Week 4 Reflections

I thought overall Mohanty's article made a number of important points. There does seem to be a tendency in the anthropological and sociological world to treat third world women as if they were one homogeneous group of people. While the practices and traditions that are analyzed may be recognized as diverse and unique, the women's issues that are raised by them all tend to fit in very limited, broad based categories. Something that Mohanty mentions, and that I agree with, is that there is a lack of localized analysis. Specifically, she deals with the issue of the sexual division of labor. Most coverage of this issue, regardless of which culture it's actually focusing on, makes generic assumptions about the role gender plays in the division of labor, thus leading to approximate conclusions about women (as if women were a unified group that all shared the same experiences). Many act as if oppression was a universal phenomena for women. While I would certainly agree that it is a very common place one, I would not go so far as to say it was universal. Yet even if that statement were true, that all women share a connection because they have been oppressed, their forms of oppression, their methods of combatance, are all influenced by their each individual cultural, societal, and even personal context. That was perhaps the one issue I didn't think Mohanty did a very good job of raising. She sort of played into the generalization game a bit herself in that she never accounted for the individual context that could affect the analysis of a woman or a group of women. Even when studying a smaller group within a localized context, it's still not fair or accurate to assume that every woman in that group is undergoing oppression in the same manner. Women are individuals and should be treated, studied, and analyzed as such.

I was really fascinated by the premise of Abu-Lughod's article, that the United States had tried to manipulate that plight of the Afghan women to help justify their invasion of Afghanistan and the War on Terror. I thought it was interesting that she focused a lot on the way Laura Bush helped to perpetuate the image of the oppressed Afghan woman because it reminded me of the way Mohanty's article discussed Western feminist scholars being the primary instigators of the generic image of the repressed, helpless, third world woman. I think both articles touched on an important point; that, more often than not, women are the primary subjugators of other women, at least as far as an East versus West relations go. Part of the strategy for gaining support for the War on Terror was to enlist American women to sanctify the invasion of Afghanistan by making the fight on terrorism synonymous with the global cause for the rights of women. But there is an inherent sense of superiority in that attitude, as if the West were any less oppressive towards women or as if Afghani women would want to live the way Western women do. Once again, there is a lack of consideration for cultural, historical, religious, and local context. Perhaps if the United States had paid more attention to that they'd have been infinitely more successful in their attempt to bring justice to Afghani women and they'd have made a more lasting, positive difference.