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Strategic Sisterhood Or Sisters In Solidarity? Questions Of Communitarianism And Citizenship In Asia, Aihwa Ong

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) has spawned a

Triumphant sense among Western/Northern feminists that they are forging a

strategic sisterhood with less privileged women in the South. Feminists from

metropolitan countries seek a new North-South alliance whereby they make

strategic interventions on behalf of third world women by putting pressure on

their governments. Professor Ong critiques strategic sisterhood on the

following grounds:

First, strategic sisterhood is based on individualistic notions of

transnational feminine citizenship, ignoring the historical and cultural

differences between women from the first and third worlds. In particular, the

concept ignores geopolitical inequalities whereby postcolonial …