Reflection on Global Feminism
On the heels of the Civil Rights movement, many oppressed groups rallied and marched and tried to change society. Women were one of those oppressed groups, only the term they were labeled with in the 1970s and since, is “feminist.” In the 1970s, that word became synonymous with women who hate men and wanted to undermine soiety as people understood it. Femininsts were really just people—men and women--who demanded that women have the same rights and privileges in all sectors of society as men have. However, whatever dirt anti-feminists could sling at people who wanted equality, they did. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who wrote, We should All be Feminists, says, “The word feminist is heavy with baggage, negative baggage” (Adichie 18). Because feminists who demanded equality threatened the status quo so badly, people came to hate “feminists.” They still liked women, but they did not like those who wanted to change society for the better. Perhaps because of that new type of oppression, where women who just wanted equality were treated like there was something wrong with them, feminism faded for several decades. Recently, it seems to have come roaring back, and it has been somewhat successful, although there is still a fear that if equality is granted, the world will change too dramatically for some. For others, the change cannot come soon enough. Through other developments of the past few decades, feminism is having its day once again; however, if the constant pressure for equality does not remain applied, feminism could fade once more.
One reason feminism has returned to the consciousness of not just the United States, but people around the world is because of information technology. Because of the internet, women all over the world can learn that there are other women in other places fighting for the same things they want. They can help each other and support each other even though they are not even on the same continent in some cases. Maura Reilly of Feminist Studies says, “Global Feminisms explored the significant similarities as well as the contextual differences among women across and within cultures, races, classes, religions, sexualities, and so forth. Using a curatorial strategy that placed these diverse and similar works in dialogue, these ‘common differences,’ which are context-dependent, complex, and fluid, are underscored, generating fresh approaches to feminist artistic production in a transnational age” (Reilly 156). Feminism has found ways to spread and a unity among feminists around the world. Globalization, also possible because of the internet, has also helped because it has allowed women to get jobs and make money to support their families. This gave many women in developing nations around the world some control over their lives and that empowered them.
This new wave of feminism looks different though. It focuses more on reducing violence, control over women’s own bodies, and equal pay for equal work. Women are finding their political voices also. Hilary Charlesworth of the journal, Ethics, says, “Feminist internationalism has encountered considerable controversy and resistance from various quarters. A major source of antipathy is from states (whether ‘liberal’ or ‘religious’) which regard recourse to international standards with respect to women as illegitimate because they may challenge national culture, traditions, policies, and laws” (Charlesworth 64). Some of those voices are more radical than others such as the Russian anarchist band called Pussy Riot that blatantly and boldly performed an act that they knew would get them arrested, but allowed that to happen to draw worldwide attention to the oppressive politics of Russia. This type of bold confrontational style is taking what people hated so much about feminism in the late twentieth century and putting it back in the face of world in twenty-first century fashion. The day after a man who bragged about grabbing women’s private parts was inaugurated as president of the United States, thousands of women marched through Washington D.C., throughout the United States and around the world—many of them wearing knitted or crocheted “pussy hats” on their heads. While that method of confrontational politics was less radical than Pussy Riot’s method, it still took the cause and put it in the face of the media and anti-feminists everywhere.
Of course, most feminists are not marching or rallying everyday. Feminists around the world are fighting the steady fight for women to have rights that Western women take for granted. International feminists have too many other things to do like getting the right to work, let alone demanding they be paid equally to their male counterparts. Western feminists demand that workplaces be free from men who might decide to grab their private parts or use derogatory language about women or call them names or tell dirty jokes that are meant to demean women. These are particularly Western feminist efforts. Feminists internationally must fight for even more basic rights that Western women have enjoyed for years such as the right to drive like radical Islamic women did. Megan Specia of the New York Times explains that women were given the right to drive by Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who also lifted or softened other restrictions on Saudi women. Some say he is a feminist reformer, but the easing up of restrictions on women driving is just what the world outside Saudi Arabia sees. Meanwhile, “Saudi women remain subject to strict guardianship laws that prohibit them from making many basic decisions without the permission of a male relative. And some of the very activists who fought for their rights have been languishing behind bars” (Specia). Again, anti-feminists do not like any disruptions to the status quo, and they really do not like feminists who fight for change. In some countries, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, feminists wind up in prison. Other issues that international feminists may be addressing that are not often brought up by Western feminists include female genital mutilation (FGM), sex trafficking, and sexual violence such as the epidemic of rape in some cities in India.
Twentieth century feminists, those active before the internet and globalization, have never had to worry about some of the horrors that international feminists must worry about still. Twentieth-century feminists demanded birth control and abortion rights, and for the most part got them, although there is a faction currenty in power who may reverse those rights and take the United States back 50 years in time in terms of human rights. Yet, because Western feminists were able to demand and get these rights, many women around the world can now access some form of birth control. This is because the policy is viewed as wise in some nations where there is already over population, widespread poverty, and starvation. International feminists saw birth control policies as useful to the status quo and instituted them. Because of those policies, many women who could not keep a steady job previously because of repeated pregnancies—not to mention the multitides of women who died in childbirth in many developing nations—can now work and contribute to the income of their families and some even support their families. Yet those types of advancements are not equally distributed worldwide including in Western countries where, for example, in the United States, women of color are more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Obviously, there are other biases at work in some Western countries that limit feminist progress too. Also, there are many states in the United States that have passed laws that have severely limited womens’ rights to abortions, and with the conservatively packed Supreme Court, many believe Roe v. Wade is heading for a rehearing in the near future.
International feminism has some characteristics that separate it from earlier feminism. Niamh Reilly of the Irish Journal of Sociology provides a list of some of these traits beginning with “a critical feminist 'global consciousness' that challenges the systemic interplay of oppressive patriarchal, capitalist and racist power relations across multiple flexible boundaries locally and transnationally” (N. Reilly 62). Because of the internet, feminists around the world have seen that some countries have much more equality than theirs does, and now they are fighting to have it too. This includes engagement with human rights groups that “contest hegemonic concepts and practices in ways that extend the application of human rights to previously excluded and/or marginalised individuals, groups, issues and contexts” (N. Reilly 62). Feminists have also come to recognize that women around the world have similar experiences in many different areas. Perhaps not all of them have experience with FGM, for example, but all feminists recognize the rights of women not to have to undergo such disfiguring practices and so it becomes a concern of international feminists. Because of that recognition, common strategies can be developed and practiced. From these commonalities among international feminists, there has been ongoing engagement that has international reach including to the realms of power in many nations.
However, even with all these gains that feminism has brought women of the twenty-first century, patriarchy is a difficult system to overthrow. It starts when children are young. They are told they are male or female and must, therefore, act in a certain prescribed way so that they are perceived as male or female. Glittery, pink clothing, dolls, and accessories tell young children that these sorts of items are feminine, which is different, and not as valuable as masculine. From there, children in middle and high school worry about what others think of them. Often young women are told not to be too outspoken or to appear too smart or the boys will not like them. They take their cues from their parents who were also raised in a quasi-feminist era knowing that society was not equal, but not having the will or the power to change it until this recent resurgence of feminism perhaps.
Earlier feminism did result in more equality for some women such as the fact that working outside the home is no longer frowned upon. In fact, it is encouraged so that families can live comfortable lives rather than living in poverty on one income. However that does not mean that women do less housework now that they are expected to work outside the home too. Children see their mothers scrambling around after they come home work making dinner, cleaning their homes, and shepherding children to various activities, while their fathers come home from a day at work, put their feet up and watch football because housework is women’s work. This was one of the issues that was at the forefront of Western feminism in the 1970s. Perhaps it is different for women internationally, but patriarchy is entrenched much stronger in many countries internationally than it is in the United States. One example is in sub-Saharan Africa where women and young girls must walk for hours to fetch the families household water every day. The men may be working, and are, therefore, considered unable to devote the time to fetching water that women can, but the women could also be working. The young girls could be getting an education that would help them move beyond the life of poverty, but because they are not, these ways of life persist. It is not just in Africa either where men still do not do an equal amount of household chores. Gavin Jackson of the Financial Times cites surveys that found that there are national differences in how much housework men did compared to women. Working women in Sweden do 28 percent more work than working men. In Spain, women did double the unpaid work that men do. In South Korea, women did four times as much housework as men (Jackson). Of course, with the exception of South Korea, those countries mentioned are all Western countries, but patriarchy is still firmly in place in many countries around the world.
Part of the reason that patriarchy remains so firmly ingrained is capitalism, which inspired globalism, which has contradictory purposes when it comes to feminism. The gains that have been made give way to the constant patriarchal reinforcement of gender stereotypes. When politicians and leaders do nothing to stop marketers, manufacturers, and other patriarchal and capitalists strategizers who reinforce inequality in the interest of making a buck and retaining power that will not be pried from their grip until feminists have finally had enough and force them to stop, this type of differentiation to the detriment of the female sex will continue. Globalization has brought incomes to people who lived in abject poverty prior to working for an international corporation. This includes women who have been able to get an education and work because of the globalism. Becaue of the power of the almighty dollar, feminism has gained some ground in some parts of the world. Johanna Brenner of New Politics says, “Capitalist penetration deep into the rural periphery has disrupted the settled economies which supported ‘classic patriarchy’ . . . In the cities of the periphery . . . the ‘golden age’ of economic development in some parts of the Third World, is also crumbling as male wage and salary earners no longer earn a family wage” (Brenner 78). In these places especially, women have taken part in the capitalist market and gotten jobs or become entrepreneurs in order to support their children or to help their partners make enough money to live on.
While these gains are good, globalization and widespread internet access has also spread more patriarchal gender stereotypes such as Western images of the “perfect female body,” pornography and sexting to young people as well as adults. With these type of patriarchal messages being reinforced, it should not be a wonder that it is not loosening its grip even now that women are working outside the home more, becoming educated in greater numbers than every before, and joining together internationally using the same medium to oppose patriarchy. Feminists also have an international forum, but as long as people view feminism as having the negative baggage that Adichie mentions, it may not attract many new adherents. That does not mean that feminists should not stop trying to change things in their own neighborhoods, in their own cities, their own countries and around the world. Adichie also says, “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture” (Adichie 41). Feminists must continue to be activists and reject violence of all types directed at women. None is acceptable. They must oppose sex trafficking, rape, gender stereotypes, and FGM. They must insist upon equal pay and equal consideration in all sectors of society in every nation of the world. With the continual pressure that can be as intense as that of Pussy Riot or as subtle as wearing a pussy hat on one’s head, eventually anti-feminists will see that feminists are not going to go away again like the did in the late twentieth century. More and greater feminists will be the result and eventually patriarchy will crumble and society will be equal.
Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We should All be Feminists. New York: Vintage, 2012. E-Book. 12 December 2019.
Brenner, Johanna. "Transnational feminism and the struggle for global justice." New Politics 9.2 (2003): 78-87. ESCOhost. 12 December 2019. < http://content.ebscohost.com/C... >.
Charlesworth, Hilary. "Martha Nussbaum's Feminist Internationalism." Ethics 111.1 (2000): 64-78. JSTOR. 12 December 2019. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/1... >.
Jackson, Gavin. "Chore wars: why do women still do more housework?" 9 May 2019. Financial Times. Web. 12 December 2019. < https://www.ft.com/content/0c9... >.
Reilly, Maura. "Curating Transnational Feminisms." Feminist Studies 36.1 (2010): 156-173. EBSCOhost. 12 December 2019. < http://content.ebscohost.com/C... >.
Reilly, Niamh. "Doing transnational feminism, transforming human rights: the emancipatory possibilities revisited." Irish Journal of Sociology 19.2 (2011): 60-76. EBSCOhost. 12 December 2019. < http://content.ebscohost.com/C... >.
Specia, Megan. "Saudi Arabia Granted Women the Right to Drive. A Year on, It’s Still Complicated." 24 June 2019. New York Times. Web. 12 December 2019. < https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... >.
