Feminism According to Sandoval
In Sandoval’s essay, “U.S. Third World Feminism: Differential Social Movement," she discusses the theories of third world feminism. Basically third world feminism is the idea that there are unique differences between the non-western women versus the other women.
This difference is due to racism, colonialism and other cultural, economic and political factors.
Sandoval criticizes western feminists for generalizing all women’s issues across the globe when according to her, this is not the case.
In other words, western feminists define feminism solely through gender - not taking into consideration that suppression and representation of another women’s race.
According to Sandoval, "The juncture I am proposing, therefore, is extreme. It is a location wherein the praxis of U.S. third-world feminism links with the aims of white feminism, studies of race, ethnicity, and marginality, and with post-modern theories of culture as they crosscut and join together in new relationships through a shared comprehension of an emerging theory and method of oppositional consciousness."
Furthermore according to Sandoval, during much of history, feminist movements and theoretical developments were led by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America, despite how women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms.
Now these third-world feminists living in developing nations and former colonies or of various ethnicities or living in poverty are placed at further disadvantages and the feminist movements that way have worked for the western feminist is then discredited.
Sandoval believes this perspective to be the starting point in which to call for a necessary mixture in the collaboration and appropriation of ideas, knowledge and theories. This idea of a mixed consciousness reflects the necessary reality of surviving as a "minority" or other in a dominant society by using every and any aspect of the dominant power. The hope for Sandoval is that
This difference is due to racism, colonialism and other cultural, economic and political factors.
Sandoval criticizes western feminists for generalizing all women’s issues across the globe when according to her, this is not the case.
In other words, western feminists define feminism solely through gender - not taking into consideration that suppression and representation of another women’s race.
According to Sandoval, "The juncture I am proposing, therefore, is extreme. It is a location wherein the praxis of U.S. third-world feminism links with the aims of white feminism, studies of race, ethnicity, and marginality, and with post-modern theories of culture as they crosscut and join together in new relationships through a shared comprehension of an emerging theory and method of oppositional consciousness."
Furthermore according to Sandoval, during much of history, feminist movements and theoretical developments were led by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America, despite how women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms.
Now these third-world feminists living in developing nations and former colonies or of various ethnicities or living in poverty are placed at further disadvantages and the feminist movements that way have worked for the western feminist is then discredited.
Sandoval believes this perspective to be the starting point in which to call for a necessary mixture in the collaboration and appropriation of ideas, knowledge and theories. This idea of a mixed consciousness reflects the necessary reality of surviving as a "minority" or other in a dominant society by using every and any aspect of the dominant power. The hope for Sandoval is that