Lecture Twelve

So, you may be asking, what about women in the rest of the world? Is feminism global? The answer is a big juicy emphatic YES! In fact, all of the issues that we've touched on in this course (ranging from the differences in the education and socialization of boys and girls, limits on women's reproductive choices, barriers to economic advancement, poverty, racism, intolerance, patriarchy, etc.) have relevance in a global context, and women of every culture, color and class are claiming different aspects of feminism for themselves. Different women's movements around the world have made significant gains— increasing women's services , passing laws that help women , and just generally improving the quality of women's lives . The vast majority of this activism happens at the grassroots level, meaning that it begins with small groups of local, dedicated women and men organizing around a particular issue. Each issue is relevant to a particular region, but all connect to the broader goal of equality for both women and men. Whether it's ‘carpet grades' in Uganda or criminalizing domestic abuse in Chile or ending the practice of female genital mutilation in Senegal. Eygpt and Sudan , it's amazing that a small group of concerned citizens can make such a difference in the world—feminist activism is rarely a single concerted effort and is much more likely to be a few committed individuals working slowly, and often tediously, to make small changes. But global feminism is more than just the separate development of feminism in different parts of the world. It is also the development of a global perspective that reflects an understanding of diversity, because we all need to learn from each other—especially from women who have different experiences, challenges and ideas of what's important.

In 1995, tens of thousands of women from 200 different countries gathered in Beijing , China to discuss the fate and the future of women around the world at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women titled: Action for Equality, Development and Peace . They talked about the differences between Western feminism and Third World feminism—the priorities for women living in developed countries such as the US are often quite different from those in developing countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South and Central America . Indeed, on the surface it is difficult to be concerned with Western notions of an “orgasm gap” or the “glass ceiling” when many women in the world are just trying to survive and meet their basic needs. Upon closer examination, however, it's clear that even though women around the world face a number of different situations, all women deserve a life free from inequality and oppression in what ever form it may take. What makes feminism global is the realization that each woman is entitled to the power to control her own life and to be able to live it with dignity and freedom.

Global feminism is really about the personal being political. That slogan should sound familiar; it dates back to the second wave of the feminist movement and acknowledges that individual acts of oppression are often indicative of a larger system of inequality. We can all agree that it is deplorable when a woman is raped or subjected to forced labor or contracts AIDS. The problem is that sometimes it's easy to dismiss these occurrences (and the myriad others that happen to women daily) as being just bad luck or poor judgment. But feminism, particularly one with a global perspective, resists the urge to just write these misfortunes off and requires us to figure out how these individual circumstance can reveal a larger system of inequality—one where global economics and social instability become intertwined with gender imbalances. It demands that we ask new questions about familiar topics and make connections between the US and the rest of the world. So take a fundamentally feminist issue such as rape and start digging deeper. Well, where is rape happening in the world today? Asking this question may lead us to discover that rape is increasingly being used as a war tactic . We might then wonder if our country's involvement in foreign wars might in fact perpetuate this problem ? We could consider another feminist issue such as work. We need to ask what sorts of work are women around the world doing? A bit of digging around might encourage us to inquire: Why is sweatshop labor done primarily by women ? Why is it the only choice that many women have to provide for their families? What is the role of sweatshop labor in our own economy, and how might our demand for cheap products be linked to the inhumane conditions of textile manufacturing? Global feminism piques our curiosity and encourages us to question: Why are young women the fastest growing group being infected with HIV/AIDS in Africa ? How might this be connected with our own country's policy of exporting abstinence-only sex education programs? Most importantly, global feminism forces us to see that we are all connected to these issues, even when they may seem remote and removed from our daily lives.

And once we recognize these connections, we can see that YES, in some ways we are all part of the problem. Global feminism says that none of us are completely innocent, and we all participate in holding up this patriarchy in some way or another. But at the same time, it says that we all have the power to begin dismantling it as well. We don't have to wait for the next feminist revolution to set things right. Instead, we can be conscious of the ways that we all perpetuate inequality and work towards changing our ways. Maybe it's just getting that new baby girl a truck instead of a doll or calling out a sexist joke. Not all of us have to become radical activists to make change in society, though we certainly need a few more of those! If all of us agree to do one small feminist thing once a month, once a week or even every day, it will start to show. Not now, and maybe not even soon, but slowly and steadily. Global feminism wants to change the world, one little tiny person at a time. So go ahead and get started already, you'll find that feminism is everywhere. You might just be surprised at how much power you have. bell hooks was right—feminism is for everybody.