Feminist thought has grown increasingly international, much as commerce, technology, communication, and politics have.
For feminist theory, globalization presents both problems and opportunities.
Meetings of cultures are always educational, even if they may be confrontational at times.
As feminism becomes more global, feminists must strive to balance efforts to advocate for all women with tolerance for and understanding of cultural diversity.
Because of strongly entrenched ideas and practices regarding women and their position in certain cultures, reconciliation is often difficult.
When critiquing cultures other than their own, feminists must use caution, yet this is one of the responsibilities of global feminism.
But, more importantly, criticism is never enough.
Global feminism aims to strengthen bonds amongst women all over the globe via shared political commitments to social change.
Susan Moller Okin once said that, just as academic feminists and academic feminist theory began to emphasize women's differences, as we saw with third wave feminism, women's activists all over the globe began to seek links between women.
These activists saw connections among women and parallels in oppression as a foundation for coalitional politics to advocate for all women's human rights.
Global feminists recognize women's diversity in terms of class, culture, religion, and ethnicity, but also identify common ground for political action.
This is coalitional politics at its finest.
Women all around the globe, according to Okin, need assistance from Western feminists and the international community as a whole.
A global feminism must be capable of both identifying grounds for collective action to protect women's human rights and condemning damaging cultural practices, even within one's own society.
But, more significantly, global feminism and transnational feminism deconstruct the traditional aid trajectory, warning against models or ideas that place the ‘two-thirds world' in need of help from the ‘one-third world.' These theories ignore the agency and power of women and men in underdeveloped countries.
The phrases "two-thirds world" and "one-third world" clearly depict the relationship between those who "have" and those who "don't." Industrialized nations are home to just a small percentage of the world's population.
The Global South, often known as the Third World or less developed nations, is home to two-thirds of the world's population.
However, these words are divisive.
In the middle of first-world grandeur, one may live in "third-world circumstances." Furthermore, using the term "developed" to describe industrialization implies a uniquely Western concept of development.
For these reasons, transnational and global feminists and other activists working for a more equitable distribution of the world's resources sometimes use the one-third/two-third terminology, or use other terminology with political consciousness, infusing new meaning into old concepts such as "Third World."
Building connections between feminist and other women's organizations is a political effort that requires no shared experience or identity.
Human rights, coalition or solidarity, and empowerment are key ideas in global feminist philosophy.
Human rights are everyone's fundamental rights, and they typically contain both positive and negative rights.
Positive rights are entitlements to something, such as the right to leisure time, a good job, a fair pay, and safe working conditions.
Negative rights are safeguards such as the right not to have one's property seized by the state unfairly or arbitrarily, the right to practice one's religion freely as long as it does not infringe on others' fundamental rights, and the right not to be tortured.
Solidarity is defined as a group of individuals coming together to achieve a shared objective.
It necessitates commitments to both the objective and to those who share that commitment.
Coalitions, in a similar manner, are linkages between and among individuals or organizations for political purposes.
These ideas are used by global feminists to show the links between women's organizations beyond country boundaries and language barriers.
They demonstrate the good force that comes from collaborating for a shared goal, even if ideological disagreements exist.
In feminist theory, empowerment refers to a person's or a group's recognition of their own power.
This is the ability to change oneself or a group, and it often extends to changing the lives of others, social institutions, and society as a whole.
When individuals feel oppressed, they often fail to see their own strength.
The process of emancipation is also a process of empowerment, as it frees oneself from the shackles that prevent one from recognizing and acting on one's own strength.
Global feminism examines problems that impact women across the world or from a global standpoint.
That is, certain problems, such as sex and gender-based harassment and violence, seem to impact women all over the globe.
Consumption, for example, necessitates a global view with a female awareness.
Third-wave feminists believe that buying and selling goods is a political act.
By examining the impact of purchases on women and children all across the world, global feminists make that political goal worldwide.
Human rights, as I have said, are one of the most important aspects of global feminism.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) of the United Nations is the most comprehensive and generally recognized statement of human rights, although it is far from universal in reality.
The paper has piqued the attention of many feminists across the world.
They point out that many societies still do not see women as fully human, much alone legal people deserving of protection.
The declaration itself makes just a passing reference to gender and makes no mention of sex-based human rights abuses.
Global feminists propose particular methods for extending women's human rights, including as gaining full legal status for women and amending existing human rights standards to account for sex and gender-based abuses.
The terms "global feminism" and "transnational feminism" are often used interchangeably.
Nonetheless, there is a clear distinction between the two.
Feminism that crosses national boundaries is known as transnational feminism.
It does not, however, have to address global issues, though it may do so.
When women in a developed country collaborate with women in a developing country to provide opportunities for women and exchange information and expertise, this is an example of transnational feminism.
For example, Norwegian women's organizations have collaborated with Thai women's organizations to attempt to stop the flow of human trafficking from Thailand to Norway.
They do this in a variety of ways, including providing grants to university women's centers, providing loans to women's co-operatives to help them support and sustain alternative sources of income, and funding the establishment of programs to educate people about the true intentions of recruiters who come to villages looking for domestic workers for the city.
However, international feminism cannot be a one-way street.
Thailand's women's organizations must likewise strive to educate Norwegian women's groups.
They must explain why certain women are more susceptible to trafficking than others due to cultural traditions and customs, as well as what kinds of alternatives will make a difference in the lives of impoverished women.
Furthermore, whether from universities or villages, Thai women encourage Norwegian women to solve the issue of human trafficking by focusing on traffickers and consumers, johns, or those who book sex holidays in Thailand or send for mail order brides from Southeast Asia.
In other words, Norway's task is to investigate the reasons of human trafficking from the demand side.
This example emphasizes the importance of women working together in the fight for human rights and women's rights beyond national boundaries.
However, cultural norms, language obstacles, and government regulations often obstruct women's organizations' capacity to collaborate.
Global and transnational feminisms strive to respect cultures and national sovereignty while challenging sexist aspects of both.
It's not always simple to walk this line. Often, one must first address issues in one's own nation before being trusted by women's organizations in another country.
If the United States' policies have a direct and negative effect on women in El Salvador, for example, women's organizations in the United States must alter US government policy before they can fully engage in social change with women in El Salvador.
Trust, as well as bravery and honesty, are on the line.
Just as one must face one's own sexism before condemning the sexism of others on a personal level, one must confront those factors in one's country that lead to sexist discrimination or violence before or while criticizing others.
Postcolonial feminism and Third World feminism are two more approaches to feminism with issues and followers that transcend borders or span the world.
Insofar as they pay attention to the issues and variety of race, class, culture, country, ethnicity, and religion, as well as sex, they have a lot in common with global feminism and transnational feminism.
In that sense, these feminisms are often lumped together or referred to in the same way.
Third-world feminism has its own set of theoretical features.
Many of the issues that less developed nations face may be traced back to colonial history, according to postcolonial feminism.
Colonialism robbed not just of natural riches, but also of civilizations, educational systems, racial and gender relations ideas, and languages.
Within this framework, postcolonial feminism examines sexist ideas and behaviors.
Postcolonial feminists come in all shapes and sizes.
They might live in one of the former colonies, Europe, or America.
They may be descendants of colonists or colonized.
Regardless, the history of colonialism and its long-term consequences serves as their analytical framework.
Of course, colonialism did not affect every colony in the same manner.
Imperialist governments handled the peoples of the countries they conquered in a variety of ways.
This range of experience is also essential when considering postcolonial feminism.
Many postcolonial feminists detect traces of colonialism in other feminists' universalizing statements.
When first and second wave feminists, for example, argued based on oppression in women's common experience, they disregarded or missed the many ways in which women did not and do not share comparable experiences.
Some feminist schools of thought and initiatives, according to postcolonial feminists, replicate dominant relations or reinscribe oppressive identities.
When feminists impose Western liberation ideals on the two-thirds globe, they are engaging in a kind of neocolonialism that replicates colonialism's historical experience by attempting to make the "colony" more like them.
Although political takeover of land as a form of colonialism is mostly a thing of the past, postcolonial theorists are targeting a new kind of colonialism.
Through business methods, hegemonic culture, worker exploitation, and the replacement of traditional crafts, multinational companies and transnational enterprises, mainly based in Western countries, bring their own colonial impact.
Unlike traditional forms of colonialism, which involved the colonizer assuming the privilege of ruling in the colony, neocolonialism rules indirectly through the power it creates and enjoys by bringing manufacturing jobs to a region or providing consumer goods to a people – often Western-inspired consumer goods.
Old-style colonialism often murdered or dispossessed indigenous peoples; new-style colonialism impoverishes countries by inundating them with Western values, goods, or aspirations.
When sexist oppression exists, both types of colonialism become apparent feminist issues, but postcolonial feminists believe that there are significant links between sexism and racism, colonialism, classism, heterosexism, ecological injustice, and other kinds of oppression.
Despite the fact that postcolonial feminist liberation tactics involve recognizing variations across peoples and experiences, oppression analyses may be grouped together under the same umbrella structure.
They highlight that oppressed peoples' identities and experiences are shaped by their history of colonialism and oppression, and that various kinds of oppression often overlap to influence social life.
Third World feminists, in a similar spirit, fight racism, sexism, colonialism, and imperialism by stressing strength and resistance in the face of dominant culture.
Third World feminists identify their places as ‘Third World' to highlight the circumstances of poverty, exploitation, and marginalization that may be experienced anywhere one lives, regardless of wealth or poverty.
The term "Third World" comes from a colonial era, but it has been adopted by feminists and other activists to express political solidarity in the face of injustice.
One important aspect of this resistance is the rejection of colonial history produced from the imperialist colonizer's point of view.
Third-world feminists, on the other hand, propose rewriting history from the point of view and experience of colonial peoples.
This gives history more nuance and avoids the generalizations of previous imperialists.
Furthermore, Third World feminists lead philosophy by examining the particular struggles of survival in the daily lives of colonial and previously colonized peoples.
Both postcolonial and Third World feminists believe that the only way to end women's oppression is for individuals and peoples to be free to create their own futures in light of their repressed histories.
They will require independence from dominating cultures as well as imperialist countries in order to accomplish so.
Humans create resistance communities on a daily basis, uniting them in fights for human dignity and opposition to oppressive powers.
Human dignity necessitates economic and political self-determination, as any human rights campaigner would argue.
Breaking away from dominant culture's imperialist influences is critical to such efforts.
Writing is one tangible technique for resistance, in addition to those used in day-to-day survival attempts and more overt efforts for social and political change.
Personal narrative, or creating one's own tale, has been utilized by feminists of all stripes to uncover one's own subjectivity and express agency in the face of oppressive circumstances.
Writing is used by Third World and postcolonial feminists to claim the memory of cherished cultural traditions, colonized and brutal past, and family honor.
In their attempts to promote women's rights and fight sexist or patriarchal institutions throughout the world, global, transnational, postcolonial, and Third World feminists address a variety of problems.
Examining problems as linked and mutually reinforcing is an essential aspect of global feminist thought.
In order to address the feminization of poverty, for example, problems of race and class must be addressed both locally and globally, as well as the gendered elements of poverty.
Other problems, such as human trafficking or rape in war, may also lead to feminization of poverty and vice versa.
The following sections address some of these problems and demonstrate the sophisticated analysis required for global women's emancipation.
THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN, BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION, PARAGRAPH 17.
‘Absolute poverty and feminization of poverty, unemployment, increasing environmental fragility, ongoing violence against women, and the widespread exclusion of half of humanity from institutions of power and governance highlight the need to continue the search for development, peace, and security, as well as ways to ensure people-centered sustainable development.
The involvement and leadership of the female half of humankind is critical to the search's success.
Only a new era of international cooperation between governments and peoples based on a spirit of partnership, an equitable international social and economic environment, and a radical transformation of women and men's relationship to one of full and equal partnership will enable the world to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.'
~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan
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