Weekly Reading 4: Under Western Eyes - Chandra Mohanty

In the reading by Chandra Mohanty, she speaks on how western feminist views third world women. She begins to define the difference of the word women when it comes to western feminism. The two viewpoints Chandra defines are women as culturally diverse in ethnic, culture, and in society, as well as women who have been viewed in history. This is very important when speaking about Western feminism because it is clear that many Western feminists perspective in history primarily focuses on addressing white privilege women. This also becomes important to note since it reflects the eurocentric influence when it comes to western feminism. Many of the western feminists claims to be culturally or geographically knowledgeable from the ‘west’ in which Chandra brings to attention. For this reason Mohanty questions the intentions of western feminists and the foundation they are claiming. Mohanty then uses 3 analytical presuppositions to observe many western feminists who identify as third world women. When observing these feminists, Chandra tries to look for the location or situation of the ‘woman’ discovering the identity, interests, ethnic or radical location, and figures to see their perpestive on gender or sexuality differences. She also looks into the proof of validation for the women being universality and cross-cultural as well as their political standpoint. I find this to be very helpful to see the intentions of western feminists because it is highly important to deconstruct the sterotypical perspective of third world women and how western women look at them. It is unfair to create an image of the experiences of third world women, when it does not solely apply to third world countries but all countries. Chandra then begins to state the perpestive that third world women are victims of male violence, universal dependants, colonial influenced marriages, association with familial systems, religious ideologies, and development in third world countries viewed as such. It is extremely important to not only speak up about these issues regardless of the location and to deconstruct the ideas of these experiences only applying to third world women. It does not help move forward nor get any support for these issues to be put upon at large, for the reason that many of these issues only revolve around third world countries as well as being it is about women. For me, the idealistic approach that will benefit women in the long run for western feminist is to innovate solutions and create a clear approach on how to end the causes of these issues at large starting with themselves. There is nothing many can do within third world countries if western feminists are only identifying their problems and not providing solutions for these women. My solution would be for the western feminists to back the hell up and leave these women and their stories alone.