Week 3 Intro to Global Feminism

Naples/Desai

While reading Naples and Desai, I most definitely felt like I was forced to learn a lot of new terms very quickly. Among the many terms and concepts, the explanation of “Third World” in relation to the categorization of other worlds. I honestly never used the term “First World” to describe the country I live in, despite knowing this is probably the status both we (Americans) and the rest of the world ascribe to us. Naples and Desai “Third World” has received criticism because it “discursively justifies the construction of the First World countries as dominant and more advanced” (5). What I think Naples and Desai are trying to express is that by giving different countries and global regions a status, especially one primarily based on their affluence, only serves as tool of division rather than inclusion.

This description of the “worlds” reminds me of the very significant theme of invisible privilege. We never have to consider the issues of people of the Third World because they are, as the term describes, of a completely different world. Naples and Desai says this causes ‘othering’ women from non-Western countries”, which the authors go on to mention women of color born in American are “othered” too, and categorized as Third World (5). I think Third World is a term thrown around too freely without any thought of the attached connotation. I personally never really thought of the meaning of the terms and how it perpetuated divisiveness. I always thought of Third World as places that are likely to have issues we can help with but not necessarily how the terminology may be causing more damage than doing good.

Feree/Tripp

In the Ferree and Tripp reading I like the explanation of Transnational Mobilization broken down into the three waves of feminism (55-60). It was like a brief relearning of the significance and progress of each wave from a global view. When I was taught about the First Wave I remember talking about women’s suffrage but only in America. I never knew about suffrage in Japan or India at the time, let alone that there was the possibility their movements were more intense than America’s. I think this is particularly important because my experience is that when people think of feminism, positively or negatively, they think it is an American-centered movement.

Even Second Wave feminism was experienced differently than America. America experienced peaks and lows of feminism at certain times, specifically the 1950s, however in Latin America this decade was not a feminist “doldrums” but a time where “women and activists there were energized and internationally engaged” (Ferree and Tripp 59). This proved to me that the feminist waves are often defined America’s timeline rather than the world as a whole.

The Third Wave, globally, was the wave that seemed to have the same complaints as American feminists at the time. Many issues were focused and funded by white, middle-class international organizations, which of course is exclusive of many transnational feminists that have quite a different experience and set of complaints (Ferree and Tripp 60). The upside to this is it opens the conversation to solving problems affecting women in many different categories and broadens the very definition of feminism.

Questions

1) How do you think feminist movements can be better represented in learning about World History? Clearly not all of us are Political Science or History majors, so for those of us who experience this information as new how can terms be better incorporated in general education classes so we aren’t as green when taking an upper level class about issues we really should have some background on. For example, how do you think terms like “globalization” and “postcolonial”, which are often thrown around quite loosely, can be defined more broadly to include how it has affected women’s movements?

2) Since there may be some fuzziness (I know there is for me) about what wave we are currently part of, is it possible that a more globally unified definition of feminism is in the works or are our cultural, religious, ethnic differenced too extreme to be able to unite feminists across the world?