Feminist Critiques Flashcards
(30 cards)
Michael collins on historiographical shift
Early history state-centric, elite negotiations, now evolved to include women in shaping the decolonisation process.
Shahid Amin - what country & specifics do they talk about
India, Ghandi
Shahid Ahmin women as symbolic
Ghandi’s appeal was moral and spiritual - women linked to purity, sacrifice, and spiritual discipline. symbolic role.
Ahmin women agency
everyday acts of resistance
1. donating jewellery
2. boycotting foreign cloth
3. Participating in procession and rituals
Ahmin conclusion
women’s actions were welcomed when symbolic, but werent when politically radical or subversive
shaped by local social norms
who does Hue-Tam Ho Tai talk about
Bao Luong
Bao Luong inspirations & legacy
inspired by Chinese Revolutionaries, women breaking roles and joining the effort.
Arrested in 1927, first female imprisoned
Ho Tai 3 main points on Bao Luong
- Political actors: 1st woman member of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, took on roles preserved for men (organising cells, distributing pamphlets, living underground)
- Double struggle of colonialism and patriarchy: surveilled more
- Had to prove themselves more than men - remain celibate and unmarried, women bodies were politicised.
what does Ho Tai outline?
how gender shaped experiences, risks, and perceptions of the movement
Gail Hershatter
May Fourth Movement 1919
promoted womens liberation contained in nationalist gender
framed as steps to modernisation
Tani Barlow
May Fourth Movement 1919
“modern woman” educated, patriotic, and public-facing
Beijing 1919
women students joined May Fourth street protests, defying gender norms by being politically active
arrested alongisde male students
Women’s Journals in May Fourth Movement
New Youth & Women’s Voice
to debate education, marriage reform, and gender roles
What does Naoko Shimazu talk about
Japanese women in early 20th century international diplomacy, Japan’s interwar foreign relations
Shimazu broad argument
“invisible diplomacy” women’s transnational engagements blurred lines between public diplomacy and private activism
Shimazu 4 points on Japanese Women’s activism:
- Cultural Diplomacy: acted as intermediaries between Japan and the West. softened image in wake of growing imperial ambitions
- Transnational: Leage of Nations as platform for women to shape affairs without holding office
- Gender & Soft Power: deployed strategically to serve national interests. empowered & instrumentalised. travelled, wrote, spoke, and networked.
- Silenced: largely excluded, work didnt fit into traditional definitions of diplomacy, calls for re-reading of archives.
what does Shimazu call Japanese women in this context?
“co-constructors of its international persona”
Elisabeth Armstrong basic outline of who shes talking about
Women’s International Democratic Federation est 1945 before Bandung
crucial to anti-imperialist organisations early cold-war but largely written out of nationalist narratives.
Armstrong 3 main points:
- WIDF as platform: bought women together from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. space to coordinate strategy and feminist critique of colonialism, war, and racism.
- Transnational: not just elites, activists for labourers, peasants, and anti-war movements. WIDF linked feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist struggles
- Erased: sidelined in favour of male-led histories of decolonisation, depoliticised and domesticated.
what do the WIDF reject?
rejected feminism as a bourgeouise or Western, applied it to the anti-colonial struggle
rejected paternalism, feminism as anti-imperial struggle.
Armstrong on Beijing WIDF Congress 1948
major
asserted leadership in framing imperialism as a feminist issue.
challenged US idea of global democracy and postwar humanitarianism
“interlocking systems”
What was the WIDF?
founded in Paris in 1945 by women from over 40 countries
aimed to promote women’s rights, peace, anti-fascism, and international solidarity
strongly influenced by leftist, communist, and anti-colonial women activists - many members had resisted against fascism in WWII
became largest international women’s organisation of the 20th century
WIDF as a global platform
speak about their struggles
women from Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa, India, and other colonies bought testimonies of repression, racism, and war
linked women’s liberation with national liberation, feminism and anti-imperialism were inseperable.
WIDF key actions and contributions
- petitions and UN advocacy against colonial war (French war in Vietname, Apartheid in South Africa)
- Highlighted Gendered Violence in Colonial Wars (rape, mass displacement, forced labour)
- Supported women in anti-colonial armed struggles (Algeria’s FLN, Vietnam’s resistance)
- created international attention to things like Algerian war of independence, Apartheid in South Africa, and US imperialism in Vietnam and Korea.
