of new developing models of feminism in the Third World.
Being the pioneer of feminist movements, Western feminism has made significant contributions to the development of the global discourse on women and gender. It has no doubt successfully liberated women and elevated their status in societies. But behind its achievements lie structural and ideological problems that need to be addressed.
By drawing from Michel Foucault’s (1990) theory of the relationship between knowledge and power, we can see that the construction of feminism is not neutral against the backdrop of colonialism. The development of Western feminism is intertwined with notions of Western imperialism, where the West was thought to be ‘superior on the scale of civilisation’ (Liddle and Rai, 1998, p.495). Hence, white women often saw themselves as the ‘leaders of global feminism’ (1998, p.495), which encouraged their involvement in the liberation of the global women population. However, in the course of doing so they mistake the universality of female oppression and victimhood (Rosaldo, 1980, p.393-396), resulting in the ‘exclusion of women of colour… and the misinterpretation of [their] experiences’ (Zinn and Dill, 1996, p.321).
In the light of these misrepresentations made by Western feminists in the Third World, new arguments and feminisms have popped up in recent decades to reject the blind application of it as a global feminist movement, fit to represent all women. This failure of Western feminism is particularly addressed by feminists who wanted to decolonise the historical representations of gender in the Third World. They argue that certain practices deemed as oppressive by the West are in fact, women’s unique way of resistance and subversion in their own societies (Bilge, 2010). For example, the burka is often identified as a symbol of the ongoing oppression faced by Muslim women. However, scholars have pointed out that the burka empower women by enabling them to move around in public spaces. It acts like a ‘portable seclusion’ (Papanek, 1971, p.520) that allows Muslim women to work around the strict rules of mobility and yet maintain their religious virtues at the same time. Therefore, the burka in contrast to common understanding, is not necessarily a tool of oppression as emphasised by Western feminists who saw the practice as alien.
Similarly, the practice of footbinding in early modern China also ‘remains at the forefront of feminist politics’ (Ko, 2003, p.427) as the symbol of Chinese male patriarchy and oppression of women. Although it was eventually abolished under Western moral pressures and local calls to modernise, Dorothy Ko (2005) argues that the assumptions made by Western feminists downplay the agency of Chinese women. In reality, even in face of legal restrictions and social unpopularity, Chinese women were said to have persisted in the “oppressive” practice which suggests a degree of autonomy among the women. Thus, it is too simplistic to identify footbinding as merely a form of oppression through the Western lens without considering its cultural and historical context. These examples are not to say that arguments along the lines of resistance are not without issues of their own (Bilge, 2010, pp.19-20), but they serve to illustrate the problems present in the universal ideas and saviour mentality of Western feminism.
Furthermore, the importation of Western feminism into Third World nations have also widened existing divisions between global and local communities. On a global scale, the strong feminist opposition against the Muslim veil in France has resulted in increased hostility and intolerance towards the global Muslim community. This is because apart from being painted as a symbol of the subordination of Muslim women, the veil is also often criticised for its link to political Islam and Islam’s ‘backwardness’ (Bilge, 2010, p.11) which people saw as a threat to French modernity and safety. As a result of these brewing uncertainties, feminist viewpoints against the veil were co-opted into anti-immigrant political agendas, and manipulated to exaggerate the threats posed by Islam in France (2010, p.15). Therefore, despite having good intentions to “save” and include (Abu-Lughod, 2013) Muslim women, Western feminism here has in turn led to further marginalisation of the Muslim community.
On a local scale as seen in Nicola Spakowski’s article (2011), the introduction of Western feminism has created divisions among the women and people of China. This conflict can be seen through the common use of words such as ‘trouble’ and ‘clash’ (Spakowski, 2011, p.31) in describing feminism, indicating the negative connotations that accompany the feminist debate in China. Spakowski pointed out that feminism in China is split between two main schools: one mainly led by diasporas who hold the ‘missionary zeal… to do things in line with Western ways’ (2011, p.37) and another which believes in localising feminism to include ‘indigenous creativity, traditions and resources’ (2011, p.46). From here, we can observe that the influence of Western feminism in China is challenged to be disempowering to Chinese women as it ‘fail[s] to address the complex experience of Chinese history’ (2011, p.48). Therefore, as seen from the above examples, in order to substantiate the discourse on gender, we cannot blindly apply the justification of Western feminism to all groups of women who come from different social backgrounds.
The main issue of Western feminism boils down to its failure to recognise the intersectionality of the experiences of womanhood, which is ‘dependent on [one’s] social location in the structures of race, class, gender and sexuality’ (Zinn and Hill, 1996, pp.326-327). These categories not only affect the construction of identity for each woman (and man) but are also ‘primary organising principles of a society’ (1996, p.322), which determine a person’s position and thus, the system of privilege and subordination they come under. This therefore explains the uneasy relationship between Western feminism and localised ideas of feminism in the Third World. In truth, the “universal” model of feminism is in itself a product of ‘interlocking power structures’ (Bilge, 2010, p.24) which enables its superiority and disables its sensitivities towards other cultures. However, in the push for the localisation of feminist movements with considerations of these categories, we must not assume the existence of essential definitions for various groups of women.
In the case of Chinese feminism, it is not possible to provide a single definition for the model of Chinese womanhood as women of the same race still experience different forms of oppression according to their social classes (Spakowski, 2011, p.47). In the adoption of this analytical framework, Maxine B. Zinn and Bonnie T. Dill (1996) also warn of the danger of creating yet another form of universal feminism if we reduce diversity into pluralism, which would become ‘a form of exotica’ (Zinn and Dill, 1996, p.323) in feminist scholarship.
In conclusion, we must acknowledge the ground-breaking success and influence of Western feminism in reopening the discourse about gender and sex. Despite its unintended power projections that have brought about the marginalisation of women in the Third World, its impact beyond the West has provided a springboard for Third World women to construct their own discourses to challenge dominant ideas of gender and sexuality in their various contexts. But just like how we are critical about the matrix of power at play in Western feminism, we must also remain critical about new forms of localised feminism to prevent falling into the traps of orientalising or essentialising differences. By understanding the importance of intersectionality in feminism, we will then be able to situate our ‘diverse claims to equality and justice…along the many intersecting axes of the local and global that constitute us today’ (John, 2007, p.172).
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