Posted: May 13th, 2022

Critical Analysis Paper

Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
It ought to be of some political significance at least that the
term “colonization” has come to denote a variety of phenomena in
recent feminist and left writings in general. From its analytic value as
a category of exploitative economic exchange in both traditional and
contemporary marxisms (particularly contemporary theorists such as
Baran, Amin and Gunder-Frank)’ to its use by feminist women of color
in the U.S. to describe the appropriation of their experiences and
struggles by hegemonic white women’s movements,52 colonization has
been used to characterize everything from the most evident economic
and political hierarchies to the production of a particular cultural dis-
course about what is called the “Third World.”‘3 However sophisti-
cated or problematical its use as an explanatory construct,
colonization almost invariably implies a relation of structural
domination, and a supression-often violent-of the heterogeneity of
the subject(s) in question. What I wish to analyze is specifically the
production of the “Third World Woman” as a singular monolithic
subject in some recent (Western) feminist texts. The definition of
colonization I wish to invoke here is a predominantly discursive one,
focusing on a certain mode of appropriation and codification of
“scholarship” and “knowledge” about women in the third world by
particular analytic categories employed in specific writings on the
subject which take as their referent feminist interests as they have
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been articulated in the U.S. and Western Europe.
My concern about such writings derives from my own
implication and investment in contemporary debates in feminist
theory, and the urgent political necessity (especially in the age of
Reagan) of forming strategic coalitions across class, race, and
national boundaries. Clearly Western feminist discourse and political
practice is neither singular nor homogeneous in its goals, interests or
analyses. However, it is possible to trace a coherence of effects
resulting from the implicit assumption of “the West” (in all its com-
plexities and contradictions) as the primary referent in theory and
praxis. My reference to “Western feminism” is by no means intended
to imply that it is a monolith. Rather, I am attempting to draw
attention to the similar effects of various textual strategies used by
particular writers that codify Others as non-Western and hence them-
selves as (implicitly) Western. It is in this sense that I use the term
“Western feminist.” The analytic principles discussed below serve to
distort Western feminist political practices, and limit the possibility of
coalitions among (usually White) Western feminists and working
class and feminists of color around the world. These limitations are
evident in the construction of the (implicitly consensual) priority of
issues around which apparently all women are expected to organize.
The necessary and integral connection between feminist scholarship
and feminist political practice and organizing determines the
significance and status of Western feminist writings on women in the
third world, for feminist scholarship, like most other kinds of
scholarship, is not the mere production of knowledge about a certain
subject. It is a directly political and discursive practice in that it is
purposeful and ideological. It is best seen as a mode of intervention
into particular hegemonic discourses (for example, traditional anthro-
pology, sociology, literary criticism, etc.); it is a political praxis which
counters and resists the totalizing imperative of age-old “legitimate”
and “scientific” bodies of knowledge. Thus, feminist scholarly
practices (whether reading, writing, critical or textual) are inscribed in
relations of power-relations which they counter, resist, or even
perhaps implicitly support. There can, of course, be no apolitical
scholarship.
The relationship between “Woman”-a cultural and ideo-
logical composite Other constructed through diverse representational
discourses (scientific, literary, juridical, linguistic, cinematic,
etc.)-and “women”-real, material subjects of their collective
histories-is one of the central questions the practice of feminist
scholarship seeks to address. This connection between women as
historical subjects and the re-presentation of Woman produced by
hegemonic discourses is not a relation of direct identity, or a relation
of correspondence or simple implication.4 It is an arbitrary relation set
up by particular cultures. I would like to suggest that the feminist
writings I analyze here discursively colonize the material and
historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world,
thereby producing/re-presenting a composite, singular “Third World
Woman”-an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but never-
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theless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist
discourse., I argue that assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric
universality on the one hand, and inadequate self-consciousness
about the effect of Western scholarship on the “third world” in the
context of a world system dominated by the West on the other,
characterize a sizable extent of Western feminist work on women in
the third world. An analysis of “sexual difference” in the form of a
cross-culturally singular, monolithic notion of patriarchy or male
dominance leads to the construction of a similarly reductive and
homogeneous notion of what I call the “Third World
Difference”-that stable, ahistorical something that apparently
oppresses most if not all the women in these countries. And it is in the
production of this “Third World Difference” that Western feminisms
appropriate and “colonize” the fundamental complexities and
conflicts which characterize the lives of women of different classes,
religions, cultures, races and castes in these countries. It is in this
process of homogenization and systemitization of the oppression of
women in the third world that power is exercised in much of recent
Western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and
named.
In the context of the West’s hegemonic position today, of what
Anouar Abdel-Malek calls a struggle for “control over the orientation,
regulation and decision of the process of world development on the
basis of the advanced sector’s monopoly of scientific knowledge and
ideal creativity,”6 Western feminist scholarship on the third world
must be seen and examined precisely in terms of its inscription in
these particular relations of power and struggle. There is, I shall
argue, no universal patriarchal framework which this scholarship
attempts to counter and resist-unless one posits an international
male conspiracy or a monolithic, ahistorical power hierarchy. There
is, however, a particular world balance of power within which any
analysis of culture, ideology, and socio-economic conditions has to
be necessarily situated. Abdel-Malek is useful here, again, in
reminding us about the inherence of politics in the discourses of
“culture”:
Contemporary imperialism is, in a real sense, a hege-
monic imperialism, exercising to a maximum degree
a rationalized violence taken to a higher level than
ever before-through fire and sword, but also
through the attempt to control hearts and minds. For
its content is defined by the combined action of the
military-industrial complex and the hegemonic
cultural centers of the West, all of them founded on
the advanced levels of development attained by
monopoly and finance capital, and supported by the
benefits of both the scientific and technological
revolution and the second industrial revolution
itself.7
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Western feminist scholarship cannot avoid the challenge of situating
itself and examining its role in such a global economic and political
framework. To do any less would be to ignore the complex inter-
connections between first and third world economies and the
profound effect of this on the lives of women in these countries. I do
not question the descriptive and informative value of most Western
feminist writings on women in the third world. I also do not question
the existence of excellent work which does not fall into the analytic
traps I am concerned with. In fact I deal with an example of such work
later on. In the context of an overwhelming silence about the
experiences of women in these countries, as well as the need to forge
international links between women’s political struggles, such work is
both pathbreaking and absolutely essential. However, it is both to the
explanatory potential of particular analytic strategies employed by
such writing, and to their political effect in the context of the
hegemony of Western scholarship, that I want to draw attention here.
While feminist writing in the U.S. is still marginalized (except from the
point of view of women of color addressing privileged White women),
Western feminist writing on women in the third world must be con-
sidered in the context of the global hegemony of Western scholar-
ship-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 imperial-
ism in the eyes of particular third world women.8 Hence the urgent
need to examine the political implications of analytic strategies and
principles.
My critique is directed at three basic analytic principles which
are present in (Western) feminist discourse on women in the third
world. Since I focus primarily on the Zed Press “Women in the Third
World” series, my comments on Western feminist discourse are cir-
cumscribed by my analysis of the texts in this series. This is a way of
limiting and focusing my critique. However, even though I am dealing
with feminists who identify themselves as culturally or geographically
from the “West,” what I say about these analytic strategies or implicit
principles holds for anyone who uses these methods, whether third
world women in the West, or third world women in the third world
writing on these issues and publishing in the West. (I am not making a
culturalist argument about ethnocentrism; rather, I am trying to
uncover how ethnocentric universalism is produced in certain
analyses, and in the context of a hegemonic First/Third World con-
nection, it is not very surprising to discover where the ethnocentrism
derives from.) As a matter of fact, my argument holds for any dis-
course that sets up its own authorial subjects as the implicit referent,
i.e., the yardstick by which to encode and represent cultural Others. It
is in this move that power is exercized in discourse.
The first principle I focus on concerns the strategic location or
situation of the category “women” vis-a-vis the context of analysis.
The assumption of women as an already constituted, coherent group
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with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or
racial location or contradictions, implies a notion of gender or sexual
difference or even patriarchy (as male dominance-men as a cor-
respondingly coherent group) which can be applied universally and
cross-culturally. The context of analysis can be anything from kinship
structures and the organization of labor to media representations.
The second principle consists in the uncritical use of particular
methodologies in providing “proof” of universality and cross-cultural
validity. The third is a more specifically political principle underlying
the methodologies and the analytic strategies, i.e., the model of
power and struggle they imply and suggest. I argue that as a result of
the two modes-or, rather, frames-of analysis described above, a
homogeneous notion of the oppression of women as a group is
assumed, which, in turn, produces the image of an “average third
world woman.” This average third world woman leads an essentially
truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually con-
strained) and being “third world” (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated,
tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I
suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of Western
women as educated, modern, as having control over their own bodies
and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions. The
distinction between Western feminist re-presentation of women in the
third world, and Western feminist self-presentation is a distinction of
the same order as that made by some marxists between the
“maintenance” function of the housewife and the real “productive”
role of wage labor, or the characterization by developmentalists of the
third world as being engaged in the lesser production of “raw
materials” in contrast to the “real” productive activity of the First
World. These distinctions are made on the basis of the privileging of a
particular group as the norm or referent. Men involved in wage labor,
first world producers, and, I suggest, Western feminists who some-
times cast Third World women in terms of “ourselves undressed”
(Michelle Rosaldo’s term),10 all construct themselves as the referent in
such a binary analytic.
“Women” as Category of Analysis, Or: We Are All Sisters In Struggle
By women as a category of analysis, I am referring to the
critical assumption that all of us of the same gender, across classes
and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous
group identified prior to the process of analysis. This is an assump-
tion which characterizes much feminist discourse. The homogeneity
of women as a group is produced not on the basis of biological
essentials, but rather on the basis of secondary sociological and
anthropological universals. Thus, for instance, in any given piece of
feminist analysis, women are characterized as a singular group on the
basis of a shared oppression. What binds women together is a socio-
logical notion of the “sameness” of their oppression. It is at this point
that an elision takes place between “women” as a discursively con-
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structed group and “women” as material subjects of their own
history. Thus, the discursively consensual homogeneity of “women”
as a group is mistaken for the historically specific material reality of
groups of women. This results in an assumption of women as an
always-already constituted group, one which has been labelled
“powerless,” “exploited,” “sexually harrassed,” etc., by feminist
scientific, economic, legal and sociological discourses. (Notice that
this is quite similar to sexist discourse labeling women weak,
emotional, having math anxiety, etc.) The focus is not on uncovering
the material and ideological specificities that constitute a particular
group of women as “powerless” in a particular context. It is rather on
finding a variety of cases of “powerless” groups of women to prove
the general point that women as a group are powerless.
In this section I focus on five specific ways in which “women”
as a category of analysis is used in Western feminist discourse on
women in the third world.” Each of these examples illustrates the
construction of “Third World Women” as a homogeneous
“powerless” group often located as implicit victims of particular
socio-economic systems. I have chosen to deal with a variety of
writers-from Fran Hosken who writes primarily about female genital
mutilation, to writers from the Women in International Development
school who write about the effect of development policies on third
world women for both western and third world audiences. The
similarity of assumptions about “third world women” in all these
texts forms the basis of my discussion. This is not to equate all the
texts that I analyze, nor is it to equalize their strengths and weak-
nesses. The authors I deal with write with varying degrees of care and
complexity. However, the effect of the representation of third world
women in these texts is a coherent one, due to the use of “women” as
a homogeneous category of analysis, and it is this effect I focus on. In
these texts women are defined as victims of male violence (Fran
Hosken); victims of the colonial process (M. Cutrufelli); victims of the
مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab familial system (Juliette Minces); victims of the economic
development process (B. Linsday and the [liberal] WID School); and
finally, victims of the Islamic code (P. Jeffery). This mode of defining
women primarily in terms of their object status (the way in which they
are affected or not affected by certain institutions and systems) is
what characterizes this particular form of the use of “women” as a
category of analysis. In the context of Western women writing/study-
ing women in the third world, such objectification (however bene-
volently motivated) needs to be both named and challenged. As
Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar argue quite eloquently in a recent
essay, “Feminist theories which examine our cultural practices as
‘feudal residues’ or label us ‘traditional,’ also portray us as politically
immature women who need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of
Western Feminism. They need to be continually challenged …. “12
Women As Victims of Male Violence:
Fran Hosken,’ in writing about the relationship between
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human rights and female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle
East, bases her whole discussion/condemnation of genital mutilation
on one privileged premise: the goal of genital mutilation is “to
mutilate the sexual pleasure and satisfaction of woman” (“FGM,”
p. 11). This, in turn, leads her to claim that women’s sexuality is
controlled, as is their reproductive potential. According to Hosken,
“male sexual politics” in Africa and around the world “share the same
political goal: to assure female dependence and subservience by any
and all means” (“FGM,” p. 14). Physical violence against women
(rape, sexual assault, excision, infibulation, etc.) is thus carried out
“with an astonishing consensus among men in the world” (“FGM,”
p. 14). Here, women are defined consistently as the victims of male
control-the “sexually oppressed.” Although it is true that the
potential of male violence against women circumscribes and
elucidates their social position to a certain extent, defining women as
archetypal victims freezes them into “objects-who-defend-
themselves,” men into “subjects-who-perpetrate-violence,” and
(every) society into powerless (read: women) and powerful (read: men)
groups of people. Male violence must be theorized and interpreted
within specific societies, both in order to understand it better, as well
as in order to effectively organize to change it.’4 Sisterhood cannot be
assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete,
historical and political practice and analysis.
Women As Universal Dependents:
Beverly Lindsay’s conclusion to the book Comparative Per-
spectives of Third World Women: The Impact of Race, Sex and Class
states: “…. dependency relationships, based upon race, sex and
class, are being perpetrated through social, educational, and
economic institutions. These are the linkages among Third World
Women.”’15 Here, as in other places, Lindsay implies that third world
women constitute an identifiable group purely on the basis of shared
dependencies. If shared dependencies were all that was needed to
bind us together as a group, third world women would always be seen
as an apolitical group with no subject status! Instead, if anything, it is
the common context of political struggle against class, race, gender
and imperialist hierarchies that may constitute third world women as
a strategic group at this historical juncture. Linsday also states that
linguistic and cultural differences exist between Vietnamese and
Black American women, but “both groups are victims of race, sex and
class.” Again Black and Vietnamese women are characterized by their
victim status. Similarly, examine statements like: “My analysis will
start by stating that all African women are politically and
economically dependent.””6 Or: “Nevertheless, either overtly or
covertly, prostitution is still the main if not the only source of work for
African women.”‘7 All African women are dependent. Prostitution is
the only work option for African women as a group. Both statements
are illustrative of generalizations sprinkled liberally through a recent
Zed Press publication, Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression, by
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Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, who is described on the cover as an Italian
Writer, Sociologist, Marxist and Feminist. I wonder if, in 1984, anyone
would write a book entitled “Women of Europe: Roots of
Oppression”? What is it about cultural Others that make it so easy to
analytically formulate them into homogeneous groupings with little
regard for historical specificities? Again, I am not objecting to the use
of universal groupings for descriptive purposes. Women from the
continent of Africa can be descriptively characterized as “Women of
Africa.” It is when “women of Africa” becomes a homogeneous socio-
logical grouping characterized by common dependencies or power-
lessness (or even strengths) that problems arise.
Descriptive gender differences are transformed into the
division between men and women. Women are constituted as a group
via dependency relationships vis-a-vis men, who are implicitly held re-
sponsible for these relationships. When “women of Africa” as a group
(versus “men of Africa” as a group?) are seen as a group precisely
because they are generally dependent and oppressed, the analysis of
specific historical differences becomes impossible, because reality is
always apparently structured by divisions-two mutually exclusive
and jointly exhaustive groups, the victims and the oppressors. Here
the sociological is substituted for the biological in order, however, to
create the same-a unity of women. Thus, it is not the descriptive po-
tential of gender difference, but the privileged positioning and
explanatory potential of gender difference as the origin of oppression
that I question. In using “women of Africa” (as an already constituted
group of oppressed peoples) as a category of analysis, Cutrufelli
denies any historical specificity to the location of women as sub-
ordinate, powerful, marginal, central, or otherwise, vis-a-vis particular
social and power networks. Women are taken as a unified
“Powerless” group prior to the analysis in question. Thus, it is then
merely a matter of specifying the context after the fact. “Women” are
now placed in the context of the family, or in the workplace, or within
religious networks, almost as if these systems existed outside the re-
lations of women with other women, and women with men. The
problem with this analytic strategy is that it assumes men and women
are already constituted as sexual-political subjects prior to their entry
into the arena of social relations. Only if we subscribe to this as-
sumption is it possible to undertake analysis which looks at the
“effects” of kinship structures, colonialism, organization of labor,
etc., on women, who are already defined as a group apparently
because of shared dependencies, but ultimately because of their
gender. But women are produced through these very relations as well
as being implicated in forming these relations. As Michelle Rosaldo
states: “. . . woman’s place in human social life is not in any direct
sense a product of the things she does (or even less, a function of
what, biologically, she is) but the meaning her activities acquire
through concrete social interactions.”‘ That women mother in a
variety of societies is not as significant as the value attached to
mothering in these societies. The distinction between the act of
mothering and the status attached to it is a very important one-one
that needs to be made and analyzed contextually.
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Married Women As Victims of The Colonial Process:
In Levis-Strauss’s theory of kinship structures as a system of
the exchange of women, what is significant is that exchange itself is
not constitutive of the subordination of women; women are not sub-
ordinate because of the fact of exchange, but because of the modes
of exchange instituted, and the values attached to these modes. How-
ever, in discussing the marriage ritual of the Bemba, a Zambian matri-
local, matrilineal people, Cutrufelli in Women of Africa focuses on the
fact of the marital exchange of women before and after Western
colonization, rather than the value attached to the exchange in this
particular context. This leads to her definition of Bemba women as a
coherent group affected in a particular way by colonization. Here
again, Bemba women are constituted as victims of the effects of
Western colonization. Cutrufelli cites the marriage ritual of the
Bemba as a multistage event “whereby a young man becomes incor-
porated into his wife’s family group as he takes up residence with
them and gives his services in return for food and maintenance.”‘9
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 inter-
course is sanctioned, and the man acquires legal rights over the
woman. This initiation ceremony is the most important act of the con-
secration 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. Cutrufelli asserts that the effect of
European colonization has changed this whole marriage system. Now
the young man is entitled to take his wife away from her people in
return for money. The implication is that Bemba women have now lost
the protection of tribal laws. However, while it is possible to see how
the structure of the traditional marriage contract (versus the post-
colonial marriage contract) offered women a certain amount of
control over their marital relations, only an analysis of the political
significance of the actual practice which privileges an initiated girl
over an uninitiated one, indicating a shift in female power relations as
a result of this ceremony, can provide an accurate account of whether
Bemba women were indeed protected by tribal laws at all times. How-
ever, it is not possible to talk about Bemba women as a homogeneous
group within the traditional marriage structure. Bemba women before
the initiation are constituted within a different set of social relations
compared to Bemba women after the initiation. To treat them as a
unified group characterized by the fact of their “exchange” between
male kin, is to deny the socio-historical and cultural specificities of
their existence, and the differential value attached to their exchange
before and after their initiation. It is to treat the initiation ceremony as
a ritual with no political implications or effects. It is also to assume
that in merely describing the structure of the marriage contract, the
situation of women is exposed. Women as a group are positioned
within a given structure, but there is no attempt made to trace the
effect of the marriage practice in constituting women within an
obviously changing network of power relations. Thus, women are
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assumed to be sexual-political subjects prior to entry into kinship
structures.
Women and Familial Systems:
Elizabeth Cowie, in another context,20 points out the impli-
cations of this sort of analysis when she emphasizes the specifically
political nature of kinship structures which must be analyzed as
ideological practices which designate men and women as father,
husband, wife, mother, sister, etc. Thus, Cowie suggests, women as
women are not located within the family. Rather, it is in the family, as
an effect of kinship structures, that women as women are con-
structed, defined within and by the group. Thus, for instance, when
Juliette Minces (Zed Press, 1980)21 cites the patriarchal family as the
basis for “an almost identical vision of women” that مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab and Muslim
societies have, she falls into this very trap. Not only is it problematical
to speak of a vision of women shared by مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab and Muslim societies
without addressing the particular historical, material and ideological
power structures that construct such images, but to speak of the
patriarchal family or the tribal kinship structure as the origin of the
socio-economic status of women is to again assume that women are
sexual-political subjects prior to their entry into the family. So while
on the one hand women attain value or status within the family, the
assumption of a singular patriarchal kinship system (common to all
مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab and Muslim societies) is what apparently structures women as
an oppressed group in these societies! This singular, coherent kin-
ship system presumably influences another separate and given entity,
“women.” Thus, all women, regardless of class and cultural differ-
ences, are affected by this system. Not only are all مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab and Muslim
women seen to constitute a homogeneous oppressed group, but there
is no discussion of the specific practices within the family which con-
stitute women as mothers, wives, sisters, etc. مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabs and Muslims it
appears, don’t change at all. Their patriarchal family is carried over
from the times of the prophet Mohammed. They exist, as it were, “out-
side history.”
Women and Religious Ideologies:
A further example of the use of “women” as a category of
analysis is found in cross-cultural analyses which subscribe to a
certain economic reductionism in describing the relationship be-
tween the economy and factors such as politics and ideology. Here, in
reducing the level of comparison to the economic relations between
“developed and developing” countries, any specificity to the question
of women is denied. Mina Moderes, in a careful analysis of women
and Shi’ism in Iran, focuses on this very problem when she criticizes
feminist writings which treat Islam as an ideology separate from and
outside social relations and practices, rather than a discourse which
includes rules for economic, social and power relations within
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society.22 Patricia Jeffery’s otherwise excellent work on Pirzada
women in purdah (Zed Press, 1979),3 considers Islamic ideology as a
partial explanation for the status of women in that it provides a
justification for the purdah. Here, Islamic ideology is reduced to a set
of ideas whose internalization by Pirzada women contributes to the
stability of the system. However, the primary explanation for purdah
is located in the control that Pirzada men have over economic
resources, and the personal security purdah gives to Pirzada women.
By taking a specific version of Islam as the Islam, Jeffrey attributes a
singularity and coherence to it. Modares notes, ” ‘Islamic Theology’
then becomes imposed on a separate and given entity called ‘women.’
A further unification is reached: Women (meaning all women),
regardless of their differing positions within societies, come to be
affected or not affected by Islam. These conceptions provide the right
ingredients for an unproblematic possibility of a cross-cultural study
of women.”’24 A number of cross-cultural studies of women’s position
which subscribe to this kind of economic reductionism do so by
collapsing all ideological specificities into economic relations, and
universalizing on the basis of this comparison.
Women and the Development Process:
The best examples of universalization on the basis of economic
reductionism can be found in the liberal “Women in Development”
literature. Proponents of this school seek to examine the effect of
development on third world women, sometimes from feminist per-
spectives. At the very least, there is an evident interest in and commit-
ment to improving the lives of women in “developing” countries.
Scholars like Irene Tinker, Ester Boserup, and Perdita Huston 2 have
all written about the effect of development policies on women in the
third world. All three women assume “development” is synonymous
with “economic development” or “economic progress.” As in the case
of Minces’s patriarchal family, Hosken’s male sexual control, and
Cutrufelli’s Western colonization, Development here becomes the all
time equalizer. Women are affected positively or negatively by
economic development policies. Cross-cultural comparison between
women in different “developing” countries is made both possible and
unproblematical by this assumption of women as a group affected (or
not affected) by economic policies. For instance, Perdita Huston
states that the purpose of her study is to describe the effect of the de-
velopment process on the “family unit and its individual members” in
Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Mexico. She states that
the “problems” and “needs” expressed by rural and urban women in
these countries all center around education and training, work and
wages, access to health and other services, political participation and
legal rights. Huston relates all these “needs” to the lack of sensitive
development policies which exclude women as a group or category.
For her, the solution is simple: improved development policies which
emphasize training for women field workers, use women trainees,
women rural development officers, encourage women’s cooperatives,
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etc. Here, again, women are assumed to be a coherent group or
category prior to their entry into “the development process.” Huston
assumes that all third world women have similar problems and needs.
Thus, they must have similar interests and goals. However, the
interests of urban, middleclass, 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. Practices which
characterize women’s status and roles vary according to class.
Women are constituted as women through the complex interaction
between class, culture, religion and other ideological institutions and
frameworks. They are not “women”-a coherent group-solely on the
basis of a particular economic system or policy. Such reductive cross-
cultural comparisons result in the colonization of the conflicts and
contradictions which characterize women of different social classes
and cultures.
Thus, according to Perdita Huston, women in the third world
countries she writes about have “needs” and “problems,” but few if
any have “choices” or the freedom to act. This is an interesting repre-
sentation of women in the third world, one which is significant in
suggesting a latent self-presentation of Western women which bears
looking at. She writes, “What surprised and moved me most as I
listened to women in such very different cultural settings was the
striking commonality-whether they were educated or illiterate,
urban or rural-of their most basic values: the importance they assign
to family, dignity, and service to others.”’26 I wonder if Huston would
consider such values unusual for women in the West?
What is problematical, then, about this kind of use of “women”
as a group, as a stable category of analysis, is that it assumes an
ahistorical, universal unity between women based on a generalized
notion of their subordination. Instead of analytically demonstrating
the production of women as socio-economic political groups within
particular local contexts, this move limits the definition of the female
subject to gender identity, completely bypassing social class and
ethnic identities. What characterizes women as a group is their
gender (sociologically not necessarily biologically defined) over and
above everything else, indicating a monolithic notion of sexual
difference. Because women are thus constituted as a coherent group,
sexual difference becomes coterminus with female subordination,
and power is automatically defined in binary terms: people who have
it (read: men), and people who do not (read: women). Men exploit,
women are exploited. As suggested above, such simplistic
formulations are both reductive and ineffectual in designing
strategies to combat oppressions. All they do is reinforce binary
divisions between men and women.
What would an analysis which did not do this look like? Maria
Mies’s work is one such example. It is an example which illustrates
the strength of Western feminist work on women in the third world
and which does not fall into the traps discussed above. Maria Mies’s
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study of the lace-makers of Narsapur, India (Zed Press, 1982)27
attempts to carefully analyze a substantial household industry in
which “housewives” produce lace doylies for consumption in the
world market. Through a detailed analysis of the structure of the lace
industry, production and reproduction relations, the sexual division of
labor, profits and exploitation, and the overall consequences of
defining women as “non-working housewives” and their work as
“leisure-time activity,” Mies demonstrates the levels of exploitation in
this industry and the impact of this production system on the work
and living conditions of the women involved in it. In addition, she is
able to analyze the “ideology of the housewife,” the notion of a
woman sitting in the house, as providing the necessary subjective and
socio-cultural element for the creation and maintenance of a pro-
duction system that contributes to the increasing pauperization of
women, and keeps them totally atomized and disorganized as
workers. Mies’s analyses show the effect of a certain historically and
culturally specific mode of patriarchal organization, an organization
constructed on the basis of the definition of the lace-makers as “non-
working housewives” at familial, local, regional, state-wide and
international levels. The intricacies and the effects of particular
power networks are not only emphasized, but they form the basis of
Mies’s analysis of how this particular group of women is situated at
the center of a hegemonic, exploitative world market. This is a good
example of what careful, politically focused, local analyses can ac-
complish. It illustrates how the category of women is constructed in a
variety of political contexts that often exist simultaneously and
overlaid on the top of one another. There is no easy generalization in
the direction of “women” in India, or “women in the third world”; nor
is there a reduction of the political construction of the exploitation of
the lacemakers to cultural explanations about the passivity or
obedience that might characterize these women and their situation.
Finally, this mode of local, political analysis which generates
theoretical categories from within the situation and context being
analyzed, also suggests corresponding effective strategies for organ-
izing against the exploitations faced by the lace makers. These
Narsapur women are not mere victims of the production process,
because they resist, challenge and subvert the process at various
junctures. Here is one instance of how Mies delineates the con-
nections between the housewife ideology, the self-consciousness of
the lace makers and their inter-relationships as contributing to the
latent resistances she perceives among the women:
The persistence of the housewife ideology, the self-
perception of the lace makers as petty commodity
producers rather than as workers, is not only upheld
by the structure of the industry as such but also by
the deliberate propagation and reinforcement of re-
actionary patriarchal norms and institutions. Thus,
most of the lace makers voiced the same opinion
about the rules of purdah and seclusion in their com-
munities which were also propagated by the lace
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exporters. In particular, the Kapu women said that
they had never gone out of their houses, that women
of their community could not do any other work than
housework and lace work etc. But in spite of the fact
that most of them still subscribed fully to the
patriarchal norms of the gosha women, there were
also contradictory elements in their consciousness.
Thus, although they looked down with contempt
upon women who were able to work outside the
house-like the untouchable Mala and Madiga
women or women of other lower castes, they could
not ignore the fact that these women were earning
more money precisely because they were not re-
spectable housewives but workers. At one discus-
sion, they even admitted that it would be better if
they could also go out and do coolie work. And when
they were asked whether they would be ready to
come out of their houses and work in one place in
some sort of a factory, they said they would do that.
This shows that the purdah and housewife ideology,
although still fully internalized, already had some
cracks, because it has been confronted with several
contradictory realities.28
It is only by understanding the contradictions inherent in women’s
location within various structures that effective political action and
challenges can be devised. Mies’s study goes a long way towards
offering such analysis. While there are now an increasing number of
Western feminist writings in this tradition29 there is also unfortunately
a large block of writing which succumbs to the cultural reductionism
discussed earlier.
Methodological Universalisms, Or: Women’s Oppression
Is a Global Phenomenon
Western feminist writings on women in the third world sub-
scribe to a variety of methodologies to demonstrate the universal
cross-cultural operation of male dominance and female exploitation. I
summarize and critique three such methods below, moving from the
most simple to the most complex methodologies.
First, proof of universalism is provided through the use of an
arithmetic method. The argument goes like this: the more the number
of women who wear the veil, the more universal is the sexual
segregation and control of women.30 Similarly, a large number of dif-
ferent, fragmented examples from a variety of countries also ap-
parently add up to a universal fact. For instance, Muslim women in
Saudi مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, India and Egypt all wear some sort of a
veil. Hence, this indicates that the sexual control of women is a uni-
versal fact in those countries in which the women are veiled.31 Fran
Hosken writes “Rape, forced prostitution, polygamy, genital muti-
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lation, pornography, the beating of girls and women, purdah (segre-
gation of women) are all violations of basic human rights” (“FGM,”
p. 15). By equating purdah with rape, domestic violence and forced
prostitution Hosken asserts its “sexual control” function as the pri-
mary explanation for purdah, whatever the context. The institution of
purdah is thus denied any cultural and historical specificity and con-
tradictions and potentially subversive aspects of the institution are
totally ruled out. In both these examples, the problem is not in assert-
ing that the practice of wearing a veil is widespread. This assertion
can be made on the basis of numbers. It is a descriptive general-
ization. However, it is the analytic leap from the practice of veiling to
an assertion of its general significance in controlling women that
must be questioned. While there may be a physical similarity in the
veils worn by women in Saudi مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arabia and Iran, the specific meaning
attached to this practice varies according to the cultural and ideo-
logical context. For example, as is well known, Iranian middle class
women veiled themselves during the 1979 revolution to indicate
solidarity with their veiled working class sisters, while in contempo-
rary Iran, mandatory Islamic laws dictate that all Iranian women wear
veils. While in both these instances, similar reasons might be offered
for the veil (opposition to the Shah and Western cultural colonization
in the first case, and the true Islamicization of Iran in the second), the
concrete meanings attached to Iranian women wearing the veil are
clearly different in both historical contexts. In the first case, wearing
the veil is both an oppositional and revolutionary gesture on the part
of Iranian middle class women; in the second case it is a coercive,
institutional mandate.32 Only through such context-specific differ-
entiated analysis does feminist theorizing and practice acquire
significance. It is on the basis of such analyses that effective political
strategies can be generated. To assume that the mere practice of veil-
ing women in a number of Muslim countries indicates the universal
oppression of women through sexual segregation would not only be
analytically and theoretically reductive, but also prove quite useless
when it comes to political strategizing.
Second, concepts like reproduction, the sexual division of
labor, the family, marriage, household, patriarchy, etc., are often used
without their specification in local cultural and historical contexts.
These concepts are used by feminists in providing explanations for
women’s subordination, apparently assuming their universal
applicability. For instance, how is it possible to refer to “the” sexual
division of labor when the content of this division changes radically
from one environment to the next, and from one historical juncture to
another? At its most abstract level, it is the fact of the differential
assignation of tasks according to sex that is significant; however, this
is quite different from the meaning or value that the content of this
sexual division of labor assumes in different contexts. In most cases
the assigning of tasks on the basis of sex has an ideological origin.
There is no question that a claim such as “women are concentrated in
service-oriented occupations in a large number of countries around
the world” is descriptively valid. Descriptively, then, perhaps the
existence of a similar sexual division of labor (where women work in
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service occupations like nursing, social work, etc., and men in other
kinds of occupations) in a variety of different countries can be
asserted. However, the concept of the “sexual division of labor” is
more than just a descriptive category. It indicates the differential
value placed on “men’s work” versus “women’s work.” Often the mere
existence of a sexual division of labor is taken to be proof of the op-
pression of women in various societies. This results from a confusion
between the descriptive and explanatory potential of the concept of
the sexual division of labor. Superficially similar situations may have
radically different, historically specific explanations, and cannot be
treated as identical. For instance, the rise of female-headed house-
holds in middle class America might be construed as greater inde-
pendence and feminist progress, whereby women are considered to
have chosen to be single parents (there are increasing numbers of
lesbian mothers, etc.). However, the recent increase in female-headed
households in Latin America where women might be seen to have
more decision-making power, is concentrated among the poorest
strata, where life choices are the most constrained economically.33 A
similar argument can be made for the rise of female-headed families
among Black and Chicana women in the U.S. The positive correlation
between this and the level of poverty among women of color and
White working class women in the U.S. has now even acquired a
name: the feminization of poverty. Thus, while it is possible to state
that there is a rise in female-headed households in the U.S. and in
Latin America, this rise cannot be discussed as a universal indicator
of women’s independence, nor can it be discussed as a universal
indicator of women’s impoverishment. The meaning and explanation
for the rise obviously varies according to the socio-historical context.
Similarly, the existence of a sexual division of labor in most contexts
cannot be sufficient explanation for the universal subjugation of
women in the work force. That the sexual division of labor does
indicate a devaluation of women’s work must be shown through
analysis of particular local contexts. In addition, devaluation of
women must also be shown through careful analysis. Concepts like
the sexual division of labor can be useful only if they are generated
through local, contextual analyses.34 If such concepts are assumed to
be universally applicable, the resultant homogenization of class, race,
religious, cultural and historical specificities of the lives of women in
the third world can create a false sense of the commonality of oppres-
sions, interests and struggles between and amongst women globally.
Beyond sisterhood there is still racism, colonialism and imperialism!
Finally, some writers confuse the use of gender as a super-
ordinate category of organizing analysis with the universalistic proof
and instantiation of this category. In other words, empirical studies of
gender differences are confused with the analytical organization of
cross-cultural work. Beverly Brown’s review of the book Nature,
Culture and Gender35 best illustrates this point. Brown suggests that
nature:culture and female:male are superordinate categories which
organize and locate lesser categories (like wild/domestic and
biology/technology) within their logic. These categories are universal
in the sense that they organize the universe of a system of repre-
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sentations. This relation is totally independent of the universal sub-
stantiation of any particular category. Her critique hinges on the fact
that rather than clarify the generalizability of nature:
culture::female:male as superordinate organizational categories,
Nature, Culture and Gender, the book, construes the universality of
this equation to lie at the level of empirical truth, which can be
investigated through field work. Thus, the usefulness of the
nature:culture::female:male formulation as a universal mode of the
organization of representation within any particular socio-historical
system is lost. Here, methodological universalism is assumed on the
basis of the reduction of the nature:culture::female:male analytic
categories to a demand for empirical proof of its existence in different
cultures. Discourses of representation are confused with material
realities, and the distinction made earlier between “Woman” and
“women” is lost. Feminist work on women in the third world which
blurs this distinction (which is present in certain Western feminists’
self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic
images of “Third World Women” as women who can only be defined
as material subjects, not through the relation of their materiality to
their representations.
To summarize: I have discussed three methodological moves
identifiable in feminist (and other academic) cross-cultural work
which seeks to uncover a universality in women’s subordinate
position in society. The next and final section pulls together the
previous sections attempting to outline the political effects of the
analytical strategies in the context of Western feminist writing on
women in the third world. These arguments are not against
generalization as much as they are for careful, historically specific
complex generalizations. Nor do these arguments deny the necessity
of forming strategic political identities and affinities. Thus, while
Indian women of different religions, castes, and class might forge a
political unity on the basis of organizing against police brutality
towards women,36 any analysis of police brutality must be contextual.
Strategic coalitions which construct oppositional political identities
for themselves are based on generalization, but the analysis of these
group identities cannot be based on universalistic, ahistorical
categories.
The Subject(s) of Power
This last section returns to an earlier point about the inherently
political nature of feminist scholarship, and attempts to clarify my
point about the possibility of detecting a colonialist move in the case
of a hegemonic first-third world connection in scholarship. The nine
texts in the Zed Press/Women in the Third World series that I have
discussed37 focused on the following common areas in discussing
women’s “status” within various societies: religion, family/kinship
structures, the legal system, the sexual division of labor, education,
and finally, political resistance. A large number of Western feminist
writings on women in the third world focus on these themes. Of
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course the Zed texts have varying emphases. For instance, two of the
studies, Women of Palestine (Zed Press, 1982) and Indian Women in
Struggle (Zed Press, 1980) focus explicitly on female militancy and
political involvement, while Women in مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab Society (Zed Press, 1980)
deals with مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab women’s legal, religious and familial status. In
addition, each text evidences a variety of methodologies and degrees
of care in making generalizations. Interestingly enough, however,
almost all the texts assume “women” as a category of analysis in the
manner designated above. Each text assumes “women” have a
coherent group identity within the different cultures discussed, prior
to their entry into social relations. Thus, Omvedt can talk about
“Indian Women” while refering to a particular group of women in the
State of Maharashtra, Cutrufelli about “Women of Africa” and Minces
about “مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab women” as if these groups of women have some sort of
obvious cultural coherence, distinct from men in these societies. The
“status” or “position” of women is assumed to be self-evident,
because women as an already constituted group are placed within
religious, economic, familial and legal structures. However, this focus
on the position of women whereby women are seen as a coherent
group in all 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 apparently constituted whole
populations, and relations of dominance and exploitation are also
posited in terms of whole peoples-wholes coming into exploitative
relations. It is only when men and women are seen as different
categories or groups possessing different already constituted
categories of experience, cognition and interests as groups, that such
a dichotomy is possible.
What does this imply about the structure and functioning of
power relations? The setting up of the commonality of third world
women’s struggles across classes and cultures against a general
notion of oppression (primarily the group in power-i.e., men)
necessitates the assumption of what Michel Foucault calls the
“juridico-discursive” model of power,38 the principle features of which
are: “a negative relation” (limit and lack); an “insistence on the rule”
(which forms a binary system); a “cycle of prohibition”; the “logic of
censorship”; and a “uniformity” of the apparatus functioning at
different levels. Feminist discourse on the third world which assumes
a homogeneous category-or group-called women necessarily
operates through the setting up of originary power divisions. Power
relations are structured in terms of a source of power and a
cumulative reaction to power. Opposition is a generalized
phenomenon created as a response to power-which, in turn, is
possessed by certain groups of people. The major problem with such
a definition of power is that it locks all revolutionary struggles into
binary structures-possessing power versus being powerless.
Women are powerless, unified groups. If the struggle for a just society
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is seen in terms of the move from powerless to powerful for women as
a group, and this is the implication in feminist discourse which
structures sexual difference in terms of the division between the
sexes, then the new society would be structurally identical to the
existing organization of power relations, constituting itself as a
simple inversion of what exists. If relations of domination and
exploitation are defined in terms of binary divisions-groups which
dominate and groups which are dominated-surely the implication is
that the accession to power of women as a group is sufficient to
dismantle the existing organization of relations? But women as a
group are not in some sense essentially superior or infallible. The crux
of the problem lies in that initial assumption of women as a
homogeneous group or category (“the oppressed”), a familiar
assumption in Western radical and liberal feminisms.39
What happens when this assumption of “women as an
oppresed group” is situated in the context of Western feminist writing
about third world women? It is here that I locate the colonialist move.
By focusing on the representation of women in the third world, and
what I refered to earlier as Western feminisms’ self-presentation in
the same context, it seems evident that Western feminists alone
become the true “subjects” of this counter-history. Third world
women, on the other hand, never rise above their generality and their
“object” status. While radical and liberal feminist assumptions of
women as a sex class might elucidate (however inadequately) the
autonomy of particular women’s struggles in the West, the
application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to
women in the third world colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of
the simultaneous location of different groups of women in social
class and ethnic frameworks. Similarly, many Zed Press authors, who
ground themselves in the basic analytic strategies of traditional
marxism also implicitly create a “unity” of women by substituting
“women’s activity” for “labor” as the primary theoretical determinant
of women’s situation. Here again, women are constituted as a
coherent group not on the basis of “natural” qualities or needs, but on
the basis of the sociological “unity” of their role in domestic
production and wage labor.40 In other words, Western feminist
discourse, by assuming women as a coherent, already constituted
group which is placed in kinship, legal and other structures, defines
third world women as subjects outside of social relations, instead of
looking at the way women are constituted as women through these
very structures. Legal, economic, religious, and familial structures are
treated as phenomena to be judged by Western standards. It is here
that ethnocentric universality comes into play. When these structures
are defined as “underdeveloped” or “developing” and women are
placed within these structures, an implicit image of the “average third
world woman” is produced. This is the transformation of the
(implicitly Western) “oppressed woman” into the “oppressed third
world woman.” While the category of “oppressed woman” is
generated through an exclusive focus on gender difference, “the
oppressed third world woman” category has an additional
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attribute-the “third world difference!” The “third world difference”
includes a paternalistic attitude towards women in the third world.4′
Since discussions of the various themes I identified earlier (e.g.,
kinship, education, religion, etc.) are conducted in the context of the
relative “underdevelopment” of the third world (which is nothing less
than unjustifiably confusing development with the separate path
taken by the West in its development, as well as ignoring the
directionality of the first-third world power relationship), third world
women as a group or category are automatically and necessarily
defined as: religious (read “not progressive”), family-oriented (read
“traditional”), legal minors (read “they-are-still-not-conscious-of-their-
rights”), illiterate (read “ignorant”), domestic (read “backward”) and
sometimes revolutionary (read “their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war-they-
must-fight!”). This is how the “third world difference” is produced.
When the category of “sexually oppressed women” is located within
particular systems in the third world which are defined on a scale
which is normed through Eurocentric assumptions, not only are third
world women defined in a particular way prior to their entry into social
relations, but since no connections are made between first and third
world power shifts, it reinforces the assumption that people in the
third world just have not evolved to the extent that the West has. This
mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing and systematizing the
experiences of different groups of women in these countries, erases
all marginal and resistant modes of experiences. It is significant that
none of the texts I reviewed in the Zed Press series focuses on lesbian
politics or the politics of ethnic and religious marginal groups in third
world women’s groups. Resistance can thus only be defined as
cumulatively reactive, not as something inherent in the operation of
power. If power, as Michel Foucault has argued recently, can really be
understood only in the context of resistance,4 this
misconceptualization of power is both analytically as well as
strategically problematical. It limits theoretical analysis as well as
reinforcing Western cultural imperialism. For in the context of a
first/third world balance of power, feminist analyses which perpetrate
and sustain the hegemony of the idea of the superiority of the West
produce a corresponding set of universal images of the “third world
woman,” images like the veiled woman, the powerful mother, the
chaste virgin, the obedient wife, etc. These images exist in universal,
ahistorical splendor, setting in motion a colonialist discourse which
exercises a very specific power in defining, coding and maintaining
existing first/third world connections.
To conclude, then, let me suggest some disconcerting simi-
larities between the typically authorizing signature of such Western
feminist writings on women in the third world, and the authorizing
signature of the project of humanism in general-humanism as a
Western ideological and political project which involves the
necessary recuperation of the “East” and “Woman” as Others. Many
contemporary thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Deleuze, and
Said have written at length about the underlying anthropomorphism
and ethnocentrism which constitutes a hegemonic humanistic prob-
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lematic that repeatedly confirms and legitimates (Western) Man’s
centrality.43 Feminist theorists like Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman,
Helene Cixous, and others have also written about the recuperation
and absence of woman/women within Western humanism.44 The focus
of the work of all these thinkers can be stated simply as an un-
covering of the political interests that underlie the binary logic of
humanistic discourse and ideology whereby, as a valuable recent
essay puts it, “the first (majority) term (Identity, Universality, Culture,
Disinterestedness, Truth, Sanity, Justice, etc.), which is, in fact,
secondary and derivative (a construction), is privileged over and
colonizes the second (minority) term (difference, temporality, anarchy,
error, interestedness, insanity, deviance, etc.), which is in fact,
primary and originative.”45 In other words, only in so far as
“Woman/Women” and “the East” are defined as Others, or as
peripheral, that (Western) Man/Humanism can represent him/itself as
the center. It is not the center that determines the periphery, but the
periphery that, in its boundedness, determines the center. Just as
feminists like Kristeva, Cixous and others deconstruct the latent
anthropomorphism in Western discourse, I have suggested a parallel
strategy in this paper in uncovering a latent ethnocentrism in
particular feminist writings on women in the third world.
As discussed earlier, a comparison between Western feminist
self-presentation and Western feminist re-presentation of women in
the third world yields significant results. Universal images of “the
third world woman” (the veiled woman, chaste virgin, etc.), images
constructed from adding the “third world difference” to “sexual dif-
ference” are predicated upon (and hence obviously bring into sharper
focus) assumptions about Western women as secular, liberated, and
having control over their own lives. This is not to suggest that Western
women are secular, liberated and have control over their own lives. I
am refering to a discursive self-presentation, not necessarily to
material reality. If this were a material reality there would be no need
for political movements in the West-a ridiculous contention in these
days of the imperialist adventures of Jerry Falwell and Indiana Jones!
Similarly, only from the vantage point of the West is it possible to
define the “third world” as underdeveloped and economically
dependent. Without the overdetermined discourse that creates the
third world, there would be no (singular and privileged) first world.
Without the “third world woman,” the particular self-presentation of
Western women mentioned above would be problematical. I am
suggesting then that the one enables and sustains the other. This is
not to say that the signature of Western feminist writings on the third
world have the same authority as the project of Western humanism.
However, in the context of the hegemony of the Western scholarly
establishment in the production and dissemination of texts, and in
the context of the legitimating imperative of humanistic and scientific
discourse, the definition of “the third world woman” as a monolith
might well tie into the larger economic and ideological praxis of
“disinterested” scientific inquiry and pluralism which are the surface
manifestations of a latent economic and cultural colonization of the
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“non-Western” world. It is time to move beyond the Marx who found it
possible to say: They cannot represent themselves; they must be
represented.
Cornell University
Acknowledgments
This paper would not have been possible without the challenging and careful reading and
editorial suggestions that S. P. Mohanty provided. I would also like to thank Biddy Martin
for our numerous discussions about feminist theory and politics. They both helped me
think through some of the arguments in this paper.
NOTES
1 Paul A. Baran, Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1962); Samir Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1977); Andre Gunder-Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in
Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967).
2 See especially essays in Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge
Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table
Press, 1983); Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New
York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983); Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, Common Dif-
ferences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1981); Cherrie Moraga, Loving in the War Years (Boston: South End
Press, 1984).
3 Terms like “third” and “first” world are very problematical both in suggesting
over-simplified similarities between and amongst countries labelled “third” or
“first” world, as well as implicitly reinforcing existing economic, cultural and
ideological hierarchies which are conjured up in using such terminology. I use
the term “third world” with full awareness of its problems, only because this is
the terminology available to us at the moment. The use of quotation marks is
meant to suggest a continuous questioning of the designation “third world.”
Even when I do not use quotation marks, I mean to use the term critically.
4 I am indebted to Teresa de Lauretis for this particular formulation of the project
of feminist theorizing. See especially her introduction in de Lauretis, Alice
Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press,
1984); see also Sylvia Wynter, “The Politics of Domination,” unpublished
manuscript.
5 This argument is similar to Homi Bhabha’s definition of colonial discourse as
strategically creating a space for a subject peoples through the production of
knowledges and the exercise of power. The full quote reads: “[colonial dis-
course is] an apparatus of power. .. an apparatus that turns on the recognition
and disavowal of racial/cultural/historical differences. Its predominant
strategic function is the creation of a space for a ‘subject peoples’ through the
production of knowledges in terms of which surveillance is exercised and a
complex form of pleasure/unpleasure is incited. It (i.e., colonial discourse)
seeks authorization for its strategies by the production of knowledges by
coloniser and colonised which are stereotypical but antithetically evaluated.”
Homi Bhabha, “The Other Question-the Stereotype and Colonial Discourse.”
Screen, 24 (November-December 1983), 23.
6 Anouar Abdel-Malek, Social Dialectics: Nation and Revolution (Albany: State
Univ. of New York Press, 1981), esp. p. 145.
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7 Abdel-Malek, Social Dialectics, pp. 145-46.
8 A number of documents and reports on the U.N. International Conferences on
Women, Mexico City, 1975, and Copenhagen, 1980, as well as the 1976
Wellesley Conference on Women and Development attest to this. Nawal el
Saadawi, Fatima Mernissi and Mallica Vajarathon in “A Critical Look At The
Wellesley Conference”‘ (Quest, IV [Winter 1978], 101-107), characterize this
conference as “American-planned and organized,” situating third world
participants as passive audiences. They focus especially on the lack of self-
consciousness of Western women’s implications in the effects of imperialism
and racism in their assumption of an “international sisterhood.” A recent
essay, by Pratibha Parmar and Valerie Amos, is titled “Challenging Imperial
Feminism,” Feminist Review, 17 (Autumn 1984), 3-19. Parmar and Amos
characterize Euro-American feminism which seeks to establish itself as the
only legitimate feminism as “imperial.”
9 The Zed Press “Women in the Third World” series is unique in its conception. I
choose to focus on this series because it is the only contemporary series I have
found which assumes that “women in the Third World” is a legitimate and
separate subject of study and research. A number of the texts in this series are
excellent, especially those texts which deal directly with women’s resistance
struggles. However, a number of the texts written by feminist sociologists,
anthropologists, and journalists are symptomatic of the kind of Western
feminist work on women in the Third World that concerns me. Thus, an analysis
of a few of these particular texts in this series can serve as a representative
point of entry into the discourse I am attempting to locate and define.
10 M.Z. Rosaldo, “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism
and Cross-Cultural Understanding,” Signs, 5, no. 3 (1980), 389-417, esp. 392.
11 My analysis in this section of the paper has been influenced by Felicity
Eldhom, Olivia Harris and Kate Young’s excellent discussions in “Con-
ceptualising Women,” Critique of Anthropology, “Women’s Issue,” 3 (1977),
101-103. Eldhom, Harris and Young examine the use of the concepts of “repro-
duction” and the “sexual division of labor” in anthropological work on women,
suggesting the inevitable pull towards universals inherent in the use of these
categories to determine “women’s position.”
12 Amos and Parmar, “Challenging Imperial Feminism,” p. 7.
13 Fran Hosken, “Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights,” Feminist Issues,
1 (Summer 1981), 3-24 (hereafter cited in the text as “FGM”). Another example
of this kind of analysis is Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology. Daly’s assumption in this
text, that women as a group are sexually victimized leads to her very
problematic comparison between the attitudes towards women witches and
healers in the West, Chinese footbinding, and the genital mutilation of women
in Africa. According to Daly, women in Europe, 论文帮助/论文写作服务/负担得起我及时提交我最好的质量 – China, and Africa constitute a
homogeneous group as victims of male power. Not only does this label (sexual
victims) eradicate the specific historical and material realities and
contradictions which lead to and perpetuate practices like witch hunting and
genital mutilation, but it also obliterates the differences, complexities and
heterogeneities of the lives of, for example, women of different classes,
religions and nations in Africa. As Audre Lorde pointed out, women in Africa
share a long tradition of healers and goddesses that perhaps binds them
together more appropriately than their victim status. However, both Daly and
Lorde fall prey to universalistic assumptions about “African women” (both
negative and positive). What matters is the complex, historical range of power
differences, commonalities and resistances that exist among women in Africa
which construct African women as “subjects” of their own politics. See Mary
Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1978), esp. pp. 107-312; Audre Lorde, “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” in
Moraga and Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back (New York: Kitchen
Table Press, 1983), pp. 94-97.
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14 See Eldhom, Harris and Young, “Conceptualising Women,” for a good
discussion of the necessity to theorize male violence within specific societal
frameworks, rather than assume it as a universal fact.
15 Beverly Lindsay, ed., Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: The
Impact of Race, Sex and Class (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1983),
esp. pp. 298, 306.
16 Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Women on Africa: Roots of Oppression (London: Zed
Press, 1983), esp. p. 13.
17 Cutrufelli, Women of Africa, p. 33.
18 Rosaldo, “The Use and Abuse of Anthropology,” p. 400.
19 Cutrufelli, Women of Africa, p. 43.
20 Elizabeth Cowie, “Women As Sign,” m/f, 1 (1978), 49-63.
21 Juliette Minces, The House of Obedience: Women in مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab Society (London: Zed
Press, 1980), esp. p. 23.
22 Mina Modares, “Women and Shi’ism in Iran,” m/f, 5 & 6 (1981), 61-82.
23 Patricia Jeffery, Frogs in a Well: Indian Women in Purdah (London: Zed Press,
1979).
24 Modares, “Women and Shi’ism in Iran,” p. 63.
25 Ester Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development (New York: St. Martins
Press, 1970); Irene Tinker and Michelle Bo Bramsen, eds., Women and World
Development (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1972); Perdita
Huston, Third World Women Speak Out (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979).
These views can also be found in differing degrees in collections like:
Wellesley Editorial Committee, ed., Women and National Development: The
Complexities of Change (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977), and Signs,
Special Issue, “Development and the Sexual Division of Labor,” 7 (Winter 1981).
For an excellent introducton to WID issues see ISIS, Women in Development: A
Resource Guide for Organization and Action (Philadelphia: New Society
Publishers, 1984).
26 Huston, Third World Women Speak Out, p. 115.
27 Maria Mies, The Lace Makers of Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the
World Market (London: Zed Press, 1982).
28 Mies, The Lace Makers, esp. p. 157.
29 See essays by Vanessa Maher, Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson, and Maila
Stevens in Kate Young, Carol Walkowitz and Roslyn McCullagh, eds., Of Mar-
riage and the Market: Women’s Subordination in International Perspective
(London: CSE Books, 1981); and essays by Vivian Mota and Michelle Mattelart
in June Nash and Helen I. Safa, eds., Sex and Class in Latin America: Women’s
Perspectives on Politics, Economics and the Family in the Third World
(Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1980).
30 Ann Dearden, eds., مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab Women (London: Minority Rights Group Report No. 27,
1975), esp. pp. 4-5.
31 Dearden, مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab Women, pp. 7, 10.
32 See Azar Tabari, “The Enigma of the Veiled Iranian Women,” Feminist Review,
5 (1980), 19-32, for a detailed discussion of these instances.
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33 Olivia Harris, “Latin American Women-An Overview,” in Harris, ed., Latin
American Women (London: Minority Rights Group Report, No. 57, 1983),
pp. 4-7. Other MRG Reports include Ann Dearden, 1975, and Rounaq Jahan,
ed., Women in Asia (London: Minority Rights Groups Report No. 45, 1980).
34 See Eldhom, Harris and Young, “Conceptualising Women,” for an excellent dis-
cussion of this.
35 Beverly Brown, “Displacing the Difference-Review, Nature, Culture and
Gender,” m/f, 8 (1983), 79-90; Marilyn Strathern and Carol McCormack, eds.,
Nature, Culture and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980).
36 See Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, eds., In Search of Answers: Indian
Women’s Voices from Manushi (London: Zed Press, 1984), for a discussion of
this aspect of Indian women’s struggles.
37 List of Zed Press Publications: Patricia Jeffery, Frogs in a Well: Indian Women
in Purdah, 1979; Latin American and Carribbean Women’s Collective, Slaves of
Slaves: The Challenge of Latin American Women, 1980; Gail Omvedt, We Shall
Smash this Prison: Indian Women in Struggle, 1980; Juliette Minces, The House
of Obedience: Women in مساعدة التعيين – خدمة كتابة المقالات من قبل كبار الكتاب العرب, Arab Society, 1980; Bobby Siu, Women of 论文帮助/论文写作服务/负担得起我及时提交我最好的质量 – China:
Imperialism and Women’s Resistance 1900-1949, 1981; Ingela Bendt and James
Downing, We Shall Return: Women of Palestine, 1982; Maria Rosa Cutrufelli,
Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression, 1983; Maria Mies, The Lace Makers of
Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market, 1983; Miranda
Davis, ed., Third World/Second Sex: Women’s Struggles and National
Liberation, 1983.
38 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), esp.
pp. 134-45.
39 For succinct discussions of Western radical and liberal feminisms see Hester
Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought (Boston: G.K. Hall & Company,
1983); And Zillah Eisenstein, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New
York: Longman, 1981).
40 See Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and
Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” Socialist Review, 80 (March-April 1985),
65-108, esp. 76.
41 Parmar and Amos describe the cultural stereotypes present in Euro-American
feminist thought: “The image is of the passive Asian woman subject to oppres-
sive practices within the Asian family with an emphasis on wanting to ‘help’
Asian women liberate themselves from their role. Or there is the strong,
dominant Afro-Caribbean woman, who despite her ‘strength’ is exploited by the
‘sexism’ which is seen as being a strong feature in relationshps between Afro-
Caribbean men and women” (“Challenging Imperial Feminism,” p. 9). These
images illustrate the extent to which paternalism is an essential element of
feminist thinking which incorporates the above stereotypes-a paternalism
which can lead to the definition of priorities for women of color by Euro-
American feminists.
42 This is one of M. Foucault’s central points in his re-conceptualization of the
strategies and workings of power networks. See his Power/Knowledge, 1980,
and his History of Sexuality Volume One (New York: Random House, 1978).
43 Foucault, Power/Knowledge and History of Sexuality; Jacques Derrida, Of
Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974); Julia
Kristeva, Desire in Language (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980); Edward
Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978); Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (New York: Viking Press,
1977).
357
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44 Luce Irigaray, “This Sex Which Is Not One,” and “When the Goods Get
Together,” in Elaine Marks and Isabel de Courivron, eds., New French
Feminisms (New York: Schoken Books, 1981), pp. 99-110; Helene Cixous, “The
Laugh of the Medusa,” in New French Feminisms, pp. 245-68. For a good
discussion of Sarah Kofman’s work, see Elizabeth Berg, “The Third Woman,”
Diacritics (Summer 1982), 11-20.
45 William V. Spanos, “boundary 2 and the Polity of Interest: Humanism, the
‘Center Elsewhere,’ and Power,” in this issue.
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