Chandra Mohanty’s critique on Feminist scholarship of the First world is continuous with a recurring theme in the history of colonization- the endeavors of the colonizing first world to identify and define itself as more progressive, superior and simply better than the colonized, without which the colonizer’s identity would be insignificant and incomplete. Feminist scholarship of the First World turns women into a “category of analysis”, assumes them as a monolithic whole in the third world, and then adjudicates these very self-created categories, crafting a specific position for the first world woman in the process. Mohanty’s work illustrates a tug of war between feminist concerns serving as a just cause- a cause that could push the colonizers and the colonized in the right direction- and the concealed parallelism of this scholarship with colonialist and imperialist elements, pulling them backwards. The work that could help understand the different women of the world and their circumstances is countered by the scholarship falling into the traps of incorrect “representation” and “self-representation”. In essence, this tug of war produces a feminism that is static- never really moving forward and yet neither backward, but allowing a third way to be engendered between it, that would scream itself of its heterogeneity, diversity and social contexts. It is the stagnancy of the feminist scholarship that allows for the creation of movement, of a voice that tells the world what the right direction might be.

Mohanty’s explanation of the treatment of third world women and men as binaries also helps understand how this feminism is static. Men and women are understood as distinct populations rather than parts of one- as “wholes coming into exploitative relations”, where simply men possess power and women don’t. This undermines the local social and cultural contexts of different areas, cementing the concept of binaries that are based upon assumptions that almost become real for the First World Feminists- it creates the “western eyes” that Mohanty explores. Binaries, by virtue of acting as wholes and monolithic forces, cannot produce an energy that could lead to a nuanced understanding of the conditions of the women of the world. Instead, the only power that binaries possess is to make one imagine the need of women to “move from powerless to powerful”, and therefore an “inversion” of the status quo, keeping just this one goal in mind. In essence, the inversion does not allow for any actual movement towards understanding of forces outside binaries- of degrees of power, of various cultural, economic and social factors and the shades of their impact. It is just one move that occurs in the same place, allowing feminist scholarship to stay static.

Mohanty’s description of the creation of the category of the “Third world woman” is one similar to a process, like the creation of an artwork or a sculpture. Western standards craft molds of “underdeveloped” and “developing” places in the Third world and then place women within these molds. Out then, come chiseled figurines of the third world women, with the “third world difference.” It is precisely here that the First World scholarship ceases to be a global feminist struggle, but one where it becomes a means of First World women defining themselves, also as a monolithic entity-only a more progressive one- in relation to those of the third world. Monolithic entities that keep alive the basic and essential difference of master and subject created by colonisation and imperialistic tendencies. What is still alive is the difference between these two entities, rather than the countless differences between individuals across the global community. In essence, this feminism is static because its very starting point is a flawed assumption, a mold that has a fixed shape, that will churn out the same sculptures to understand the countless women of the Third world.

 In essence, without any real territorial control and extraction of resources, First world feminist discourse keeps the colonialist tendency alive, which in turn keeps the discourse from truly understanding all women and how they fare in the world of colonization and decolonization. This is where the discourse becomes motionless, giving way to the Third world voices to grow louder and point towards the third way- which is not just a third woman, but a reference to numerous women and their conditions. As Mohanty shows, First World Feminist discourses, which assume third world women as a homogenous group, do no service to them but certainly one to themselves. Yet, even this service, of defining themselves, is frozen at a particular point in time. It does not have the power to make the contextual differences of the third world to disappear. The stagnancy of the First world thought is precisely what reveals the impairment of its “eyes”.

Western Feminism is systematically shown to have imperialist tendencies through the many problematic practices that Mohanty lays out. The premise of Mohanty’s argument can be laid down in the homogenization and simplification of third world women, local nuances and complexities. She states:

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

This wide and strictly segmented analysis is what Mohanty has contentions with; Western Feminists do not ground their work in the “women” (i.e. the real material subjects) and instead focus on the “Woman” (i.e. a cultural and ideological composite other).

We will focus on these two criticisms and further this analysis to illustrate how neglecting these factors can lead to an implicit simplification of colonization.

The variety of the colonization mission presented many different programs, systems and levels of exploitation around the world. The causes of differences are many and just a few examples include the complexities that arose out of what country was colonizing which country, and in what time period. It is safe to say the complexity in the variations and histories of the colonized are vast.

By detaching the histories, politics and economics from their analysis, alongside the imposition of strictly gendered sexual-political explanations, which operates in identity binaries, western feminism simplifies the phenomena of colonization. Western feminism creates neat boxes of homogenized women in the third world who suffer in the hands of oppressive men, religions and even past colonial practices, but in the tacitly represented uniform third world. The pervasiveness of colonization’s impact alongside the multiplicity of its manifestations is entirely ignored by western feminism. This plays a role in mainstream discourse as it ignores the nuances and devastation of differing colonial practices by ignoring local complexities that arose from differing colonial repercussions. The impression that a reader of western feminism may get is that the consequences of colonization are also homogenous, that it can be traced along vast territories, just like the “oppression” of the veil or Islam on the “homogenous” third world woman. Ignoring history and context means that the impacts of colonization is reduced to stereotypical qualities, without the important qualification being made that they are color blind to the multiple shades of red that was spilt during colonization.

The demarcation of neat categories with a prioritization for non-contexualised gender politics also absolves much blame from colonial impositions. Mohanty cites the change in marriage ritual of the Bemba in Women of Africa because this is evidence for her of a western feminists explanation of change in the “structure of the marriage contract” rather than the “political implications of its effects”. This is a good example of direct colonial interference in the lives of women, which in current western feminism merits exploration and assigns potential fault with the colonizer. However many impacts and legacies that are not a result of direct interference but nonetheless can be assigned to the vast economic and political effects of colonization, will not be given due weight because of the neglect of localized intersectional factors. The macro-lens with which western feminism views the world will glance past the culpability of wider colonial practices that heavily influence current day economies, politics and societies, which in turn impacts the position of women.

Mohanty stresses on the need for contextual analysis based on heterogeneity of women and the conditions of the land from where they are from. Without this there will be a continuation of the impunity that imperialism and colonization faces in today’s ahistorical analysis. Mohanty shows us how western feminism is imperialist to third class women, but such discourse can also be imperialist to third class histories.

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.