JUSTIFYING THE DIVIDE

‘Learn her mother-tongue’ if you wish to feel solidarity, suggests Gayatri Spivak. Learn about the other woman, not as the stereotype we see in the popular media, either oppressed by foreign customs or as the exotic other, clad in colourful difference. From documentaries and news stories, from advertisements and pleas by aid agencies, western women are bombarded with images of ‘other’ women. Often these stereotypes are contradictory: the strong black matriarch exposed to domestic battery; the veiled Iranian who took up a gun to fight for her country's independence; the passive mail-order bride who is nevertheless a scheming gold-digger; the proud erect image of Winnie Mandela in her traditional headdress but convicted of corruption. But the purpose of this book is not primarily to learn about the other woman. This book will fail to deliver the rich detail of women's lives offered in anthropology courses or area studies (like Asian studies). Rather, we will explore why and how the stereotypes of ‘other’ women are so integral to white western women's constructions of themselves. Contradictory or not, these stereotypes are usually pejorative.