Global feminism

Global feminism is a feminist theory closely aligned with post-colonial theory and postcolonial feminism. It concerns itself primarily with the forward movement of women's rights on a global scale. Using different historical lenses from the legacy of colonialism, global feminists adopt global causes and start movements which seek to dismantle what they argue are the currently predominant structures of global patriarchy. Global feminism is also known as world feminism and international feminism.

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Two historical examples Global Feminists might use to expose patriarchal structures at work in colonized groups or societies are medieval Spain (late eleventh to thirteenth centuries) and nineteenth-century Cuba. The former example concerns women of the Mudejar communities of Islamic Spain and the strict sexual codes through which their social activity was regulated. Mudejar women could be sold into slavery as a result of sexual activity with a Christian man; this was to escape the deemed punishment. Because of their simultaneous roles as upholding one's family honor and one of "conquered status and gender", "Mudejar women suffered double jeopardy in their sexual contact with Christians [in Spain]".[1]

Nineteenth-century Cuba can be looked at as an example of colonialism and neocolonialism working together in a slave-based society to affect women's lives under patriarchy, where Cuba "remained a Spanish colony while enduring a neocolonial relationship with the United States".[1] Havana, a city noted for its "absence of the female form", had, "of all the major cities in the West...the most strict social restrictions on the female portion of its population".[1] Upper-class Cuban women were "a constant visual reminder of the separation between elite white society and the people of color they ruled".[1]

Transnational mothering

Forced commitment to double shifts, struggle for individual autonomy, and blurring the private and public sphere of labor are all additional concerns to the primary issue for migrant women, which is the right to motherhood. The phenomena of motherhood in a transnational and contemporary time creates structural constraints for migrant women. Abusive employers and intimate violence is not the only problem these women have to face, but there are structural issues regarding the right to motherhood in this transnational era.[2] Women immigrants leave their chance overseas at an idealized motherhood of watching their children grow up while performing their gender role, and deport to be the breadwinner. The restructuring of care from the effects of globalization and neoliberalism institutionalizes these women.

Globalization is constantly changing and as a result it is supporting the phenomena of women in the global south migrating to developed countries to serve domestic labors. The role of transnational mothering within a neoliberal spectrum affects the exploitation of women through the deprivation of their citizen rights, by extracting the benefits of immigrant's labor while minimizing or eliminating any obligations, whether social or fiscal to the society or state.[3] Migrant women of Third World countries are not drawn from their countries to the advancing economy of the First World, rather drawn from their economies that have been disrupted and distorted by Western colonial incursions, leaving many to be torn free of their roots and recruited to countries to fill its non permanent labor needs, preventing competition with native workers; fulfilling the complementary void.[4] Transnational mothering is viewed as an accommodation for both classes.

Motherhood, along with reproductive freedom and marriage, is the fundamental right of women but is prohibited by nations that justify foreign domestic services, as much as view immigrant women as a threat to its nationalism.[3] Nations create a process of racial formation through which women of different national and racial identities experience discrepant integration within a society, ultimately contributing to hierarchies of citizenship. In relation to social Darwinism, natives believe that Third World migrants "just can't make it", and fear degeneration, thus nations try to weed out those who do not fit the upper or middle class society in ways such as sterilization; e.g.; black women are identified as devious, immoral, domineering, sexually promiscuous, and bad mothers, resulting in their reproductive rights being threatened by regulation.[5]

Additionally, as Western feminism began to make contact with the global south, many women objected to the most radical strands of its ideology that demonized marriage, motherhood, and men. The relationship between motherhood and women's movements has led to the advent of Motherism, coined by the creator Catherine Acholonu as "an Afrocentric alternative to feminism".[6]In some parts of Africa, radical Western feminism was seen as an unhelpful imposition that did not align with the realities of African women's lives. Motherism was meant to bring inclusion to a movement that was seen as polarizing.

[7]

Global Feminism in East Asia

Many of the feminist movements in East Asia have been empowered by global, rights-based feminism from organizations like the UN and their international treaty CEDAW to make national changes in their own countries. Taking a human rights approach, as the UN aims to, allowed Japanese feminists to push for the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (1985) and the Basic Law for a Gender Equal Society (1999) to be enacted.[8] Similarly, Korean activists experienced further gains in gender equity after joining the UN in 1991, and the advent of the Beijing Declaration.[9]Many of these gains came from Korean democratization and the election of a progressive government in the 1990s, but the changing international norms surrounding women's rights were also a factor. On the other hand, a backlash to women's rights movements around the globe is likely to facilitate backsliding in the same way.

Many East Asian countries participated in the #MeToo Movement, including Japan, China, South Korea, and the Philippines.[10]While the movement was started by an American activist, its online nature helped it to spread and become truly global. Even despite the widespread censorship of social media in China, the movement grew, albeit largely limited to university students.[11]

Women's Movements in Thailand

Women's movements in Thailand are often regarded with suspicion by the government because of their associations with Western feminism, which is considered antithetical to Thai values.[8]Despite this, Thai women created many women's groups such as the Women's Association of Siam and professional groups like The Woman Lawyers Association of Thailand. In the 70s, Thailand's conservative government attempted to shut down many feminist organizations, which consequently found refuge in Western universities. One of the main issues that brings Thai feminism to the global stage however is the country's sex work industry. Sex workers trying to organize in the 1970s and 80s were suppressed by the government, which wanted to have more control over what was perceived as a problematic industry. Feminist NGOs who came together to solve these issues saw sex work largely from a middle-class viewpoint, construing the workers as victims of the patriarchy and the economy's globalization. [8]This is a pervasive part of sex work activism in all countries, with many people divided over helping workers in an industry they see as fundamentally problematic. In response to these attitudes, Thai activists have come together to organize EMPOWER, an organization that seeks to provide useful services for sex workers rather than trying to pull them out of the industry. EMPOWER aims to provide services such as English lessons, health services and education, and career workshops.[12]These initiatives help to combat issues that sex workers themselves report to be concerned about, such as contracting HIV/AIDS. This is a real and present concern because of Thailand's past outbreaks, and the fact that male clients will sometimes remove condoms (a practice known as stealthing), or the condoms may tear or be negotiated away before sex. [13]

Japanese Involvement in the WCTU

In the 20th century, Japan's strongest ties to global feminism were through the US and England, often through Christian organizations such as the YWCA and the WCTU. Japan's branch of the WCTU shifted its focus away from temperance and towards promoting other Christian values like sexual morality.[8] Unfortunately, Japanese women in the WCTU felt that the American members had set up a "mother-daughter" dynamic between them, and saw their participation in the organization as a learning experience rather than a meeting of equals. This idea was compounded when the Japanese members wore traditional kimono to the group's 1920 London meeting and were subsequently taken less seriously by the American members. The WCTU in the early 20th century was also seen by some as having racially insensitive undertones because of its published article "To Make the Whole World White", ostensibly referring to their logo of the white ribbon. [8] This exoticizing attitude lies at the heart of many interactions between US feminists and those in the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the Japanese women within the WCTU would eventually begin to perpetuate the social hierarchies that had once been imposed on them. Because of the group's religious background, they looked down on prostitution and felt the country should follow their guidelines of sexual morality. The Japanese branch would also go on to enforce the imperialistic views of the nation it sprouted from through a racial hierarchy of its members. Just as the Japanese members had been treated as mentees by their American counterparts, the Chinese members were treated as "little brothers" in need of Japan's guidance.[8] WCTU members also collaborated with Japanese military and colonial officials to set up social reform projects, schools, and a medical settlement house in Korea. This was predictably received poorly due to Japan's imperialist influence in the country.

Nonetheless, the Japanese branch of the WCTU continued to facilitate connections between American and Japanese activists, such as the eventual meeting of Tsueneko Gauntlett and Carrie Chapman Catt. It was Catt who influenced Gauntlett that a Japanese suffragette movement would be instrumental to the country's women's movement. This led to Gauntlett eventually establishing the Japan Women's Suffrage Association, alongside activists Kubushiro Ochimi and Ebini Miyako [8]. Movements like these supported the existing secular suffrage movement in Japan run by women like Hiratsuka Raichō and Oku Mumeo. Carrie Chapman Catt would also meet with the influential suffragist Ichikawa Fusae. Ichikawa was inspired by Catt's insistence that women should be involved in politics, but she was much more drawn to another American activist: Alice Paul. Influenced by the more radical suffragette and the hope that women's suffrage in the US inspired, Ichikawa would go on to establish the Woman's Suffrage Union in 1924.[14]

See also

References
  1. Tamara L. Hunt and Micheline R. Lessard, eds. Women and the Colonial Gaze. ISBN 0-8147-3647-5.
  2. Ladd-Taylor, Molly. "Mother-Worship/Mother-Blame: Politics and Welfare in an Uncertain Age." Ed. Andrea O'Reilly. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings (2007): 640–48. Print.
  3. Choy, Catherine Ceniza. (2003). "Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History." Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  4. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. "Women and Labor Migration." Ed. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. An Introduction to Women's Studies: Gender in a Transnational World (2006): 444–48. Print.
  5. Roberts, Dorothy, and Andrea O'Reilly. "Killing the Black Body." Maternal Theory: Essential Readings (2007): 482–500. Print.
  6. Acholonu, Catherine (1995). Motherism: The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism. Afa Publications. ISBN 9789783199712.
  7. Pius Adesanmi. Who Owns the Problem? : Africa and the Struggle for Agency. Michigan State University Press, 2020. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2285798&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
  8. Mina Roces, and Louise Edwards. Women’s Movements in Asia : Feminisms and Transnational Activism. Routledge, 2010. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=324371&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
  9. Asian Feminism and the Transnational Women’s Movement (Promoting Women's Rights in Asia & Globally), retrieved 2023-05-18
  10. "Twitter chat: What #MeToo says about sexual abuse in society". PBS NewsHour. 2017-10-25. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
  11. Chen, Te-Ping (2018-04-22). "#MeToo Meets China's Censors and Students Learn a Tough Lesson". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
  12. "-= Empower Foundation =-". www.empowerfoundation.org. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  13. Steinfatt, Thomas M. Working at the Bar. ABC-CLIO, 2002. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=86708&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
  14. Vavich, Dee Ann. “The Japanese Woman’s Movement: Ichikawa Fusae, A Pioneer in Woman’s Suffrage.” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 22, no. 3/4, 1967, pp. 402–36. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2383075. Accessed 18 May 2023.

Further reading
  • Feldman, Shelley. "Exploring Theories of Patriarchy: A Perspective from Contemporary Bangladesh," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 25.4 (Summer 2001), p. 1108.
  • Fonow, Mary Margret. "Human Rights, Feminism, and Transnational Labor Solidarity." Just Advocacy? Women's Human Rights,Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation. Ed. Wendy S. Hasford and Wendy Kozol. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005. 221–43.
  • Mendez, Jennifer Bickham. "Creating Alternatives from a Gender Perspective: Transnational Organizing for Maquila Workers' Rights in Central America". Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. Ed. Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York: Routledge Press, 2002. 121–41.
  • Brenner, Johanna (2003). "Transnational Feminism and The Struggle for Global Justice". New Politics. IX (2 (New Series)). Archived from the original on 17 April 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2012.
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