Erin

The potentiality for feminism to be a global movement sometimes can be a bit of an elephant in the room for Western feminists. It is clear that the rights of women are fundamentally and consistently in question throughout the world. In many nations, women lack the right to a public life on their own terms. Their voice and their movements are so restricted that we tend not to see their situation as one involving full self-determination.

This reality is an uncomfortable one for Western feminists, not just because it presents a reality of explicit gender oppression, but also because it isn’t entirely clear what role we play in doing something about it.

It is difficult for laypeople and consumers of popular culture to understand the realities of ‘other’ women in places such as Africa and the Middle East (note that this is a huge generalisation – the experiences of women are likely to differ from one locality to another, from one home to another. I essentialise here only for the sake of convenience). Their realities are further informed by their history, their religion, their personal relationships, and the conversations we aren’t privy to.

While we may be ignorant of those realities, we obviously shouldn’t ignore them. After all, the feminist idea that a woman should be free from gender oppression is a universal ideal. Freedom from gender oppression is an ‘ideal’ rather than a ‘goal’ because it has not been fully realised yet and it is not obvious what shape freedom takes. But what we ...