According to Chandra Mohanty, Western feminism perpetuates power imbalance by scholarship, universalization, and self-representation. From the readings in Zed Press, there were many articles between the years of the 70s and 80s that discuss ‘third world woman’ (p. 72). The main issue that arose with the writings of Western women was that many would group and universalize the use of the word, ‘third world women’. The writings often failed to consider different aspects that may affect the socioeconomic status of individuals or groups but would often sum up a whole country to have shared the same experience. The power dynamic that was portrayed in many of the writings also placed the ‘third world women’ in object status - where they were always the victims of men, while West women would self-present as the norm (p.52).

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            The use of the word ‘third world women’ has many connotations, as they are a combination of two words that are already being used to homogenize and overlook differences. The word ‘women’ was not differentiated from the word ‘woman’ as it did not express the differences or consider the complex factors of ‘real, material subjects of their collective histories’ (p.53). Hence, when the word ‘women’ that is already universalized and used to express victims or the subjects to oppression and limitation, pairing that word with ‘third world’ and using it together creates an inaccurate image of groups in different parts of the world and blurs the individuality. This is problematic as Mohanty puts it is a ‘construction of “third world women” as a homogeneous “powerless” group often located as implicit victims of a particular socioeconomic systems’ (p.57).

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            The homogenizing continues when Western writers talk about the women in the Global South in academic and political settings which assumes that they must share the same problems and issues. The writings of Beverly Lindsay is a great example as she writes that ‘all African women are politically and economically dependent,’ and goes on to explain that prostitution is the only work option for African Women (p.58). This analysis is a great example of what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie would consider to be a ‘single story’ (2009) that can be extremely dangerous. It doesn’t consider the individual women that live in different socioeconomic status than the group of women who actually live in poverty in a specific area in Africa. I believe that this prolongs the process of liberation for women who fight different battles as their issues get summed up to be the same as all other countries that are considered to be ‘third world’.

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            The analysis that was made in Zed Press by many different authors also sets a standard by comparing the liberation of the Global South to the West, which produces the misperception that the ‘women’ in the West are more liberated than the ‘other’. The practice of ethnocentric universality can make basic observations that may be common all across the universe to be something that is unique to ‘third world women’ and create gaps that places them as the ‘oppressed others’. The example of Perdita Huston of finding it surprising that the commonality in the most basic values of women in different socioeconomic status to be ‘family, dignity, and service to others’ (p.64) is a great example of self-presentation as the findings of Huston somehow attempts to create a gap between ‘them’ and the women in the West.

There was much analysis made during the 70s and 80s, where gender was used as the major category of analysis (p. 68) without dissecting the different cultures, histories, power dynamics, religion, etc. and I believe that homogenizing of men also, as perpetrators who are controlling and violent, reinforced the binary of gender as that was the common argument made all across different articles, failing to capture the specific individuals or even the middle ground of the constructed gender system. This can only prolong the issues of women everywhere, as it is not specifying issues within a group in a specific country; therefore, missing the opportunities to discover the root of the problem and the solutions.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Adichie, C. (2009, July 1). The Danger of a Single Story. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

 

Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A., & Torres, L. (1991). Under Western Eyes. In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (pp. 51-74). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.