Nationality

During lecture for our Women’s Studies class, we were provided with the following quotation from Stephen D. Levitt’s Freakonomics:

            In a sample of 13 African countries between 1999 and 2004, 52% of women surveyed say they think that wife-beating is justified if she neglects the children; around 45% think it's justified if she goes out without telling the husband or argues with him; 36% if she refuses sex, and 30% if she burns the food. And this is what the women think.

 

To be quite honest, in reading these statistics, I immediately thought, “I can’t believe this!  I want to go over there and do something to make them see different.”  This is exactly what we should not do.  We as westerners, have a tendency to go in to countries and change them to meet our standards.  Johanna Brenner in her article “Transnational Feminism and the Struggle for Global Justice” states, “Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML) challenges religions/political fundamentalism from within an Islamic framework of discourse, re-defining just as men have done historically, what constitutes an ‘Islamic’ practice” (The WSF: Challenging Empires, 27).  In other words, these women do not feel that a new system is necessary; they simply want to correct the one that they currently live in. 

            This is what I feel transnational feminism is all about.  Western feminists must lend a hand to their neighboring feminists, but we must not take over.  Even if we only provide support, in order for the women to fully succeed, I feel that it is necessary they do the work on their own.   Within transnational feminism, women from all over the world can share information, and ideas on how to correct certain issues.  The key factor is recognizing the differences among cultures, and realizing that what is suitable for our culture may not be applicable to a totally different culture.  Intersectionality Theory proves that there is no cookie cutter design of feminism that can apply to all cultures.  We “women” are all unique.