‘Women’ in ‘Asia’: An Interrogation

Devleena Ghosh

doi:10.5130/portal.v3i2.345

Abstract

The articles in this special issue section of PORTAL had their first iteration as presentations in the Eighth Women in Asia Conference held at the University of Technology Sydney in 2005, the theme of which was ‘Shadow Lines’. The concept ‘Women in Asia’ is problematic since some of the major debates in gender or women’s studies have focused on the diversity of women’s life worlds and beings and the contested nature of the term ‘Asia’. As a theme it has the potential to become a holdall phrase for scholarship, research and activist work ‘from Suez to Suva’. However, reflecting on these difficult terms can be a creative and rewarding process. The attempt to locate Australia within the region, rather than within a putative ‘west’, and to deal with her geography rather than just her white history, can be an effective way of challenging many current ‘white blindfold’ discourses. At the same time, gendered analyses of society, politics and culture that attempt a re-insertion of ‘herstories’ into academic discourses have to be sophisticated enough to demonstrate the intrinsic gendering of all-embracing, supposedly ‘neutral’, ideas such as race, nationalism, ethics, and the state, rather than simply ‘adding in’ women. The marginalised spaces of women’s activities have to be legitimated as crucial elements of all social relations, highlighting the intimate relationships and connections between men and women. These concerns animate the papers collected in this issue.

Highlights

Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism’, in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, eds C
Were re-inscribed and reconstructed in the service of colonialism and modernity, and nations were frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic space
The women’s question in the agenda of Indian social reform in the early 19th century was not so much about the specific condition of women within a specific set of social relations, as it was about the political encounter between a colonial state and the supposed ‘tradition’ of a conquered people (Chatterjee 1993, 119)

Summary

Introduction

Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism’, in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, eds C. Were re-inscribed and reconstructed in the service of colonialism and modernity, and nations were frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic space.

Results

Conclusion