The history of colonialism and imperialism is plagued with conceptions of other-ization and elements of identification on the basis of ‘Us vs. Them.’ For the civilized, there is a need for the barbaric subject that legitimizes and gives substance to its civilization. The way that these competing forces are identified and defined is in relation to each other. Likewise, the first world woman needs the third world woman subject in order to distinguish herself as the ‘liberated’ western counterpart. This can be used to argue that First World Feminism can be seen as neo-imperialist in how it showcases the Third World Women.

Mohanty uses various examples of feminist literature that looks upon the third world women as a homogenous group, stripping it of any cultural, religious, economic or social context, which needs to be liberated. This has the trap of ‘freezing’ the women collectively as objects which only exist in relation to a counterpart, whether that counterpart is men or the first world women. They do not exist on their own terms with their own contexts of history and culture.  They are always the victims in the power relations with men and the only way they can escape is through their ‘westernization’ and ‘liberation’ something that has to be given to them even if it is against their will, just as the colonized native was to be civilized against its will. This ‘liberalization’ is not context specific but is a blanket effort for all third world women whether they’re from Africa, they’re Muslim, or Arab or even Vietnamese. This is eloquently put by Mohanty, “that Western feminism 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.”

Mohanty further explains that this discourse, ‘colonial’ in its nature “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 exercised in discourse.” Hence, this discourse creates a dichotomy of power between the first world woman and the third world woman whereby both exist in relation to the other where the third world woman exists to validate the first world woman’s freedom and liberation. Thus, through Western Feminism, the first world woman represents herself in a black and white way, and expresses herself via the situation of the third world woman. If she is educated then the other is not, if she does not cover herself, then the other is veiled, if she has control of her own sexuality then the other does not.

Hence, first world feminism, through the power of its discourse has created an imperialist power over the third world woman. Sisterhood, as the feminism puts it, is not solely dependent upon biological similarities, “Beyond sisterhood there is still racism, colonialism and imperialism,” Mohanty.

Fingerprinting as a form of identification is based on the proven premise that each and every individual has a different fingerprint. A difference which is not manufactured by humans but is sanctioned by Nature. To group even two individuals together under any broad category, may they be identical twins, is unacceptable when delving into solutions to the problems faced by said individuals from thousands of miles away, having never met them in person. The purpose is not to draw attention away from the above-mentioned problems, rather it is the exacerbation of these problems that stems from this irrational assumption that places whole groups of these people under the same category. An example would be to assume all oppressed women in country A in the Third World as part of a perfectly uniform group of women that transcends class, religious, historical and individual boundaries. Uniform because of (a) their gender and (b) being oppressed.

This is what Chandra Mohanty deems prudent to point out in her essay Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. The lack of effort to distinguish between (broadly speaking) the nature of oppression with regards to women from the global South by grouping all of them under the same category of “Oppressed Third World Women” is counterproductive and, boldly speaking, ironic considering this is a direct result of efforts to emancipate women from the shackles that come with those regions. Each woman and her circumstances will be different in one way or the other. For example, a woman grudgingly keeping to domestic work so as not to grieve her parents faces a different form of oppression than the one who is forced to stay there by, say, her spouse. Both face different forms of oppression than the one who is abused in her home and she faces a different form than the one who faces the “burka police” in Afghanistan and so on. To group all of them in the same category and to, subsequently, break society down into binary constituents, namely “oppressed women” and “oppressive men” is merely reinforcing this divide and glosses over the individual voice of each woman in the global feminist theatre, Mohanty argues.

This first world feminism and its construction of this “Third World Woman” whom they have to save has parallels with Walt Whitman Rostow’s linear 5 stage growth model which he believed was applicable to every nation in the world, failing to account for historical, socio-economic and anthropological factors. Promising at first glance, grossly neglectful of imperative factors at second. That is not to say that first world feminism is aimed at maintaining the status quo in the global South vis-à-vis women but rather it is fails to account for vital elements which is needed to fulfill the holistic vision of the feminism movement. This ‘Hero Syndrome’ prevalent in first world feminism is what leads to this unscholarly analysis of women in the third world.

The power divide that is reinforced with this ignorance of individuality amongst third world women is between the men and the women, the oppressor and the oppressed respectively. The power divide is not between the women of the North and the women of the South. Therefore, while First World Feminism may be ignorant of some aspects of the nature of infringement of women rights in different countries, regions, societies, families and religions in the South, it is anything but imperialist in its motives.

Contemporary day Western feminism might as well be used as a euphemism for the hegemonic feminist theory, for both are non-class, non-racialized, at least according to Mohanty.

In this world of polarised communities and strong power structures, Chandra Mohanty, in her essay, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, goes on to identify gender as a source of oppression. However, her take is quite different from ones common idea of gender struggle. She does not look at the man-versus-woman debate. Instead, she takes a more globalised view of the world and pays close scrutiny to how women of the West may well be waging a gender war against other women, or particularly those of the Global South. For me, Mohantys article was able to achieve three main things: the need for creating an understanding of how all global systems work in symbiosis (for instance, capitalism, globalisation, imperialism etc), the need to understand how the “Third World Woman” is in fact, constructed from the perspective of the “First World Woman, and the need to understand the detrimental effect of generalisations.  

Keeping in view the colonial past of most countries (both, colonized and colonizer), and their present of globalisation and capitalism, it is almost impossible to look at any aspect of these given communities in a solitary manner. According to Mohanty, “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 interconnections between first and third world economies and the profound effect of this on the lives of women in these countries.” This analysis is particularly important for it brings to attention how ideas like imperialism, militarism, capitalism and globalisation are not to be looked independently, for all these systems practice in an interconnected manner and sustain each other. But it isn’t only their compounded nature that one has to call attention to. No. In fact, it is a lot more important to assess how at the heart of some of these practices are gendered and heteronormative sexual politics and ideologies that cement this kind of imperialism and militarism, further strengthening ideas of gendered oppression. Similarly there is a need to always answer questions of freedom and liberation (of the colonized) by deeply engaging with its imperial past and the epistemological question of decolonization and imperialism itself. This is pertinent in understanding ideas of decolonisation on psychic or social levels, or in terms of racialized gendered ideologies.

When Edward Said calls attention to the orient, he mainly lays focus on the need to look at it from the view of the occident and how the latter creates the former. This implies that when a French man goes to Algeria and looks at her people as “backward and primitive”, he is in fact, assuming himself to be at the pinnacle of progress and hence, creating the identity of the Algerian as being different from his own i.e primitive. This same principal can be applied to women of the first world, and how they construct this “third world woman” as being oppressed and primitive. When movements like “Free the Nipple” become flag bearers of what contemporary day feminism should look like, white women look down at the covered woman of the third world and assume her state of oppression in relation to the amount of clothes she uses to cover herself. This train of thought, although common, is inherently problematic, for it is entirely based on the assumption that the idea of a free, liberated woman can be conflated with the “western woman” and how anything that differs from this definition may well be constituting itself as oppressed and awaiting progress. And hence, it becomes almost compulsory, at least in feminist scholarship, to look at the third world woman through her right and culture, and independent of any western thoughts.

But is it as easy?

Most western feminists studying the “third world woman”, almost inevitably comply to the negative connotations that the phrase itself comes with. Part of it may be attributed to ethnocentrism while for the most part, the loaded term can be blamed. The whole term “third world woman” itself points to the problematic idea of generalisation, and how all these women from the Global South are an assumed cookie-cutter model of each other- oppressed and far from progressive. As a result, the first world woman constantly feels the “need” to protect this third world woman, and to “enlighten” her with what real progress should look like.

How this may be put to action is a stark reality in itself.

In 2002, when George Bush is trying to build his empire through waging a war in Afghanistan, Laura Bush comes forth and attributes this intervention to the “emancipation of Afghan women”. Her husband constantly refers to those women as “women of cover” and those who are “oppressed and marginalised”. One may ask how his definition of the woman in the burka (“women of cover”) suddenly, and so nonchalantly, translates to the oppressed, but then the precedent is enough as an answer. The 19-year long war, which sees no future of an end, has further sabotaged the country and made it into a more stimulated cauldron of oppression and tumult, at least for the women. The Afghan woman is possibly more scared to leave her house, and if she does covering is a prerequisite, not because the “Taliban are oppressive” and demand it, but because there is no other way. Even if one hypothetically believes that the war has “liberated Afghanistan”, one can bring Laura Bush’s definition of the “emancipation of these women” and they still still look a lot more destitute.

Feminism is a powerful phenomenon, and while its allies grow each day, people who feel threatened by it also grow at the same speed- almost linearly. Some may deem those non-allies as women-hating, atrocious humans, but then Chandra Mohanty clearly leaves a room for why the woman in burka may “not need” feminism and what her idea of it may be.

In this piece, I will analyze the extent to which first world feminism can be seen as imperialism. My reflection will focus on the methodological universalisms section of Chandra Mohanty’s article. I will try to engage with Mohanty’s assessment of the methodological problem of ethnocentric universalism in cross-cultural work and how that correlates with third world women being reduced to object status.

Before delving into Mohanty’s critique, it is important to define imperialism as it can hold many connotations. My analysis will interpret imperium as the exercise of power. First world feminist discourse perhaps unintentionally reduces the agency of third world women by implying that they cannot represent themselves. In the context of first world feminism, ‘progress’ cannot be gauged without identifying third world subjects, and it is precisely this identification which results in third world women being viewed as depersonalized objects. What this ‘progress’ denotes is women gradually reclaiming their personhood, but the contradiction is that the first world feminist discourse can be seen as further marginalizing third world women. This can happen due to an imposition of Western standards which comes at the expense of third world women and their individuality.

The problem of ethnocentric universalism can be seen as a methodological issue that results in an uninformed intrusion by first world feminists into the contexts of third world women. Mohanty’s primary contention is predicated on the notion that such discourse is depersonalizing third world women. According to her, a critical assumption is that across classes and cultures, women are somehow socially constituted as a homogenous group. This results in the neglect of cultural or historical specificity which might be an integral component when it comes to understanding the power dynamics in a given society. An example which Mohanty gives to elucidate such generalizations is of Hosken equating the veil with rape, domestic violence, and forced prostitution as a form of sexual control. By reducing the veil to a mere symbol of oppression, a universal fact is constructed which does not take into account the opinion of the individual who might be wearing the veil and what it might mean to her. Not only does first world feminist discourse tend to neglect contextual nuances, but it also imposes a dominant episteme which does not account for the individuality of third world women. It is the process of such imposition which results in third women becoming objects of power. What the issue of ethnocentric universalism can be linked to is the rationale behind the mission civilastrice as it applies a similar temporality on the existence of third world women.

The intent of first world feminism is to expedite emancipation, but the result can be construed as the exacerbated marginalization of third world women.

Chandra Mohanty outlines the problematic implications of Western feminism portraying third world women as a “singular monolithic subject.” Mohanty describes how this homogenization of third world women creates a stark distinction between them—the other—and the Western women who are significantly better off. Such feminist discourse is inherently colonial as it privileges one kind of woman while depicting the other as the victim of the colonized societies. The following analysis of Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” will focus on two main consequences of this kind of feminist discourse. First, it will discuss how otherization of third world women is instrumental in making the Western women look better and more advanced. And then, it will elaborate on how this view of third world women does a disservice to them and only helps perpetuate their positions as a victim.

Mohanty quotes multiple examples to show how Western feminist discourse groups women from postcolonial countries under the singular title of third world women. These groups of Muslim women or African women are attributed certain characteristics that define them. This reductionism and determinism reminds one of a similar process of categorization—the colonizing process. The colonizers, too, categorized the colonized people in one big group of backward and uncivil beings who needed to be guided and civilized by their superior masters. Such categorization only exists for the purpose of comparison. There needs to be the uncivil person for the existence and justification of the civilized person. Similarly, there need to be the third world women struggling in their backward societies for there to be first world women who also struggle but somehow struggle in more useful ways such that they are eventually able to break the chains that bind them. The other—the third world women—exist to provide a scale for comparison and to show to the Western feminists that they have come a long way. Time, again, plays an important role. Similar to the colonized who lived in the colonizer’s past, third world women lives in Western women’s past. This is not to say that they share same histories but that if they were to mark their progress, the latter would be much ahead of the former.

The otherization of third world women is thus important to show the differences between them and their Western counterparts. And the importance of these differences is to be able to make a claim of value between the two. Of course, feminist discourse does not claim to promote such competition. It is still implied that while one type of woman struggles in silence, the other fights for her rights and is on the path to success. Thus the latter is the type of woman that one should aspire to be. Given the notion of time discussed above and the idea of success mentioned here, it is obvious that Western feminism suggests that there’s one particular kind of freedom that all women should hope for. This is the Western kind of freedom that only takes into account the Western culture and context. Any other kind of freedom is not freedom at all. It is simply another form of oppression or some kind of compromise that the third world woman is expected to make. For example, the image of a free woman will have Western attire (pants, skirts, etc) but the image of an oppressed woman will have a veil. The signifiers of liberation have been decided according to Western scales. Western feminism is imperialist in that way. It exploits the oppression of third world women to make itself look better in comparison.

Mohanty also discusses how such discourse portrays third world women in only a few selected ways. They are universal dependents, and victims of male violence, the colonial process, familial systems and religious ideologies. In any narrative involving third world women, their only role is that of a victim or a passive receiver of abuse and oppression. What this discourse robs them of, more than their conditions themselves, is not simply a voice but also the possibility of being anything other than a victim. In fact, oppression in such narratives is so normalized that it is expected. What else could these women get? It is as if their culture is designed to victimize them. Such a lens provides a pitiful view of third world women. Since their conditions—the men in their society or their religious ideologies—cannot change, they too cannot experience any change. What makes this pity more profound is the hopelessness that accompanies it.

With such reduced possibilities, the third world woman does not stand a chance. She has no choice, no hope, and perhaps no desire to be free like the Western woman. She is stuck being sexually violated, restricted to the roles of mother and wife, hidden behind a veil. The Western women are martyrs who fight bravely for what they know they deserve, and the third world women are victims who take what they get in silence. There is a particular respect associated with the former which is absent and is replaced by pity and perhaps judgment for the latter. While Western feminists fight for the right to vote, the third world women are concerned with more basic problems: the right to their own body, fixed gender roles, etc. Again, the third world women are behind. The problem here is that unlike the colonized who had the colonizer to guide him to civilization, the third world woman has no one. She is left behind with the same uncivil man with no further promise of redemption. She is permanently stuck in her helpless state.

The First World Feminists are out on the mission to rescue the Third World Woman. This woman is a victim of oppression. But funnily enough, in reality it is not the third world woman who is a victim but the first world woman. She is a victim of colonization. Certainly not in the sense as the coloured races but she has succumbed to the ideas of the colonialists and in the guise of rescuing the coloured women, and women in general, she is advancing the civilization mission. Oblivious to this, she continues to fight the colonial men for equal wages, employment opportunities’ all the while perpetuating their message. This First world feminist is then nothing but another tool for spreading colonialism.

 And to serve this mission of colonialism, first world woman need the third world woman. Without ‘us’, ‘they’ cannot exist!  Hence whatever scholarship is produced is tainted by colonialism. It is not merely a production of knowledge based on the subject ‘women’ but knowledge that is “directly political and practice that it is purposeful and ideological’’ as outlined by Chandra Mohanty. Then it wouldn’t be wrong to say that this knowledge on women is inherently flawed.

Firstly, because, as Mohanty states that western scholarship on third world women paints them all with the same brush, condensing them in a “composite singular” group, trying to resist a ‘universal patriarchy’ in place. This third world woman is then constructed as ‘ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic,’ and most importantly as victimized. In other words, she is portrayed as someone who is backward and needs to be rescued. The first world woman wants to bring this poor woman out of the darkness of her socially and politically oppressed situation into the light of the first world that is advanced and progressive.  But what she fails to understand is that what may appear as black to this white woman may be white for black woman. This Third world woman then is not backward. She does not need to be rescued from the ‘past’ of the first world. First world’s past is Third world woman’s present, that which is robbed off by the colonialists.

So in reality, it is not the third world woman that needs to be rescued but the first world feminists. One needs to burst their bubble who believe to be working for women when in actuality they are just working for the colonialist men.

In her work called “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, Mohanty sets the stage by the various ways in which colonialism, as a discourse, is repeatedly employed by the West, be it about cultural appropriation, economic and political hierarchies, domination or understanding of the third world.

Particularly, understanding of ‘women’ of the third world. By Western Feminism.

Mohanty’s concern is with the creation, production and reference to the “third world women” as a singular, monolithic subject in recent Western feminist texts. The idea is to investigate the specific, methodological manner in which knowledge regarding the third world women is articulated, presented, and made popular. How and why a particular view or image of the third world women has increasingly become common, or convenient, is in question. While the author carefully points out the fact that Western feminist discourse is not homogeneous or unified, yet there exists certain points of coherence and convergence. Such areas are visible in the in the overarching and unsophisticated assumption(s) of the West regarding the third world women.

Western feminism defines itself via creating the ‘other’ as non-Western. Thus, Feminist scholarship is not just concerned with ‘producing’ knowledge regarding a subject, instead, it is to be understood as a political and discursive ‘practice’. An ideologically motivated practice, which intervenes into certain hegemonic discourses. It is, therefore, no surprise that feminist scholarship puts its entire emphasis on power-dynamics, which scholarly practices deal with in a number of ways. The author does, however, make it known that apolitical scholarship does not exist. She speaks of Western feminism in terms of colonialism and its attempt to ‘colonize’, to dominate and ignore, the differences and heterogeneity that exist in the lives of women in the third world, and convert this heterogeneity into a singular image, as reflection of the ‘Third World Woman’. Crucial to note here is the distinction made between woman and women. While ‘woman’ refers to a compound, unified identity based on certain ‘universal’ social and anthropological relations, ‘women’ is used for actual, historical subjects, with collective pasts and presents. Needless to say, this label of the ‘Third World Woman’ is approved by the Western humanist discourse, and carries with itself certain implicit assumptions convenient to the ideas, frameworks and perceptions of the West. In addition to deciding what ‘should’ be understood of the third world woman, confined to patriarchy and oppression, what exists within this label is a reductive notion which does not appreciate or recognize the existing complexities, differences and heterogeneous elements in what is known of women in the third world.

 The West comes from a hegemonic position, which consequently leads to the systematization of the women’s oppression in the third world, and it is through this homogenization that power relations are created. Thus the author makes the reader understand Western Feminist scholarship as a combination of two relating concepts: power and struggle. It seems, therefore, that a feminist eye coming from a Western setting cannot, or does not want to, understand the third world women as individuals with agency and independence. Rather the popular practice is to examine these women in dependency of someone else, either the men or the colonizer. Doing this, women are robbed of their individual identities and the very recognition of their agency, in whatever shape and form they have it. Evidently, this is problematic because the idea of the third world women then suggests women as dependent, struggling beings, oppressed, seen through their relations with X, as opposed to their existence as independent, individual identities. In other words, women are seen as functions of either patriarchy or colonialism, or both. This binary analytic is what the author is uncovering and challenging. While the author uses the works of many scholars on the subject, yet the defining characteristic remains the same; the effect(s) of representing third world women as a homogeneous category. What coheres the Western Feminist scholarship is defining women with an ‘object status’, a norm problematic, and a norm that needs to be challenged, for this ‘common’ understanding suggests being comfortable with keeping a certain category of women “outside history”.

Because women, particularly third world women, are constantly objectified, the immediate consequence this objectification and reductionist portrayal has is the image of women as immature and deprived of the very ethos of feminism. Or ‘Western’ feminism, in particular.  Owing to this system of establishing a universality when it comes to the third world women, the voices of women are affected despite class, cultural and regional differences. This universality has many a strand attached to it. These include constructing women in terms of religion, economic dependence, familial systems, patriarchy, violence and colonial processes. To narrow these strands down, what the author highlights is the cross cultural existence of “male domination and female exploitation”, as the crux of Western feminist writings on the third world women. Interestingly, the use of numbers and arithmetic methods comes into play too in aiding the idea of universality. Here becomes relevant the example of the veil, suggesting that the greater the number of women wearing the veil, the more widespread is the sexual control and domination over women. An overly simplistic and problematic method, but that is frequently employed in Western feminist works.

This method or popular discourse portraying women as powerless against possessing power undermines a very important badge that the third world women pride themselves in. This is the badge of revolutionary struggles, which must not be looked upon in binary terms. It is here, in the creation of ‘perpetually’ oppressed women that the role of colonial tendencies becomes clear. In other words, confining third world women into a unified, homogeneous category of oppressed, powerless women makes the first world women the uncontested and only ‘subjects’. The independent. The deciders. Consequently, it becomes impossible for third world women to rise above their object status in Western Feminist understanding. It is as if to say a particular category of women can not represent themselves, while the other can. The identified tension is, therefore, between self-presentation of Western feminists, and the ‘representation’ of the third world women by the same Western feminists.

The point to take away, therefore, is that such a framework only reflects a theoretical self portrayal of Western women and a flawed understanding of third world women, not a material reality. If that were the material reality, history would not be witnessing socio-political movements in the West, and challenging debates facing the West. If that were the material reality, there would be no struggles, no victories won by the third world women.

It is insufficient to state that third world women need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of Western Feminism, because it risks the likelihood of solidifying a limiting perception of their experience.  Even the use of the term ‘third world’ woman functions to restrain the possibility of imagining a woman from a post colonial context as anything but. Instead, there remains attached to it a conception of lack, whereby the subject is not evolved enough and so the danger of this association is that it authorizes Western notions of Feminism to voice their experiences.

Mohanty speaks precisely of this overpowering effect of the White voice within the archive of women’s experiences and expresses the danger of clustering women of the ‘third world’ under broadly stereotyped characterizations. She accurately points out that such efforts are reminiscent of imperialist traditions, except in only a more contemporary period. Therefore, now, to blindly attribute such an enfeebling attitude of Western Feminism to a higher mission of empowerment is only to accommodate a new version of imperial conquest, an attempt to control the heart and mind. 

However, it is also crucial to note that these are not isolated instances. Mohanty emphasizes how Western Feminism has developed a very binary understanding of women which is attached to the compartmentalization of the post colonial world into very limited frames of being. It is in fact through a very deliberate act of power and rooted in a unique political context, that this happening. In most cases, women in the post colonial world are seen as extensions of men or religion. That is to say, never as in or of themselves. They are the other and not complete in their own. The effect of this can be traced along a very deep tradition of Sati where Lata Mani talks about how these women were remembered as only either ‘heroines’ or ‘victims’. So as the fate of a Sati is limited to an either/or conception, therefore,  all possibility of recognizing or expressing each woman’s individual experience is foreclosed.

In much the same way, White feminism operates to foreclose any nuanced understanding of the complexity of women in the post colonial world. It functions as a part of the wider power structure that dictates the placement of individuals into groups and groups into nations, all as part of one collective whole with a single identity. As Mohanty explains, “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!”).”  What is associated with the the third world woman is a sense of regression, or a state of immobility which is the exact opposite of the White woman. What then conflicts with the supposed aim of White Feminism, to cast all women under the universal umbrella of the female experience of a ‘shared oppression‘, is exactly how divided their experiences are. There is no sisterhood, or at least not an equally accessible one. White Feminism, by its very existence argues against it.

On this premise of sisterhood thus, Mohanty sums up quite clearly the discrepancy in White feminism. First world woman, third world woman; its not so much a matter of both surviving together, fighting against the same oppression. Rather, its more that one enables and sustains the other. They exist on different planes, coming together as a whole ever so rarely; the first world woman thrives on the third world woman, she derives her strength from otherising her. She is doubly marginalized, cast on the outer folds of history and left to fight on her own.

 

 

The mere absence of the female narrative in de-colonial and post-colonial studies can be regarded as one of the most important shortcomings of history. Buried beneath a layer that was twofold, the woman seems to be missing from the struggles for independence. The first layer being the narrative of the colonizer and secondly, the narrative of the patriarchal native.

The very foundation of Orientalism, Colonialism and Imperialism was grounded upon communal lumping. The problem lies in not just viewing a diverse group of people with their own conceptions of native history and culture as homogeneous, but also how this view informs colonial policy. First world feminism seems to echo this same issue. They firstly create a binary in terms of the all powerful man and the powerless woman and impose this across the third world. Local structures of power, traditions and religion is not taken into account and it is assumed that issues faced by all women across the e.g: the Arab world, South Asia, Africa are symmetric. The terminology that follows serves as evidence to First World Feminists engaging in communal lumping. Phrases such as “Women of Africa/Middle Eastern Women” are casually thrown around not just online but even in academic papers. Phrases as such completely ignore local level differences by grouping them under one banner.

“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.” – Mohanty

First World Feminism’s failure to understand women outside their relation to the patriarch freezes them in a timeless past. In an attempt to prevent “Western influence” the local patriarchs evoke religious tradition and authority, and in some cases even appeal to anthropology and science. Taking the example of Africa for example, Kenyatta in Facing Mount Kenya mentions the practice of female circumcision among the Giyuku people in Kenya and how the entire tribal system revolves around that practice as it serves as a rite of passage. The author closes by saying:

“The African is in the best position properly to discuss and disclose the psychological background of tribal customs, such as irua, etc., and he should be given the opportunity to acquire the scientific training which will enable him to do so. This is a point which should be appreciated by well-meaning anthropologists who have had experience of the difficulties of field-work in various parts of the world.” – Kenyatta

One can observe here how British attempts to directly attack a religious ritual without developing a micro level understanding of local culture infact has solidified tradition even further in the eyes of Kenyatta. Patriarchal relationships are hence reforged in the struggle to prevent foreign influence.

First world feminism attacking issues of patriarchy at a macro level not only bears similar results but also causes a major setback to local modes of female resistance who understand their native culture much better than someone addressing their issues in the “West”. Statistically even one may find local institutions of empowerment gaining much more traction than feminist institutions based on “western” scholarship. In our own local context in Pakistan, Al-Huda with around 200 branches dominates the Women’s Action Forum with its 3-4 branches as Al-Huda operates at a more grass root level, and also because the latter is seen as “liberal” and “corrupting” due to the states constant evocation of religious authority post-1947.

Chandra Mohanty talks about how First World Feminists sometimes equate the Veil with rape and prostitution. In doing so, they deny the Veil of its historical/cultural significance in terms of how it links to female dignity in Muslim societies. In some cases it has even been revolutionized to some extent for instance Fanon in “Algeria Unveiled” talks about how the Veil itself became a tool for combat which in return places women at equal footing as males:

“The Algerian woman rises directly to the level of tragedy.” – Fanon

So the same veil that was seen as oppressive by First World Feminists and Colonialists became a source of empowerment for Women in Algeria, which according to Fanon places the “Algerian Women at the heart of combat”. Hence one can observe that the gaps that both First World Feminism and Imperialism create are immediately filled by timeless religion and culture.

In conclusion, the hegemony of Western scholarship plays a role in why First World Feminism spread rapidly and became the dominant discourse for feminism, while its ignorance of local contexts, cross border homogenization, cultural reductionism and marginalization of local feminist movements or modes of resistance has caused it to be heavily laden with imperialist undertones.

It is without any doubt that Western scholarship holds a monopoly over the production, publication and distribution of information and ideas, in addition to harboring the power to influence modes of thought and to bring about institutional changes within society by means of ideas alone. This is one of the facts that Mohanty introduces her analysis of Western feminist scholarship with, in an article titled Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. The piece rests on the assumption that feminist scholarly practices are inscribed in relations of power, which is to say that these practices are inherently political; beset in forwarding, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the agenda of the group at the center. In the writings that Mohanty chooses to analyze, it is first-world women who constitute this center, with third-world women being at the periphery of the debate. First world feminism needs this third world woman subject- this figure of the oppressed third world woman- whose struggles it can appropriate in aiding the forwarding of its own agenda. The problem arises when these Western scholars view and attempt to speak for third-world women with an unchecked degree of ethnocentric universality, which not only misrepresents entire cultures and peoples, but undermines the individual struggles of the women in these societies. Through this biased lens, colonial mindsets are reified, calling then for a ‘white savior’- in this case the first-world feminist- to ‘represent’ the struggles of third-world women who cannot represent themselves. This appropriation of their individual struggles and the suppression of their heterogeneity by hegemonic white women’s movements is what feminist women of color in the U.S. describe as ‘colonization’; a label which begs the question- to what extent is first-world feminism imperialist?

Western or first-world feminist scholars make frequent use of binary analytics in their work, dividing and categorizing people into 2 vastly opposing groups: the powerless and the powerful, victims and oppressors, women and men. What this does, in effect, is group together all women into a single homogenous collective on the basis of shared dependencies or shared oppression. Adding the term ‘third-world’ as a prefix still ignores the fact that experiences, struggles and values differ across the various groups of third-world women. An example given by Mohanty of Western scholars choosing the fact of an institution over the value attached to that institution is that of the marriage ritual of Bemba women. The author in question, Cutrufelli, suggests that Bemba women, as a constituted group, are victims of the institution of marriage. This is an assumption made at face value, but a closer study of Bemba society reveals that the marriage ritual grants the Bemba woman greater rights and privileges than she had before marriage, with the initiation ceremony being ‘the most important act of a woman’s reproductive power.’ Similarly, the American writer and social activist, Fran Hosken, in her writings, equated the purdah with vices such as rape, domestic violence and prostitution, with zero regard for the varying cultural and ideological contexts within which women wore the purdah. Citing the example of Iran in 1979 when the purdah was worn as a symbol of solidarity with the working class, compared to modern day Iran where the purdah is a mandatory Islamic law, Mohanty explains that Western scholars need to exercise care in analyzing the ideological contexts of institutions, rather than jump to conclusions inspired by biased and ethnocentric views of the third world. This phenomenon of defining a single universal direction of progress and advancement, centered around the West, is an example of the colonial impact. What this does is, it invalidates the cultural values of non-Western societies, as well as their individual experiences and struggles. Societies which do not conform to the Western ideal are seen as ‘backward’ and ‘frozen in time’. It is in response to this colonial mindset that national liberation figures advocate for a ‘third way,’ and harbor a desire to redefine what progress means.

The American psychologist and anthropologist, Michelle Zimbalist, casually refers to third-world women in her feminist writings as “ourselves undressed”. By assuming that women in third-world countries share virtually the same difficulties and aspirations that women in first-world countries do, Western feminist scholarship makes the mistake of assuming that it can represent women of all races, classes, religions and castes. This limits the definition of women to gender identity alone, bypassing social class and ethnic identities, and only reinforces the binary of men and women; powerful and powerless subjects. On the other hand, when scholars write about third-world women, there is an even greater sense of ambiguity in the generalized terms that are used to identify the women. The terms ‘Arab women’ and ‘Muslim women’, are used interchangeably as though they denote the same thing, Similarly, the term ‘African women’ has been used by some scholars who are in fact writing about a very specific minority tribe from a country within Africa, inadvertently suggesting that all African women can be summarized and grouped together by a single term. Yet again, the stripping away of the individualities of the non-Western others, seeing them as merely belonging to a greater and generalizable collective, grouping them together by a single descriptive term such as ‘African’, is another example of colonialism at play.

What then is the point of referring to all women as a single homogenous group, and as having an equal share in the struggle of victimhood? As mentioned earlier, the struggles of third-world women, after they are appropriated by feminist scholars, serve as the legitimizers of the universal female struggle, and particularly that of first-world women. Mohanty, however, points out another agenda at play. She writes, ‘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.’ This is the difference between Western feminist ‘self-presentation’ and the ‘re-presentation’ of women in the third world.

Thus, first-world feminist scholarship, through its ethnocentric universality, through its establishment of a homogenous unity among women centered around the West, through its generalizations and through its clouded lens of bias and ignorance towards non-Western cultures, is an imperialist practice. By maintaining, as Mohanty calls it ‘the third-world difference’ and the existing first/third world connections, such writings reinforce the assumption that ‘people in the third world just have not evolved to the extent that the West has.’