Calla Gilligan's Week Four Blog Post

In “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, written by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Mohanty first states how she feels colonization has become a term too widely used, one which is used to characterize every struggle faced by the third world women. “The definition of colonization I invoke is a predominantly discursive one, focusing on a certain mode of appropriation and codification of 'scholarship' and 'knowledge' about women in the third world by particular analytic categories employed in writings on the subject which take as their primary point of reference feminist interests as they have been articulated in the US and western Europe” (page 2). She then continues on to introduce the term “third world woman” and how it has been widely used in recent feminist text as the main subject. This term has been created to describe the oppressed, non-western woman who suffers so greatly, and in such unjust culture and socioeconomic society. She uses information published by other scholars about their own third world cultures to enrich her own argument, so while the article of focusing specifically on western feminist dialogues about the third world woman, the critiques she has offered also pertain to those of the other scholars, whose analytical arguments are almost identical. Throughout the article, she is trying to show how western feminist writings, while trying to prove how all women face the same struggles, but the “third world woman” who suffers so much more, should adopt these western feminist ideals as their own. These women should adopt international links but what the western feminists are trying to do is sell a product, their feminism being the product.

In “Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East”, edited by Lila Abu-Lughod, she describes how those who claim to reject feminist ideals as western imports actually practice a form of this type of feminism. The Islamists are dependent on the ideas of early modernizing reformers as these ideas have become transformed, widely spread and normalized into people’s lives through the socioeconomic changes of the last century. Throughout the article, she describes several “tv serial” writers and the content of their shows. The author believes “tv serials” are not as influential and powerful to modern feminism as the producers and critics of these shows believe. But some writers who have been involved with television since the 60’s write about several women’s issues. One of the television writers, who is female, described how she struggled with censors because some of the content of her shows was deemed unrealistic to how the women of Egypt actually acted in society.

Both these articles expressed how this idea of modern feminism had distorted society in dramatic ways. In the first article, this “third world woman” is being told how she should act, what battles to fight wherein the second article when these modern ideas are adopted, they are dismissed and fought against. In the second article, many women made traditionalism a new form of feminism, adopting hijabs and leaving their jobs to be mothers and housewives. These women were fought by "conservatives" but most of the time, the men preaching to the women were more conservative then the women themselves. Women are adopting new ideas, but hopefully, these ideas are their own and can helps create a more accepting world for them to live in.