Gender and Development

Chandra Mohanty and Abu Lughod, well known authors and feminist of South Asia, criticize the way in which “Women” of the developing countries has been represented from the western feminist point of view. Mohanty argues that categorization of large numbers of women in “Third World countries” are being described as homogeneous notion of oppressed women, who are deprived of education, are poor, tradition bound and are victimized. She challenges the notion of categorizing non-western women as “collective others” without considering their class, history, racial and ethnic contexts to which these women belongs to. Moreover, in “Under Western Eyes” Mohanty did a comparison between self presentation of Western feminist as secular, developed and liberated and Western feminist representation of Third World women as underdeveloped and dependent.

Abu- Lughod in her book “Do Muslim women really need saving?” examines the homogeneous category of Muslim women after the attack of 9/11 and obsession of West to play the role of savior for these unfortunate women, who cannot save themselves from the patriarchal society in which they live. She gives the example of Afghan women who wears veil, which represent the symbolic separation of men’s and women’s according to Afghani culture, rather the claim made by the West that Afghan woman as someone in need of saving. Furthermore, Lughod explain that although there is no doubt that some women may need help, but the manner in which the West looks upon these women and aims to ‘save’ them reduces the agency of the women to whom they claim to offer help.

The points which Mohanty and Abu-Lughod have pointed out had an immense impact among women of developing as well as developed countries. How? Because they have given a new perspective to Western feminist to accept the possibility of difference among cultures as well as inside a culture. The reason is to analyze whether the women of Third World are happy with the way they are living or they really need Western women to be their savior. International NGO’S and global politics have to bring in account the idea of cultural relativism, because rights and wrong are culture specific, so we have to stop interacting other’s culture. If veil is considered as wrong thing in Western countries, it is not necessarily to be wrong in Muslim countries as well. To sum up, in my opinion Mohanty and Lughod gave the concept that every culture is unique and beautiful in its own way. It is not important that if we have to follow other culture, if there is limitation in our own culture, rather we can create new ways to solve the problems. In this way we will be able to preserve our own culture.