December, 2000 Volume 3, Issue 3 Past Issues About dis/content Editorial Collective Contributors Contact Us Submissions Links Home   The Right Kind of Feminists?: Third-world Women and the Politics of Feminism [continued] Feminisms in Third-world Countries Now in order to account for certain specicities of feminisms, I intend to compare a few different strands of feminisms in rst- and third-world countries. First, feminisms in third-world countries decisively move beyond the issues of body politics and equal rights for women. Such issues, of course, remain linked to patriarchy, egalitarianism, and gender discrimination. And those issues have largely, but not always exclusively, constituted feminist agendas in the rst world. In other words, third-world feminists variously go beyond what I may call the “women-can-be” syndrome. For Western feminists, for instance, women can be policemen (policewomen?). Women can also be CEOs of multinational companies. Then women can be presidents of companies or even nation-states, and so on. But I ask as a third-world feminist: Is that what we need? I ask: do we need women to become “full partners” of, and to participate in, the very systems that continue to oppress other women, communities, and entire nation-states? Is that what we really want? Of course I do not see feminisms in the rst world as a homogeneous monolith. However, a variety of approaches to rst-world feminisms notwithstanding, I do see body politics and equal rights as some crucial issues underlying and even explicitly constituting the foundational site of theorizing and praxis for rst-world feminists (except for radical feminists who by all means inhabit a different site).     Feminists in third-world countries have different preoccupations and different struggles that continue to forge linkages among ghting against contemporary capitalist globalization, national liberation struggle, labor rights movement, and ghting for women’s education, to name but a few sites of interventions here. But by no means do I suggest that such sites of struggle are more important than ghting for equal rights for women. Rather I point to a few differences, among many, between rst- and third-world feminisms. Although body politics and equal rights may constitute crucial feminist agendas under some specic circumstances, those agendas remain beside the point in praxis for feminists in third-world countries. As Cheryl Johnson-Odim puts it: “While it is clear that sexual egalitarianism is a major goal on which all feminists can agree, gender discrimination is neither the sole nor perhaps the primary locus of the oppression of Third-world women.” Later she adds that the struggle of third-world women as feminists “is connected to the struggles of their communities against racism, economic exploitation, etc.” In some narratives mobilized by third-world feminists, feminism is construed fundamentally as a broad-based social struggle that deals with not only gender discrimination but also with community struggles involving liberation and self-sufciency. Johnson-Odim makes the point well: “Third-world women can embrace the concept of gender identity, but must reject an ideology based solely on gender. Feminism, therefore, must be a comprehensive and inclusive ideology and movement that incorporates yet transcends gender-specicity. We must create a feminist movement which struggles against those things which can clearly be shown to oppress women, whether based on race, sex, or class or resulting from imperialism.”     Johnson-Odim is clear, however, that third- and rst-world feminists can work together (hence the inclusive “we” in the previous statement, meaning all of us who consider ourselves feminists) and can constitute a broad-based coalition, recognizing “that racism and economic exploitation are primary forces in the oppression of most women in the world.” Such a coalition, I strongly believe, is the rst step to realizing that we need to be aware of and ght the socio-economic conditions of women in the world. For even though women constitute two-thirds of total labor-hours, they earn only one-tenth of total world-income and own one-hundredth of world possessions.     Another important issue in third-world feminisms is the issue of historical context. Third-world feminisms do not take for granted the notion of “woman.” In other words, they do not see nor do they seek a homogeneous “woman’s experience,” especially when such experience gets dened by rst-world feminists and is imposed on third-world women, as Gayatri Spivak, bell hooks, and G. Waylen discuss in their works. For third-world feminists, the category “woman” is contingent upon historical and cultural contexts. So, no, sisterhood is not necessarily global. Third-world women simply cannot afford to conform to a narrow denition of “sisterhood” that caters to the interests of rst-world women and erases historical experiences and conditions of colonialism, racism, and slavery. Those historical conditions should not only be taken into account but also be foregrounded in any claim of sisterhood. As Chandra Mohanty tells us: “sisterhood cannot be assumed [solely] on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political practice and analysis.”     Solidarity might exist, however. Such solidarity must be based, as Johnson-Odim argues, on an understanding that racial and class and (neo)colonial relations affect women around the world in different ways. One needs to understand that while imperialism – that is, the triumvirate of the military, politics, and economy of the rst world dominated by the US – has some women hanging from their feet, imperialism also has other women hanging from their necks with its grip tightening each passing minute.     I cannot emphasize enough the connections between feminisms in the third world and other struggles such as national struggles. In fact, third-world feminist movements are sometimes born out of such struggles. Delia Aguilar’s piece “What’s Wrong with the ‘F’ Word?” illustrates the connection between nationalism and feminism in the Philippines through her own experience. For women like Aguilar, political involvement in national liberation movements helps women develop a feminist consciousness. First-world feminists have not always understood this crucial linkage between nationalism and feminism. At times it has also been hard for some feminists in rst-world countries to understand the connections between labor struggles and feminist struggles in third-world countries. For instance, there was an infamous exchange – between Betty Friedan, then head of NOW, and Domitila Barrios de Chungara, then leader of an organization of tin miners’ wives against Bolivian State oppression – during the UN Decade of the Women Conference in Mexico City in 1975. At that conference de Chungara brought up the issue of the struggle of mine workers in her home country. But Friedan dismissed the issue by saying that miners’ struggles (and their wives’ concerns about underfed children, illnesses, and the oppressive state) were not women’s struggles and thus the issue was not a feminist one. Further, Friedan accused de Chungara of being manipulated by men and of thinking only about politics. Of course this event took place 25 years ago. However, arguments of the kind advanced by Friedan tend to persist in certain versions of rst-world feminisms in some form. Previous section     Next Section     Table of Contents