Global Feminism

by Charlotte Bunch

One of the main presentations given at the Orientation Course was on global feminism, by Charlotte Bunch. Charlotte is an American feminist theorist and activist who founded Quest: a feminist quarterly, and has edited six anthologies on feminism. She is presently working on issues of global feminism, through Interfem Consultants, based in New York. She came to Geneva for the Orientation Course from Rotterdam, where she had just organised a conference on the International Traffic in Women.

I have been working as a feminist organizer and writer in the women's movement for about 15 years, the last 5 of which 1 have been specifically working on international networking among feminists in different parts of the world. My interest in working in international networking is not new. Like many US women, I became a feminist in the context of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements. I feel that it is a full circle for many of us who became politically aware through those movements for social change - specifically the Vietnam war and an understanding of international imperialism and the United States' role in that - to work as feminists in our own countries, and then to come back again to look at what it means to be a feminist in a global context. Exploring connections as an international feminist is in a sense returning to our roots of concern about the relationship of our movement to movements around the world.

The first thing I want to say in talking about international or global feminism, is that I prefer the term global because it seems to me that as feminists it is important to  recognise that we are people working with people, rather than nations. Very few of us represent our governments, and even when we do, an analysis of the world which is feminist must go beyond national boundaries and one of patriarchy's basic forms of domination - the nation-state. The violence and warfare carried on in the name of the nation-state and the fact that "national security" has become a cover-up for militarism and police states makes clear the importance of feminism moving beyond the boundaries of any of our countries and seeking to create a world which can also move beyond those national boundaries.

Further, many of us have come to see that there are very few issues which are limited to one nation. Most of the problems that women experience have become global problems. In dealing with problems of employment, for example, economic problems are tied to a transnational economy, to the transnational corporations and to their control and manipulation of workers at the global level. Sex tourism — the traffic in women's bodies crossing national lines - is a good example of crimes against women on an international scale. Even contraception - both in terms of its availability and its abuse - is international. So, clearly, to fight our oppression requires global consciousness and cooperation. Feminism cannot succeed in one country alone.

Fighting Oppression: Global Consciousness and Cooperation The Western dominated mass media, recognizing the threat of feminism, has from the beginning ridiculed and trivialized our work. Feminists are generally portrayed by the media as either silly and trivial (an example of this is the term "bra-burner" - originally intended as a symbol of women's protest against their restricted lives, the media ignored the political analysis and made it look trivial), or anti-male (rather than focusing on the anti-woman society), or interested only in getting top corporate power (rather than challenging the power system.)

There has been little media attention to the serious political actions, values, or grassroots nature of feminism worldwide.

The remarkable thing is that, in spite of all this distortion, feminism has continued to grow and to grow around the world.

Given the distortion of feminism by the media, it is crucial that we be clear about what we mean by the term. An international workshop held in 1979 in Bangkok, in which both Jane (Cottingham) and I participated, took on the task of seeking to define feminism in its basic sense as a transformational politics, stating:

There are two long term feminist goals that underlie women's struggle for liberation from oppression and discrimination in all spheres and at all levels of society: First the freedom from oppression for women involves not only equity, but also the right of women to freedom of choice, and the power to control their own lives within and outside of the home. Having control over our lives and our bodies is essential to ensure a sense of dignity and autonomy for every woman.

The second goal of feminism is therefore the removal of all forms of inequality and oppression through the creation of a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally. This means the involvement of women in national liberation struggles, in plans for national development, and in local and global strategies for change.

Understood as a transformational politics, feminism addresses every area of life from the perspective of women's oppression, and goes on to challenge domination in any form (sex, race, sexual preference, class, religion, nation, etc.). Feminism is not a laundry list of "women's issues". It is not just adding women into existing institutions. When dealing with any issue, whether it's budgets or biogenetics or wife-battering, feminism as a political perspective is about change in structures - about ending domination and resisting oppression. Feminism is about new ways of looking at the world, a vision born of women that we must offer to and demand of men.

Feminism itself is political. The problem at the 1980 UN Copenhagen Conference was not that it was politicized, but that is was political only from a male perspective. (This is not surprising since after all the representatives at a United Nations conference represent male authoritative states). Feminists must redefine what is political and why. For example, one of the demands of the Rotterdam conference against the traffic in women, which I helped to organize, is that those women who are trying to escape forced prostitution be seen as political refugees. This is one way of redefining what is seen as political in the world. Another example of this is the work being done
to create a feminist analysis of militarism, linking nuclear threats and militarism to the everyday violence of battery, rape, incest, and daily violence against women.

Global Perspectives: Local Action

One problem that feminists confront is how to value cultural diversity without allowing it to be used to justify traditions that are oppressive to women. Since most "cultures" as we know them are patriarchal and therefore oppressive to women, hope for the future requires that women create new models, allowing for diversity and drawing from the best of the past, but refusing to accept any form of domination in the name of either tradition or modernization. Similarly, there is also a need to recognise differences among women, to fight the patriarchal ideology that makes differences unequal, and to create a world where differences do not lead to the domination of one group by another.

Finally, global feminism must operate locally with global consciousness. Global feminism is not based on international travel; instead, international contact is used to enrich local work. This is one reason why this Exchange program is so valuable — so unique. It is a meeting of activist to activist, based on your local work.

Networking is another important element of global feminism. Networking is an attempt to develop ways of linking existing work - especially at the local level - for effective cooperation. Examples of organizations which exist to provide linkages and support systems include Isis, the International Feminist Network, the International Women's Tribune Centre, CAMS in Senegal, the International Lesbian Information Service, the Network of Women and Global Corporations, and the International Feminist Network against the Traffic in Women.

If any lesson was clear in Copenhagen, it was that a global feminist movement will only come through people connecting to people, not from governments. The crisis of survival on our planet demands that we take the risk of trying to develop a global feminism that can add to the forces for sanity and justice at work in the world.