Martha Nussbaum's Feminist Internationalism

Abstract

The term ‘feminist internationalism’ generally means the elaboration of transnational principles and standards to advance the position of women. The move to define international benchmarks to improve women’s globally disadvantaged situation has a long history. For example, international women’s groups were established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to deal with issues such as equal access to education and training and women’s suffrage.1 Women’s groups lobbied the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation to develop standards and practices relating to matters such as the nationality of married women, trafficking in women and girls, women’s suffrage, and the working conditions of women.2 Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the international arena has become increasingly attractive for women’s groups, which have worked to persuade states to adopt treaties and resolutions dealing with many aspects of women’s lives. The most significant of these international standards is the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Feminist internationalism has encountered considerable controversy and resistance from various quarters. A major source of antipathy is from states (whether ‘‘liberal’’ or ‘‘religious’’) which regard recourse to international standards with respect to women as illegitimate because they may challenge national culture, traditions, policies, and laws. A different form of resistance to feminist internationalism comes from some feminist activists and scholars who regard it as dependent on essentialist accounts of women, obliterating differences of race, class, wealth, sexuality, and so on. Prompted by her work as a research adviser at the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, be-