The sharply contrasting images of sunburnt female GIs in combat gear and veiled Arab women presented during the Gulf war are the continuation of an old imperialist theme. The juxtaposition of women in the West and in the colonial and semi-colonial world has long been used as a justification for maintaining foreign domination.
The British claimed to be a progressive force in India, particularly for women, and pointed to legal reforms such as the prohibition of sati (the practice of widow s immolating temselves on their husbands funeral pyres) to support this. They used women's anger to suggest that India was unfit for self-rule The debates raised by Black in the WANLANe womens' movements have been informed by this history. They challenge racism in feminism and ask whether it is a white, First World ideology, at best irrelevant to, at worst actively pressing the peoples of the Third World'.
This merits more discussion than it receives - there is an interrelationship between imperialism and' women's oppression and thus a link be tween feminism and anti-imperialism.
July 6, 1991 No.5 First, the myth of western women's liberation, illustrated by their part in Desert Storm, may be easily disposed of. The position of women in the US army reflects their oppression in the imperialist countries, not the reverse.
Women comprise 11% of the US military, almost 50% are Black. They have joined up, not from a sense of liberation, but largely in a desperate attempt to escape traditional female jobs - low paid and demeaning - and to avoid unemployment, poverty and homelessness.
However, the gender segregation of jobs extends through the military - women do clerical work or nursing. A recent survey showed that sexual harassment and assault are rampant. Even those women who enter as officers are blatantly discriminated against - only 0.9% of the 1000 top officers are women.
Imperialism's claim to have advanced the position of women in its colonies also collapses under scrutiny. Even such examples as the suppression of sati, are in reality ambiguous and contradicted by other actions. orner accons Sati was only outlawed in 1829 after a battle tho British Torv The ban had limited effect and did notapply to 'independent states'.
The British destruction of the dinn bn Nayars in Kerala provides a striking counterweight to imperialist arguments. Family property was owned collective ly, and both sexes controlled their sexuality within limits.
This was opposed to the patriarchal structure of both the North Indian Brahmin family and that of the British. They saw the sexual freedom of the women as promiscuity, and viewed collective onership through the female line as the dispossession of males.
So, from 1868 to 1933 the British passed and strictly enforced reforms on marriage and inheritance aimed at eradicating this and replacing it with a patriarchal form.
Previousiy, the rigid interpretation of Hindu Personal aw by British born and educated judiciary had imposed the moral constraints and economic dependence of upper-caste women on all others. Similarly, British rule in Burma attempted to eliminate _ the female dominated family and shared family property.
These examples belie the supposedly emancipatory role of imperialism for women, and illustrate the frequent alliance of the colonial power with the local ruling class on questions of social organisation.
An opposing alliance was sometimes made between women from the oppressor state and those under colonial rule. The first three Indian women's organisations were established largely by British women. Most of them supported women's suffrage, which brought them into opposition with the British The emergence of nationalism across the colonial world had a contradictory impact. The struggle against imperialism involved millions of women, not only for self-determination, but also increasingly for equalrights forwomen, and their right to fully participate in the rebuilding of their Colkenes.
This articulation of demands for women's rights as a part of the national struggle encouraged nationalists to take them seriously. Independence often saw the achievement of some of their aims.
After the revolution in Turkey led by Attaturk, the state was secularised and women's status improved, especially in the towns. In India formal equality in politics and employment followed independence.
But elsewhere, the development of national consciousness, defined partly ture and religion, played a different role. Arab women suffered from the integration of Islam as a central element of bourgeois national consciousness.
These contradictions serve to underline the interrelationship between imperialism and the position of women - the oppressive role of the West in the colonial world. Thus international solidarity - with the struggles in Palestine, Kurdistan, and elsewhere - is an important task for the women's movement in the West.
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