Exporting feminism.

• Author: Elshtain, Jean Bethke
• Position: Transcending National Boundaries

From its inception, feminism has been a universalist faith. Originating in the West with Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, feminism was tethered to the French Revolution's proclamation of the universal rights of man, itself a transcultural set of propositions and commitments. Deeded to humanity by "nature and nature's God," such rights were called upon to support demands for democratic self-government, social egalitarianism, and the breaking of all previous social and political arrangements which seemed, from this universalistic standpoint, illegitimate and insupportable. Wollstonecraft shared these lofty sentiments but argued that they were flawed in that they were not extended to women. The enactments of French revolutionaries who were devotees of civic republicanism as well as natural-rights universalism preached a political doctrine of martial fervor and stalwart manliness as necessary to sustain and defend la patrie. Women could be mobilized for the purposes of the revolutionary state, but they were not full-fledged citizens. Wollstonecraft lamented this emphasis on military virtues as a civic requirement even as she defended political and natural rights. She chastised her male comrades for their refusal to incorporate women into those rights as political guarantees.[1] Given her philosophical and political commitments, she coupled the faith of reason - as a gender-neutral human attribute - with a strong belief in historic progress. Sooner or later, she believed, rational beings would be compelled to admit the injustice and incoherence of proclaiming a universal doctrine while applying it in limited and prejudicial ways.

These early contests presage 19th century debates over suffrage and what increasingly came to be known as "women's rights" or "the woman question." They drew upon two strands of political theory: one that placed emphasis on a teleology of historic progress tied to presumptions of universal reason and rights and a second that was indebted to arguments of utility ("the greatest good for the greatest number"). John Stuart Mill offered the clearest definitive treatment of the dominant strand of Western feminism in The Subjection of Women.[2] Mill believed that granting women equality of citizenship and civil liberty in the public realm would help generate a deeper transformation in social relations between the sexes. To Mill, society's progress depended on the extent to which it could abandon instinct and embrace the faith of reason. For societies yet in their "nonage," including "barbarian" cultures, Western imperialism was, to Mill, justifiable. He explicitly linked the end of women's subjection to cultural modernization and progress under Western auspices, in and through the dominant political assumptions of liberal political theory.

It is easy enough to understand why liberalism has been attractive to feminist thinkers. The language of rights is a potent weapon against traditional obligations, particularly those of family duty or any social status declared natural on the basis of ascriptive characteristics. To be free and equal to men became a central aim of feminist reform. The political strategy that follows from this dominant feminism is one of inclusion: Women are considered rational beings. It follows that women, as well as men, are bearers of inalienable rights; hence, there are no valid grounds for discrimination against women. Leading proponents of women's suffrage in Britain and the United States underlined arguments which justified formal legalistic inequality on the basis of gender differences. They claimed that denying basic rights to a group based on a presumed difference could not be justified unless it was proven that the difference was relevant to the distinction being made. Whatever the differences between sexes, none, they declared, justified legal inequality and denial of the rights and privileges of citizenship.

Few early feminists pushed liberal universalism to its most radical conclusion by arguing that there are no justifiable grounds for exclusion of adult human beings from legal equality and citizenship. They indicated, however, that putative sex differences, per se, could not form the basis for exclusion.[3] Some feminists even turned liberal egalitarianism on its head by arguing for women's civic equality on grounds that had served historically to exclude women from politics. They used women's special virtues, or at least those virtues associated with mothering or caregiving, to make a case for greater female political participation.[4] Speaking to and from women's social role as mothers, such early "difference feminists" used motherhood as a claim to citizenship and public identity. From the vantage point of rights-based feminism, this emphasis on motherhood was misleading. But difference feminists simultaneously embraced a notion of fundamental equality between the sexes while denying that this commitment required eradicating distinctions between men and women as citizens. Feminism has always been a pluralistic enterprise, but within this plurality dominant commitments have emerged. The most important commitment, for the purpose of this paper, is that feminism is a universal creed rooted in a set of assumptions about the nature of human beings. As such, it is exportable and deemed beneficial for all people. Feminism of this sort serves as a critical hammer with which to strike against cultures that oppress women and as a stimulus for political action on a global scale.

International relations scholars must, of course, add another dimension to this complex endeavor. Given the realities of the international order and the power disparities among state players, it makes a difference whether a group of feminists from, say Liechtenstein or from the United States, is pushing its version of a feminist agenda as a universal requirement. Its superpower status and hegemonic political culture enable the United States to influence other societies in a unique way. This set of North American (most often U.S.) doctrines is more likely to be transmitted to and imposed upon other cultures than those political ideologies which arise in less powerful and more culturally marginal parts of the world, simply because Americans tend to be more affluent and mobile and, therefore, more capable of making their views manifest as "universal" claims.

This historical perspective is important in order to recognize that feminism has always had a universalistic drive. Current controversies and tensions over whether Western feminism should be exported become more intelligible if considered as part of a larger story of dominance in Western political and cultural forms. This also clarifies why many women in societies that have emerged from a set of cultural traditions different from the West are dubious about the many indicators of contemporary Westernization, including feminism. Indeed, many view feminism as just another name for neo-colonialism or Western cultural hegemony. Even in societies that see themselves as part of the West, defining their political aspirations with a specifically North American version of feminism is often a source of political debate. Such controversies have erupted at international women's conferences since the 1970s and surfaced recently throughout the course of the International Conference on Population and Development, hosted by the United Nations in Cairo, Egypt in September 1994.

The main point of contention is not so much a commitment to human rights, but the ways in which rights-talk is deployed by North American activists. For women in cultures fighting the use of torture as an instrument of political power, political imprisonment, lack of basic social goods and occupation by a foreign power (including attempts to eradicate the distinctiveness of their own culture), the North American preoccupation with reproductive freedom and animosity towards traditional religion and the patriarchalism of the family - infused with rhetoric that often presents men and women as political enemies - sounds strange and alien at best. It is this political and theoretical backdrop that helps explain the encounters that follow.

Critical Voices: Women Against American Feminism

Feminism is a pluralistic and complex concept. It follows that one should not expect that the encounters of women who are not of a Western society be identical. The reactions of women from diverse societies to North American feminism varies depending on the social status enjoyed by women within their own society; the degree to which their country's previous engagement with the United States has been friendly or hostile; and whether the version of North American feminism communicated to them has addressed their concerns, or at least has been derived from preoccupations that reflect their needs. Feminism, in the sense of the self-conscious articulation of a perspective having to do with women's rights, roles and power, is evident in nearly every culture. At the same time, many women's groups either do not see themselves as feminist or explicitly position themselves against what they perceive feminism to be. This latter position is entirely compatible with political visibility and activism. Thus, the encounter with "exported feminism" is always a many-sided affair, sometimes pitting groups of women against one another. North American feminism tends to position "rights" as...