Chapter 24 (2/4) Accelerating Global Interactions:

The Globalization of Liberation: Comparing Feminist Movements

This section of the reading talks about Feminism in the West, the global south and internationally, comparing how it came about and ideals each held and what they thought of one another in comparison.  

There were many other ideas and issues that were running around during this time period and the ideology of liberation being the main one. “No expression of the global culture of liberation held a more profound potential for change than feminism....represented a rethinking of the most fundamental and personal of all human relationships. Feminism began in the nineteenth century with a focus on suffrage. Once receiving it, feminism died down a little until later on in the twentieth century where it came back stronger and with more ideas. The ideas brought up were however different and varies between the West and the global south.

In the west, feminism had lost motive when most countries had achieved universal suffrage. It was revived again in the 1960s. In France, for example, a book was published on discussion of how women have been historically referred to as “others” or derived from the male species. French women dramatized their concerns publically with different protest. One was an anti-mother’s day parade where they said, “Celebrated one day; exploited all year.” They also had women sign a published manifesto which stated that they had undergone abortions, which was illegal in France. Feminism also had a very strong point on employment and education for women. American feminism was very radical, and they demanded direct action. They challenged the Miss America pageant, using stink bombs and crowning a sheep as Miss America. They also got rid of tweezers, girdles, bras, high-heels and other “instruments of oppression”.  There was also a branch of feminism for women of color. Many women of African descent established their own organizations, with a focus on racism and poverty.

In the Global south, they had very different focuses that they wanted to address that did not directly relate to gender. They felt that what women were fighting for in the west were too individualistic, too focused on sexuality, and insufficiently concerned with issues of motherhood, marriage and poverty.  Women in Kenya took on projects such as building water cisterns, schools, and dispensaries. In Morocco they targeted the country’s Family Law Code which still referred to women as being minors. They changed this and had it recognize women to be equal to their husbands, and allowed them to initiate divorce, and to claim child custody.  

There were many other direct calls to action in the global south as well. “Thus feminism was global as the twenty-first century dawned, but it was very diverse and much contested.”