Third World Women's Movement

Although there is the truth of degrading, painful and humiliating place the women were occupying in society, there is the need to recognize the existence of a vibrant feminist movement in society that came into existence to rescue women from such a state of degradation. The outcome of this feminist consciousness was in the form of decontextualized generalizations and models for the global women without least consideration for the differences among women emerging out of factors like nationality, ethnicity and so on. Although feminism has been been able to effect change in such a state of affairs leading women towards emancipation but has witnessed a backlash from the category of third world women for its focus only on the problems of western and American women, without providing any space from the women from third world to speak for themselves. The move towards a universal basis of feminism ingrained in the notion that the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in the hegemonic and universal structure of patriarchy has been widely criticized these years for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression in the concrete cultural contexts in which it exists. The present paper attempts to present a picture of ongoing dialogues articulated between western and third world feminism in the backdrop of the criticism projected against the western feminism for its failure to comprehend the importance of culture context which makes feminism in third world countries different from the western ones.