The Dictionary of Human Geography

2000). Periodizing risks a second tendency:
this is to code these stages within a narrative
of progress or development, against which
feminisms in other parts of the world can be
judged as advanced or, more typically, back-
wards (Shih, 2002).
Modern Western feminism was constituted
in relation to the abstractindividualismthat
is the basis for social and political inclusion
within liberalism. Women have been
excluded from many of the supposedly univer-
sal norms and claims of liberalism, but have
used these norms to struggle for inclusion
within them. Insofar as they have shared this
experience of exclusion with other social
groups, this has offered grounds for alliances.
Nonetheless, Western feminism has been
criticized for its own exclusions, concealed by
its universalizing claims about women’s
experience. Criticisms of feminism as white,
middle-class, heterosexist and Western were
prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, and
have led to attempts to understand both the
specificity and diversity of women’s experi-
ences. It is not simply that women’s experi-
ences differ depending on other aspects of
their social locations; feminism as a political
movement takes a different trajectory in
different places, depending on how it articu-
lates with other political struggles. In the
Philippines, as one example, the ‘second wave’
of women’s liberation dating from 1970 was
closely articulated with the nationalist struggle
against the collusion between US imperialists
and landlord–comprador–bureaucrat capital-
ist allies within the Philippines (West, 1992).
As Morris (2006) writes: ‘‘‘Politics’’ is irredu-
cibly plural. .. What I have in mind is not
simply the diversity of [feminist] groups,
movements and ‘‘positions’’ that can be
mapped as active at any given time around
the world, but rather the intrinsically dynamic,
unpredictably complex and consequential
nature of political struggle itself; in failing as
well as in succeeding, political practices alter
the contexts in which they occur ... [W]e
have little to gain from polemically reducing
our vision to one project. .. We have too
rich a past from which to learn, and too much
to do in the future.’ But this also means
that the translatability across these myriad
feminist struggles can no longer be taken
for granted, and that Western feminists must
‘stop positing themselves as objects of
mimesis’ (Shih, 2002, p. 116) and do the hard
work of fully contextualizing the specificity
of feminist social movementsin particular
times and places.

Feminism has always been a spatial practice:

to disrupt traditional organizations ofspace,to

forge productive dislocations and to reconfig-

ure conventions ofscale: ‘The dichotomy

between the private and the public is central

to almost two centuries of feminist writing and

political struggle; it is, ultimately, what the

feminist movement is about’ (Pateman, 1989,

p. 118: see alsoprivate and public spheres).

The feminist slogan, ‘the personal is the polit-

ical’, expresses a refusal to accept both conven-

tional boundaries between public and private,

and scalar distinctions between thebodyand

spaces of politics (seefeminist geographies).

The term ‘postfeminist’ emerged in the

1990s, in part to signal differences among

women, the fluidity ofgendercategories and

the challenges of building a social movement

through the singular identification as women.

But there are many options for reformulating

feminism in terms other than postfeminism,

for instance, as transnational, transversal, as a

solidarity movement articulated through obliga-

tions of justice rooted in the interdependencies

of material conditions in specific places, or as

‘an empty signifier’ that gathers struggles over

the production ofdifference– through polit-

ical struggle rather than identification (Pratt,

2004). It certainly would be a mistake to assume

that feminist struggles have been won. Although

women make up roughly half the labour force in

many countries, the majority of women in most

countries continue to work in traditionally

female jobs, for significantly lower wages than

men. Reproductive rights won through second-

wave feminist activism are under attack in the

USA, and the division of domestic labour is

largelyunchangedinmanycountries.Thedevo-

lution of care underneo-liberalismhas added

to women’s work responsibilities at home, and

the increasing militarization of daily life (cf.

militarism) in many countries has led to re-

masculization and intensified regulation of

heteronormativity. gp

Suggested reading

Blunt and Wills (2000); Pratt (2004).

feminist geographies These geographies

focus on howgenderand geographies are

mutually produced and transformed, and the

ways in which gender differentiation andhet-

eronormativitypermeate social life, and are

interwoven with and naturalize other categor-

ical distinctions. The tradition dates from the

mid-1970s, drawing inspiration from women’s

movements of the 1960s (seefeminism); it is

both a sub-field and a force that has reshaped

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FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES