Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Western Feminism:
"Under Western
Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" is an essay that addresses how Western feminist scholars
characterize women of the third world as a single cohesive group. Mohanty further explains that grouping all third-world
women together is not an effective way to tackle problems or create change.
"Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses" is an academic essay written from the
third-person point of view by feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty. She
explains that she is not against the practice of generalization altogether
because it is necessary to conduct studies. She says, "The assumption of women as a ... coherent group with
identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial location
or contradictions, implies a notion of gender or sexual difference.”
Mohanty gives an example of two different
instances of Muslim women in Iran
wearing the veil and how donning the veil signified different things in
different contexts. During the 1979 revolution in Iran, middle-class women donned the veil to express
solidarity with working-class women. In the works that Chandra Talpade Mohanty
discusses in "Under Western Eyes:
Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," women are
characterized universally under a label of a system of oppression whether it is
a sexual division of labor, religion, education, or family structure. Mohanty explains that if women are a monolithic group of oppressed
people, then men are a monolithic group of oppressors.
Toward the end of the 20th century, American and European feminists
became aware of the budding feminist movements of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western feminists were appalled to find out about the
injustices that women in some countries had to endure.
European imperialism seemed absurd
to women from those regions because the status of women in parts of Africa only began to significantly deteriorate with
the arrival of colonialist Europeans. After the 1980 World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development, and
Peace in Copenhagen, women from developing
nations noted that issues such as wearing a veil and female genital mutilation
had been prioritized without consulting the women most affected by them. Women
from the developing nations felt as if their Western counterparts weren't
listening to their assessment of the needs of their communities.
In 1984 which is the same year that Chandra Talpade Mohanty published "Under Western
Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," the black lesbian feminist In 1984 which is
the same year that Chandra Talpade Mohanty published "Under Western
Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," the black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde (1934–92) was
asked to speak at the Institute for the Humanities conference at New York University. (1934–92)
was asked to speak at the Institute for the Humanities conference at New York University. Lorde's remarks were later
published under the title The Master's Tools
Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1984). In 1984, Mohanty
was in step with her contemporary third-world
feminists and Western feminists of color in her criticism of mainstream Western
feminism.
Antifeminism in the 1980s:
During the 1980s there was a backlash to the women's movement. There was
a change in local and national political leadership. Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
was elected as president of the United States.
He was anti-abortion,
anti-reproductive rights, anti-affirmative action, and anti-social services.
In 1991, Susan Faludi (1959) a writer for the Wall Street
Journal wrote a book titled Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women in which she enumerates the losses to the feminist movement
which include the failure to ratify the Equal Rights
Amendment, the rise of the anti-abortion movement,
increase in sexual harassment and job discrimination, increase in the pay gap
for comparable work by men and women, and exhaustion by mothers who felt they
were expected to "do it all."
Key facts:
1. Western
Feminism
2.
Monolithic group
3.
European imperialism
4. Audre
Lorde
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