Mohanty teaches us that we need to be careful when doing research that we not make assumptions about people who do not live in the west. We need to see the world through a global lens and not a western lens. We cannot assume that religious women are not progressive, family oriented women are traditional, illiterate women are ignorant, or domestic women are backwards (Mohanty: 1984, 352). We need to take into account all the complexities and history of a particular group and not let our pre-conceived notions (read western) effect the conclusions of our work.
As an example of this Mohanty briefly looks at the veiled Arab women an example I will further expand upon comparing western ideas of the veiled Arab to reality while comparing this image to the non-veiled western women (Mohanty: 1984, 342). In the western world we see the American women as having a lot of choice. Our western eyes see this woman as having the option of choosing a partner of either gender, choosing whether she wants to cohabitate before marriage, choosing whether is even going to get married and choosing if she will have children. Our western eyes tell us that everything the western woman is allowed to do the Arab women is not allowed to do. Because of this many see the Arab women as being more oppressed and less “happy” then the western women. But by looking at it from another point of view where sexual violence and divorce (50% divorce rate) runs rampant in the western world we see the Arab women as having a more stable life.
Even the above analysis while flipping some beliefs on their head does exactly what Mohanty tells us not to do. She tells us not to generalize (Sexual violence, and divorce exist in the Arab world) and to take into account history and location (different practices in different countries, what exactly does Arab refer to? What exactly does western refer to?) We need to escape from these categories and study specific peoples.
In Mohanty’s attempt to revisit her original work she is able to further revise and refine her thinking (Mohanty: 2002, 500). In this article she challenges us to rethink how women ’s studies teaches students about global women. She suggests that we incorporate global women into all of our courses and not just courses that have a global focus (Mohanty: 2002, 518-523). This will allow future scholars of women’s studies to be global in their thinking and not make mistakes of looking through the world through a western lens of generalizations and assumptions.
Work Cited:
Mohanty, C. (1984). Under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. boundary 2, 12(3), 333-358.
Mohanty, C. (2002). “Under western eyes” revisited: feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 28(21), 499-535.
I don't know if I would call divorce an oppressive force over women. It's not always a bad thing, and I think it reflects more on the state's involvement in our private lives and the problems there, than on our "rising rates" (which have actually been decreasing since the 70s).
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