Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes"

In Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” they argue for a careful distinction between “Western” feminism and “third world” feminism. The focus is to allow women’s issues in third world countries to not be reduced to objectification by white feminists, which acts in a similar vein with colonialism. Therein lies the issue of power and struggle, where Western feminist scholars are acting as though there is only one type of feminist discourse, or rather only one way of thinking about the “free” woman. Mohanty poses a question, one in which involves the ways that Western feminists scholars use coded language that simplifies, or rather, homogenizes the experiences of women in third world countries. What happens then is that the “third world woman” becomes a narrative, a stereotype; They are simply viewed as victims to their patriarchal culture, devoid of agency and independence. Mohanty criticizes the ways that the third world woman is being written about, especially by Western feminist scholars, but also by third world scholars who have ingrained the Western modes of thinking.

Mohanty’s approach in doing this is by critiquing work done by Western feminists wherein they have misconstrued the issues of the third world woman. They find that Western feminist scholars tend to only view women in the third world as victims to the inherent structures that they were born into, whether it be religion, patriarchal culture, or oppression with the big O. Mohanty cites several studies with which the third world woman was “homogenized.” One example is when they cite Maria Cutrufelli’s book, Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression, wherein they find that the title in itself is already problematic in that it assumes that ALL women of Africa are oppressed (Mohanty 25). This, to Mohanty, oversimplifies, as well as objectifies the community being written about. Cutrufelli fails to position the local community she worked with as their own unit, with their own practices and traditions distinct from the West. Rather, she projects Western ideas of the “free” woman onto this community, and also generalizes the fact that this community’s experiences then speak for all women of Africa. This is just one of the many critiques that Mohanty offers. They also add that Western scholars tended to crucify women born into traditions and think them as oppressed, without thinking about how this assumes that some cultural/religious traditions are “bad” and some are “good.” Again, this goes back to the idea of universalism, or the fact that all women in the world have one common enemy and that is the patriarchy. This diminishes the intersectional identities that these women possess. Additionally, it does not offer up any sense of agency that these women inherently have.

Mohanty argues that the most mindful way of writing about women in the “third world,” is to let the experiences and traditions speak for themselves. Providing local and historical contexts as much as one can when it comes to writing about their experiences is vital. One should be careful to not write with the colonial mindset that we in the West are liberated and have control over our lives and women in third world countries do not, and therefore need to be saved. This approach just further aids into the othering of minoritized populations, especially, women in the third world.