Final Essay

Confirming Pages

50

For the past decade, I have been engaged both with transnational feminisms and with writing about gen- der and globalizations.1 In the course of my engage- ment in these two fi elds, I have been intrigued by the interrelationship(s) between them. Yet, with some exceptions (e.g., Eisenstein 2005), feminist schol- ars have written about gender and globalizations or about transnational feminisms but have rarely examined the connections between the two. In this essay, I refl ect on this relationship to highlight how they have shaped each other. I suggest that femi- nisms are important forces shaping globalizations. At the same time, the interrelationships are fraught and in some instances have furthered inequalities among women. But this does not preclude other possibilities, as is evident in the work of feminists around the world.

To begin with the issue of how the two have shaped each other, I draw on Hester Eisenstein’s (2005) important, but not widely discussed, article: “A Dan- gerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globaliza- tion.” In it she argues that in the United States, global capitalism has used feminists’ arguments for women’s autonomy and need for economic independence to undermine welfare and the family wage and to send poor women into the workforce. Concurrently in the Third World, similar feminist ideologies have been used to feminize the workforce in the export process- ing zones and to discipline poor women, through micro credit, into becoming responsible economic agents.2 Thus, like missionaries in the nineteenth century, feminisms in the twentieth act as “cultural solvent[s], as globalization erodes the traditions of patriarchy” (Eisenstein 2005, 487). Such a “legitimi- zation of feminism masks the radical restructuring of the world economy, and the glitter of economic liberation disguises the intensifi cation of poverty

for the vast majority of women” (Eisenstein 2005, 489–90). Eisenstein argues, then, that feminism has served unwittingly as the hand-maiden of corporate globalization.

While I agree with Eisenstein that actors of cor- porate globalization have used feminist ideologies for their own profi t, this is only a partial account. The other story is how feminists have used globaliza- tions to further women’s agency and their political, economic, and cultural empowerment. To see these other stories, one needs to defi ne globalizations in the plural and to understand feminists as both con- stitutive of, and important actors in, globalizations (Desai 2009b).

Here I will give a few examples of the ways in which feminists have shaped the spaces of global politics: by (1) providing theoretical frameworks, organizational structures, and strategies; (2) engag- ing economic globalizations to exploit both the opportunities provided by it and articulating alter- natives to corporate globalization; and (3) creating new cultures of globalization.

The International Women’s Decade, 1975–1985, brought together women’s organizations from around the world. The feminist principles women from these organizations had developed across their respective local contexts facilitated the formation of a new transnational perspective for political action, new organizational structures, and new strategies. Primary among these was the commitment to an intersectional analysis and transversal politics. The contentious experiences of dealing with differences among women for those in women’s movements in the North and South enabled the transnational wom- en’s gatherings to form solidarities across differences.

In addition to this transnational political perspec- tive, transnational feminists were among the fi rst to

R E A D I N G 3 The Messy Relationship Between

Feminisms and Globalizations Manisha Desai (2007)

lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 50lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 50 2/1/10 12:57:02 PM2/1/10 12:57:02 PM

Confirming Pages

The Messy Relationship Between Feminisms and Globalizations | M A N I S H A D E S A I 51

develop networks on the basis of nonhierarchical, informal structures and participatory processes, to share experiences and strategize for political actions at multiple levels. These networks were formed before information and communication technolo- gies made such connections the norm in corporate and civil society. Finally, transnational feminists also pioneered strategies for articulating autono- mous spaces—such as tribunals, caucuses, grass- roots women’s networks, partnerships with other movements and local authorities— exemplifi ed in projects like the Feminist Dialogues. These strate- gies mobilize both a critique and an alternative to global politics today, especially those practiced in conjunction with the World Social Forum. Hence, contemporary global politics have to be recognized as feminist politics.

Even in the realm of economic globalization, feminists have made important contributions. From highlighting the ways global corporations have used gendered and racialized assumptions to feminize the labor force, to demonstrating how processes of eco- nomic globalizations are gendered, feminists have been at the forefront of challenging corporate glo- balizations. For example, feminists have demanded an end to what Acker (2006) calls corporate irre- sponsibility; they have proposed a “Maria tax” to acknowledge the reproductive labor of women; they have called for nongendered caring and provisioning as the basis of production and reproduction instead of profi ts (e.g., Beneria 2003); and they have crafted egalitarian institutions, organizations, families, and communities.

In addition to the feminist focus on waged work in corporate globalizations, in my own research I have shown how women cross-border traders3 cre- atively use the openings provided by global trade to make better lives for themselves (Desai 2009b). Most women cross-border traders are able to build new houses, provide education for their children as public education becomes scarce, and expand their business. Cross-border trade has also enabled women to become independent and to develop local and regional networks and economies based on creative responses to the uncertainties cre- ated by the structural adjustment programs in the region.

Cross-border trading is not restricted to poor women. In many West African countries, middle- and upper-class women also engage in cross- border trade and bring in foreign consumer items for men and women in local markets. In southern Africa, cross-border trade was made possible by the new immigration policies of the postapartheid regime, which enabled other Africans to travel freely to South Africa, as well as by the structural adjust- ment programs that created the need for women to become traders. Women have engaged in this trade out of necessity as well as innovation. In the process, they have developed social networks and new col- lective identities that have empowered them as indi- viduals and as members of communities.

In the cultural globalization realm, I have sug- gested that we move away from the homogenizing, hybridity, and clash of civilizations debates (e.g., Nederveen Pieterse 2004). Instead, I argue that we should focus on the nonconsumptive, interactive culture of globalization in which women weave their own traditions and practices along with other cul- tural and political traditions. In this sphere, women are using new technologies to create cultures of globalization that are both place and cyber based and that enable them to communicate with local, national, and transnational communities working for gender justice. These new cultures of globaliza- tion are invented and imagined based on traditions as well as modernities, combine new organizational structures with new forms of communication, circu- late transnationally, and illuminate alternative cul- tural possibilities that blur the distinctions between the aesthetic and everyday sense of culture.

For example, in Guatemala, the Centro de Com- municadoras is a Mayan site where Web surfers can sign up with women’s cooperatives to learn how to make videos or access handicrafts produced by women’s cooperatives in the rural areas. The sales are handled by women directly, thus, facilitating social economies outside the capitalist system. In Mexico, Laneta (slang for truth), which began promoting the use of the Internet for the women’s movement in 1993, links women’s organizations and networks in rural and urban Mexico for sharing information and strategizing for collective action. In Bolivia, Chas- quinet has provided indigenous women access to

lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 51lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 51 2/1/10 12:57:02 PM2/1/10 12:57:02 PM

Confirming Pages

52 C H A P T E R 1 | Transnational Feminisms

computer training by opening telecenters, or cyber cafés. Women have used this training for open- ing Internet-based businesses as well as to address issues of violence against women in their commu- nities. These new cultures of globalization embody hybridities of virtual and geographic communities, and of activists across movements and classes. In using technology for social change, activists develop a common culture based on social justice.

Despite these examples of the ways in which feminists and feminisms have shaped globalizations, these are uneven relationships. Although feminisms, in some organized fashion, are alive and well in more parts of the world today than at any other time, the lives of most women around the world are mired in poverty, ill-health, and injustice. Feminists have offered many explanations for this contradictory state, such as the new inequalities resulting from neoliberal globalization, the war on terror, religious fundamentalisms, the diffi culties of transforming structures and institutions, and the lack of political will to redistribute resources. I would add to that list some of the strategies of transnational feminisms (Desai 2007; Pearson 2003; Simon-Kumar 2004).

For example, transnational feminisms have for the most part drawn on the expertise of educated, privileged women from the global North and the South who are well versed in a Euro- and U.S.-centric professional culture. To function as an activist in the global women’s rights movement, one needs expertise—such as a familiarity with the UN system and its treaties and platforms, and the ability to raise funds for travel—that is, for the most part, avail- able only among educated women from the North and the South. This is not to say that feminists have not made efforts to be more inclusive. But given the structural inequalities that exist, their efforts have been limited by the ability of women lacking formal education—and facility in English, in particular—to navigate global gatherings. This has led to inequali- ties among feminists who work in the global versus local arenas. Moreover, some of the spaces in which transnational feminists have operated, such as the UN, and even global meetings such as the World Social Forum, have ended up taking feminist insights and demands and transforming them into manage- rial solutions, such as gender mainstreaming, that

have not really addressed structural inequalities. This has led some feminists to advocate a move away from global spaces, where the victories are primar- ily symbolic and discursive, to local arenas where addressing issues of immediate relevance on a local scale is more likely to yield concrete improvement in people’s lives.

The move to local and more concrete issues does not have to entail moving away from transnational perspectives, networks, or solidarities. Such networks and solidarities provide both support and resources. Rather, strategic uses of transnational connections for local actions are more useful as many women’s groups have found.

But while transnational feminist strategies have played a part in the contradictory situation of wom- en’s continuing poverty and ill-health in the face of the rise of feminist power around the globe, the major reasons continue to be the greater power of other actors—new and old, global and local—in margin- alizing and harming women around the world. And to deal with such entrenched power inequalities, we need to enact a dual politics of possibilities—a prag- matic politics of what is possible within the current conjuncture and a visionary politics of what can be possible—even as we recognize the power and com- plicity of some of us.

Feminists around the world have already been engaged in such a dual politics of possibilities. For example, in India, where religious differences are often so volatile, activists have used gender equal- ity, to which the Indian state is committed, to gain rights for women while sidestepping religious debates (Desai 2009a). In fact, to some extent femi- nists have been doing this from the start. Since its inception, one of the strengths of feminisms has been their openness to self-critique and change. The plural, feminisms, in common usage now, is itself recognition of this regenerative process.

In conclusion, what the messy relationship between feminisms and globalizations suggests is the need to be aware of, and to critique, the complicity, unwitting though it may be, of some feminists and feminist ideologies with global capital. It also high- lights the necessity of reinvigorating our alternative values of creating and living in societies where car- ing and provisioning are not gendered and racialized

lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 52lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 52 2/1/10 12:57:03 PM2/1/10 12:57:03 PM

Confirming Pages

Under Western Eyes | C H A N D R A T A L P A D E M O H A N T Y 53

but rather are the framework that guides all of our actions. To achieve this, we need to remind ourselves of the dual politics of possibilities in our individual and collective lives.

NOTES 1. I defi ne both as plural processes, the former refl ecting

the diversity of gendered realities around the world and the latter in terms of economic, political, and cultural processes. While both the multiple feminisms and globalizations are mutually constitutive, they are also distinct.

2. In addition to serving global capital through eco- nomic means, Eisenstein (2005) argues that the U.S. administration has used feminism for its imperial policies via the war on terror.

3. Cross-border traders are those who buy food and other consumer items in one country and sell it another. In some regions, women take goods from their home country to another and return with goods from the foreign country to their own. Such cross-border trade by women has been facilitated by the economic globalization that has opened borders between countries that previously did not allow such easy fl ow of people and goods across borders.

REFERENCES Acker, Joan. 2006. Class questions feminist answers. The

gender lens. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld.

Beneria, Lourdes. 2003. Gender, development and global- ization: Economics as if all people mattered. New York: Routledge.

Desai, Manisha. 2007. The global women’s rights movement and its discontents. President’s Message: SWS Network News 24 (1): 2.

———. 2009a. From a uniform civil code to legal pluralism: The continuing debates in India. In Gender, family, and law in the Middle East and South Asia, edited by Ken Cuno and Manisha Desai. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

———. 2009b. Rethinking globalization: Gender and the politics of possibilities. Lanhan, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld.

Eisenstein, Hester. 2005. A dangerous liaison? Feminism and corporate globalization. Science & Society 69 (3): 487–518.

Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2004. Globalization and culture: A cultural melange. Lagham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld.

Pearson, Ruth. 2003. Feminist responses to economic glo- balization. In Women reinventing globalization, edited by Joanne Kerr and Caroline Sweetman. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.

Simon-Kumar, Rachel. 2004. Negotiating emancipation: Public sphere, Gender, and critiques of neo-liberalism. International Feminist Journal of Politics 6 (3): 485–506.

R E A D I N G 4 Under Western Eyes Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1984)

What I wish to analyze is specifi cally the production of the “third world woman” as a singular monolithic subject in some recent (Western) feminist texts.

If one of the tasks of formulating and under- standing the locus of “third world feminisms” is delineating the way in which it resists and works against what I am referring to as “Western feminist discourse,” an analysis of the discursive construction of “third world women” in Western feminism is an important fi rst step.

Clearly Western feminist discourse and political practice are neither singular nor homogeneous in their goals, interests or analyses. However, it is pos- sible to trace a coherence of effects resulting from the implicit assumption of “the West” (in all its com- plexities and contradictions) as the primary refer- ent in theory and praxis. My reference to “Western feminism” is by no means intended to imply that it is a monolith. Rather, I am attempting to draw attention to the similar effects of various textual

lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 53lee1229x_ch01_015-061.indd 53 2/1/10 12:57:03 PM2/1/10 12:57:03 PM