Globalization of the Local/Localization of the Global Mapping Transnational Women's Movements AMRITA BASU

It may be time to replace the bumper sticker that exhorts, "Think Glob- ally, Act Locally," with one that reads, "Think Locally, Act Globally". Or perhaps it's time simply to retire the bumper sticker, for with the growth of transnational social movements, we need to rethink entirely relations between the local and the global. I am interested in exploring the implications for women's movements in the South of the growth of the transnational networks, organizations, and ideas. In the essay that follows Iwant to ask how North-South tensions around the meaning of feminism and the nature of women's movements have changed. What new opportunities have emerged and what new tensions have surfaced? What is the relationship between the transnationalism ofthe 'gos and the feminism ofthe '6os and '70s, when Robin Morgan aptly and controversially claimed, "Sisterhood Is Global?" My point of departure is an anthologyofwritings I edited in preparation for the I995 Beijing women's conference entitled The Challenge of Local Femi- nisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective. I found myself attempting to navigate twin dangers: resisting, on the one hand, the tendencynarrowly to equate women's movements with autonomous urban, middle-class feminist groups, and, on the other hand, of defining women's movements so broadly that the term includes virtually all forms of women's activism. I highlighted the local origins and character ofwomen's movements cross- nationally and argued that women's movements must be situated within the particular political economies, state policies, and cultural politics of the regions in which they are active. The question I now propose to ask is whether we need to rethink once again the relationship between local and global feminisms. Is it possible

[Meridians:feniinism, race, transnationalism 2ooo, vol. i, no. I, pp. 68-84] ©2o0o by Wesleyan University Press. Al rights reserved.

68 that the 1995 Beijing conference, which my book was designed to com- memorate, in fact marked the coming of age of transnational feminism and the eclipse of locally based women's movements? This question is prompted by the appearance of more transnational women's movement activity than we ever have seen. Before proceeding, a word about my terms: I am aware that local can connote the supposed particularism, provincialism and primordialism, of the Third World while global may connote the breadth and universality that is often associated with Western feminism. By contrast, I use the term local to refer to indigenous and regional, and global to refer to the transnational. I employ these terms because they correspond to the levels at which a great deal of women's activism is organized, namely at the grass roots and transnational levels. As I will discuss, it is also important to inject into that dynamic attention to the national level. There is considerable controversy about the significance of transnational movements, NO0s, networks, and advocacy groups. While some scholars speak of the emergence of a global civil society, others are more skeptical.' How to evaluate the transnationalization of women's movements is no less complicated. From one perspective it represents a signal achievement-particularly for women in the South. For example, Valen- tine Moghadam (I996) argues that transnational networks are organizing women around the most pressing questions of the day: reproductive rights, the growth of religious fundamentalism, and the adverse effects of structural adjustment policies. Moghadam also comments favorably on the recent emergence of networks, which she believes have a broader and more far reaching impact than local movements.2 From another perspective, as women's movements have become more transnational, their commitment to grass roots mobilization and cultural change has dimin- ished. Sonia Alvarez (I997, I998, 2000) argues that women's movements are becoming increasingly bureaucratized as they have come to work more closely with NGOS, political parties, state institutions, and multilateral agencies. 3 What explains the differences in these two perspectives7 Which is correct? I emphasize the indeterminate character of transnational activism in the late I99OS and early 2000s. It is inaccurate to depict local women's movements as simply being subsumed by global ones or as engaging in sustained, overt resistance to global influences. Rather what prevails is a more complex and varied situation in which local and transnational movements often exist independently of one another and experience simi-

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 69 lar challenges and dilemmas. Furthermore, while transnational ideas, resources, and organizations have been extremely successful around certain issues in some regions, their success with these issues is more circum- scribed elsewhere. After discussing these questions within the global context, I will turn to the Indian women's movement to illuminate my broader argument.

WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

The international women's conferences that occurred in Mexico City (I975), Copenhagen (I980), Nairobi (I985) and Beijing (I995) provide a fruitful opportunity to explore changing relationships among womren's organizations transnationally.The two-tiersystem of conferences, namely the United Nations-convened official conferences of heads of states, and the non-governmental conferences convened by women's groups and movements, provide insights into the workings of the international state system and of what some describe as a burgeoning global civil society. International feminism might be periodized as comprising two broad phases. The first phase, between I975 and i985, was marked by bitter con- testation over the meaning of feminism and over the relationship between the local and the global. The second decade-long phase, which began with the Nairobi conference in 1985 and culminated in the Beijing conference in 1995, was marked bya growth of networks linking women's activism at the local and global levels. Fierce struggles over the meaning and significance of feminism took place at international women's conferences of activists and policy makers from I975 to I985. Some of these debates identified the South with the local and the North with the global A typical scenario would be one in which women from the South would argue that women's major priorities were both local and material, for instance, the needs for potable drinking water, firewood forfuel, and more employment opportunities. Meanwhile, women from the North typically would focus on women's broad transnational identities and interests. It would be inaccurate to imply that tensions along North-South lines had disappeared entirely by the 1995 Beijing women's conference. Even today the organizations that sponsor campaigns to extend women's civil and political rights are Northern-based while Southern-based groups are more apt to address poverty, inequality, and basic needs. Esther Ngan-ling

70 AMRITA BASU Chow (I996) notes, "Even when they agree on the importance of an issue such as human rights, women from various world regions frame it differ- ently. While Western women traditionally have based their human rights struggles on issues of equality, non-discrimination and civil and political rights, African, Asian and Latin American women have focussed their struggles on economic, social and cultural rights." 4 These differences, however, were less striking at the Beijing conference than significant areas of agreement that were established across North- South lines. Charlotte Bunch and Susan Fried (I996) argue that the entire Platform ofAction was an affirmation ofthe human rights of women: "The incorporation of women's human rights language and concepts by gov- ernments and organizations from all parts of the world and in all manner of ways indicates more than a rhetorical gesture. It represents a shift in analysis that moves beyond single-issue politics or identity-based organizing and enhances women's capacity to build global alliances based on collective political goals and a common agenda." 5 One important explanation for the diminution of tension between women's movements in the North and South is the increasingly important influence of women of color in shaping debates about feminism in the United States. Recall that some of the earliest and most important cri- tiques of feminist universalism came from African American and Latina women in the United States. Years later, in preparation for the I995 Beijing women's conference, American women of color formed a coalition with women from the South and drafted language for the platform document about women who face multiple forms of discrimination. 6 At the same time, women from the South increasingly have worked to correct nationalism's exclusions by proposing non-discriminatory policies in newly formed states. Thanks to the influence of its women's movement, Namibia's constitution forbids sex discrimination, authorizes affir- mative action for women, and recognizes only those forms of customary law which do not violate the constitution. The South African constitution similarly provides equal rights forwomen and prohibits discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. Palestinian women have drafted a bill of rights and sought legislation protecting women from family violence. Furthermore, with the end of the Cold War, the character of international gatherings changed quite significantly. Early meetings, like the Mexico City conference in 1975, were dominated by national political leaders who sought to use these forums to pursue their own agendas. Whereas many of the delegates attending the 1975 Mexico City conference were the

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 71 wives, daughters, andwidows of male politicians, by the I985 Nairobi conference, the representatives included many women who were powerful in their own right. Even more important was the growth of women's movements globally and their increasingly important roles relative to those of states. As nongovernmental organizations and movements have grown, they have become more diverse, and divisions that cross-cut the North-South and East-West divide have become more salient. Both transnational networks offeminists and of conservativeactivists have grown. Forexample, a coalition of conservative Islamic groups and Christian anti-abortion activists sought to shape the agenda of the Cairo conference on population and development in I994 and to influence the World Plan of Action at the Beijing conference in 1995. 7The coalition included some powerful nongovernmental organizations, such as the International Right to Life Com- mittee and Human Life International; religious bodies, like the Vatican; and some states, preeminently the Islamic Republic of Iran. Likewomen's organizations, this coalition functions atlocal, national, and transnational levels. The growth of transnational networks of the religious Right has re- duced North-South polarization. Some of the staunchest opponents of feminism are North American or European, and among its staunchest sup- porters are Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. The ability of Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic groups to transcend national differences and ar- rive at common positions on motherhood, pornography, abortion, homo- sexuality, and premarital sexuality has encouraged feminist groups similarly to seek out areas of agreement.

CHARTING THE TERRAIN

It is tempting to treat international conferences as synonymous with transnational women's movements, since they have grown simultane- ously. However to conflate the two is to underestimate the extent to which new forms of transnationalism emerge from civil society and include a diverse arrayoforganizations, including NGOS, social movements, issue and identity networks, project coalitions, and issue-based campaigns. The growth of transnational women's movements entails the spread and growing density of groups and linkages among groups within transnational civil society. It also refers to aflowofresources, generallyfrom the

72 AMRITA BASU North to the South, to support women's organizations. Southern-based NGOs have come to rely heavily on financial support from Northern affili- ates, foundations, and academic institutions. But it is not just individuals, groups, and currencies that cross borders with greater ease and frequency than in the past. Certain discourses-and this is a second dimension- have acquired greater importance amongwomen in both the North and the South. One of the most important is that the violation of women's rights is a human rights abuse. Thus women's movements can be said to have become increasingly transnational when they appeal to universal principles of human rights and seek redress in global arenas. The past fewyears have witnessed the growth of all these dimensions of transnational activism. There also has been a vast expansion in the number of NGOS which engage in international networking, from the one hundred fourteen that attended the NGO forum in Mexico City in I975 to the three thousand that participated in the Beijing NGO forum in I995. Today, tens ofthousands of NGOsparticipatein international conferences and gatherings. Many of these are organized at the regional level by women activists from the South, independent of both the United Nations and national gov- ernments. In keeping with the multifaceted character of globalization, transnational women's movements are themselves extremely diverse. A minority among them seek to challenge the feminization of poverty and class inequality that globalization entails. One important example is Develop- ment Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), which research- ers and activists formed in 1984 to promote alternative approaches to state sponsored macroeconomic policies. DAWN includes membership from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, South and South-East Asia, and the Middle East. It earlier was based in Bangalore and now is based in Rio. A much larger group of women's organizations has sought to extend women's civic and political rights, particularly to address violence against women and the denial of women's rights by religious nationalists. An important example is the coalition of one hundred thirty women's and human rights groups-including the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority, Human Rights Watch, the National Political Con- gress of Black Women, and the Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights-which organized a campaign protesting the repressive measures that the Taleban has exercised against Afghan women since assuming power in September I996 and urging the international community to deny

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 73 investments and recognition to the Taleban. It has organized a website documenting the Taleban's abuses, a petition campaign and demonstrations protesting them, and various fundraising activities. Among its victo- ries has been to dissuade Unocal, an American oil company, from building a pipeline through Afghanistan. The amount of international funding available for women's organizations, women's studies programs, and women's movements has grown dramatically over the past decade. Grants by major U.S. foundations to groups working on women's rights and violence againstwomen increased from $24I,000 in i988 to $3,247,000 in I993 (Keck and Sikkink I998). The Ford Foundation underwrote almost half of this amount. In India alone, for example, the large majority ofwomen's NGOS receive foreign funding. As far as transnational discourses are concerned, neither conventions on international human rights nor the campaign for women's human rights is new. What is relatively new is the extent to which coalitions of transnational women's organizations have lobbied to demand recognition for women's rights as human rights. The year 1993 marked a turning point for the women's human rights movement, for during that year the Vienna Human Rights Declaration and Program ofAction and the UNDec- laration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women recognized violence against women as a human rights abuse and defined gender violence to include violence against women in the public and the private sphere. Women's human rights activists consolidated their gains at the Beijing conference and since have increasingly employed human rights appeals. With the collapse of communism and the decline of the organized SLeft, democratic movements have taken the place formerly occupied by social- ism, and liberal principles of human rights have become hegemonic. What are the implications of the transnationalization of wornen's movements for women in the South' Does the diminution of overt North- South tensions at the Beijing conference and other international forums reflect the increasingly important leadership and agenda-setting roles of women from the South? Or, conversely, are Southern-based organizations less able to oppose Northern domination because of their greater dependence on Northern funding sources? There is no one simple response to this question. It would be inaccurate to see transnational networks and movements simply as vehicles for Northern domination. Networks like DAWN and WLUML (Women Living under Muslim Law) were organized by and for women from the South. Although these networks accept external fiund-

74 AMRITA BASU ing, they formulate their objectives independently of donor organizations. Furthermore, certain problems may be more effectively addressed at the transnational than at the local level. A good example concerns some of the problems women face as a result of the growth of religious fundamentalism. Afghan women's groups are subject to such extreme repression that they could not organize effectively without outside support. Further- more transnational networks of women have been a vital counterweight to transnational networks of the religious right. The campaign against the Taleban also illuminates the possibilities of combining global and local appeals. While the campaign has made ex- tensive use of the website and of e-mail petition campaigns, it also has organized demonstrations locally, including one in Amherst, MA, where women marched through the town commons with banners in their hands and pieces of mesh fabric pinned to their lapels to evoke the burqua (veil). Terming the campaign an attempt to stop "gender apartheid" in Afghani- stan, the coalition identified the crimes against Afghan women with the evils of apartheid in South Africa. This simple, indeed simplistic char- acterization, provided an effective means of generating support for the campaign. Another tool that the campaign against the Taleban and other campaigns against religious fundamentalism have employed is to record the stories of women who are stoned, beaten, or publically humiliated for having worked, married, divorced, or done nothing at all. These individual narratives not only permit a personal identification with the victims but also invite activism against those who perpetrate abuse. The coalition against sexual apartheid in Afghanistan distributes a video entitled "A Shroud of Silence" which recounts these stories in a particularly graphic form. The very conditions for the success of global campaigns like the one against the Taleban in Afghanistan suggest some of the limitations of the strategy. Global campaigns are much more likely to succeed when women's civil and political rights rather than their economic rights (food, shelter, housing) have been violated. They are more effective in challeng- ing physical violence than structural violence against women. Although this organizing problem exists locally, it is much more significant at the transnational level. Struggles opposing violence against women are nested within the context of women's class and sometimes ethnic struggles more often at the local than at the transnational level. In India struggles against marital

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 75 abuse often have emerged amidst social movements ofthe urban and rural pooL Women who protest the complicity ofthe statewith illicit liquor pro- ducers in Andhra Pradesh, for example, readilyappreciate the connections between violence against women and unemployment, state corruption, and a range of other issues. By contrast, when women come together in global forums as victims of gender violence, their identities as Bosnian, African American, or poor women may be muted. Women's groups most enthusiastically have supported transnational campaigns against sexual violence in countries where the state is repressive or indifferent and women's movements areweak. Conversely, transnationalism has provoked more distrust in places where women's movements have emerged, grown, and defined themselves independently of Western feminism. Indeed, one explanation for the differences between the positions of Valentine Moghadam (I996) and SoniaAlvarez (I998) is that they examine such different contexts. Moghadam's optimism about the role of transnational networks may be born of the pessimism she feels about the potential for women's movements in face of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. By contrast, Alvarez expresses concern about cooptation because historically women's movements in Latin America have been strong and closely tied to left-wing parties and human rights movements. It is precisely in situations where women's movements are grappling with how to organize more inclusively to overcome social hierarchies that transnational linkages maypose the greatest challenge. In such situations, transnationalism may deepen divisions between globalized elites, who be- long to transnational networks, and the large majority of women, who do not. The result may be a deradicalization of women's movements. Or there may be growing rifts between those who have access to international funding and those who do not. In this event, some activists become rmore mobile, while others remain stuck at the local level. The dependence of transnational activists on the internet, which requires specialized skills and technology, further accentuates class divisions among activists. With these questions in mind, I turn to India. Although there is a rich lit- erature on women's movements in India, little has been written on global- local linkages. India provides an ideal context in which to consider the interplay of local and global influences because it has a long history of women's activism, with its roots in anticolonial nationalism. At the same time Indian women's movements have a long history of interaction with the West.

76 AMRITA BASU WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS IN INDIA

The contemporary women's movement in India, also known as the autonomous women's movement, in many ways resembles women's movements in the United States and Western Europe. It is similarly composed primarily of educated, middle-class women who have focused on gender inequality. Indeed their central concern has been the question of violence againstwomen, which they have addressed in the context of the so-called dowry deaths (the murder of brides by in-laws and husbands seeking larger dowries after marriage), the rape of women in police custody, and a few incidents of sati (the burning of women on their husbands' funeral pyres). Given these commonalities, one might assume that Western feminism forms the crucible from which the Indian women's movement emerged. While global feminism has undoubtedly influenced the Indian women's movement, a similar point could be made about the U.S. women's movement, namely that it too has absorbed the influences of women's movements cross-nationally. Indeed U.S. feminism in the I99OS is deeply inter- twinedwith global developments.TheFeministMajoritycampaign against the Taleban in Afghanistan tells us as much about the current concerns of the U.S. women's movement as about the situation ofAfghan women. And yet, ultimately the women's movement in India, as in the United States, is more a product of national than global influences. The Indian women's movement emerged through its association with other important movements in India: the social reform movement of the late nineteenth century, the nationalist movement of the early to mid twen- tieth century, the civil liberties movement of the mid 197os, and the grass- roots struggles of the rural and urban poor from the late 1970S on. The social reformers who first sought to raise the age of marriage for girls, prohibit sati, permit widow remarriage, and educate women were, for the most part, male. These reforms identified within religion and the family the key deterrents to gender equality. The Nationalist movement that fol- lowed provided the first opportunity for women's mobilization. Whatever the blindspots of Nationalist politics, and there were many, it encouraged women's activism and laid the foundations for women's professional and political advancement. The contemporary women's movement can also be traced back to the civil liberties movement of the mid 1970S which emerged in the after- math ofthe state's flirtation with authoritarian rule. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency for two years (1975-77) because

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 77 she claimed there were threats to political stability. Opposition parties and democratic movements grew in jail cells and underground networks and finally found expression in the Janata party, which defeated the Con- gress party at the 1977 polls for the first time since Independence. Many key features of the women's movement-its commitment to civil rights and liberties, its opposition to unjust state practices, and its critique of male-dominated left-wing and democratic politics-emerged during this period. It would be wrong, however, to identify the contemporary irndian women's movement exclusively with the activities of urban middle-class women. The tendency to identify the roots of the Indian women's miove- ment in Western feminism makes precisely such an error. What is termed the Indian women's movement comprised a number of rural and urban movements which fostered women's activism and protested sexual inequality. This included such diverse groups or organizations as the Shra- mikSangathanamovementinDhulia district, Maharashtra, amovementof landless tribal laborers against the exploitation of Hindu landowners; the Self-Employed Women's Association in Gujarat, which organized women whoworked in different trades to protest low wages, poor working conditions, and lack of access to credit; and what became known as the Chipko movement in northern India, which opposed deforestation and the dis- placement of subsistence farming by commercial agriculture. The activities and demands of all ofthese movements were consistent with even the most stringent definitions offeminism: in all ofthese cases large numbers ofwomen played leadership roles and fought their exploitation as woinen. The segment of the Indian women's movement that was most influenced byWestern feminism was the autonomous, middle-class movement thatfocused on violence againstwomen, However, even herewe should not readily assume similarities. Women's movement activists have employed the term violence against women in describing diverse practices cross nationally, Keck and Sikkink (I998) argue, in order to assert the global dinaen- sions of a single problem.8 The further implication of their argument is that this inventive strategy masked considerable variation in the meanings of violence against women, The danger of naming such varied practices as battering, incest, individual and mass rape, and female genital mutilation alike, as violence against women, is that one fails to take notice of the very differentways inwhich activists interpret and resist these practices in different regions of the world. If the distinguishing feature of the U.S. women's movement has been

78 AMRITA BASU its immersion in cultural politics, the Indian women's movement is dis- tinguished by its commitment to the broad goal of transforming the state. This is particularly ironic in light of Uma Narayan's (I997) contention that violence against women is often assumed to be a religious and cultural matter in India and a political question in the United States. 9 The Indian women's movement demanded the passage of laws and the greater ac- countability of the police and the courts in deterring families from provid- ing dowries at the time of marriage and in punishing dowry-related rape and murders. Similarly in addressing the question of contraception and abortion, the women's movement sought to pressure the state to ban the use of the drug deproprovera and of amniocentesis for the purposes of abortion and sex selection. Compared to their U.S. counterparts, Indian activists were less interested in exploring alternatives to the family, estab- lishing battered women's shelters, addressing questions of sexual orientation and engaging in consciousness raising. Despite having significantly expanded its interests to a range of other issues, the Indian women's movement continues to focus on the state. It has worked closely with some parliamentarians and political parties to support the passage of a bill that would reserve 33 percent of Parliamen- tary seats for women. Support for this bill brings the women's movement into a closer relationship than ever with state institutions. If, as I have been arguing, the Indian wornen's movement should be located at the nerve center of Indian politics, why is the most damning charges against it that it is excessively Westernized? There are two bases to this charge, one discursive and the other financial. The discursive dimension centers on the charge that not only are the women who form the autonomous women's movement Westernized elites but that appeals to women's rights pit them againstwomen who are primarily defined by their religious, cultural, and community identities. One of the best examples of this argument concerns the sati of a woman named Roop Kanwar in Deorala district, Rajasthan, in September I987. The Rajput community, to whom Roop Kanwar belonged, alleged that the feminists who protested her death were disparaging their Rajput Hindu identity. A powerful pro-sati campaign developed to "defend" Hinduism from opponents of sati. Religious nationalists, including some activists from a militant Hindu nationalist party, the Shiv Sena, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), extended this campaign to target those women who supposedly threatened "traditional" values. The campaign around sati entailed a significant setback for the women's movement.10

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 79 The irony of this charge only became apparent when the BJP became a major proponent of the Uniform Civil Code, which proposed to supplant the religious laws that currently govern the family with secular Jaws, The BJP appropriated feminists' commitments to women's rights as individuals over their community identities in order to challenge Muslim family law, The charge that a commitment to individual rights and secular law is Western in inspiration cannot be sustained when Hindu nationalists and feminists alike put forward that position, Furthermore, debates about women's rights date back to the nineteenth-century Indian social reform movement. More important than the question of the origins of rights dis- course is the question of the purposes for which it is deployed. Funding by Northern donor organizations to NGOS, some of wvhich are connected to social movements, has also popularized the charge that the women's movement is highly westernized. In the past the question of whether NGos and voluntary agencies should accept foreign fundingwas extremely fraught, Some prominent leftists sharply condemned the com- promises that accepting foreign funding entailed. While social movernents continue to debate the ethics of accepting foreign funding, these debates have become less fraught. Vast amounts of money are now available for research, documentation, publication, and even organizing, Many donors allowrecipients morelatitudein determininghowfundswill be spentthan they did in the past. However, the very benefits that women's organizations derive from foreign funding also pose new challenges and problems, Transnational networks exacerbate tensions between those who acquire funds to attend conferences, undertake research projects, and build organizations and those who do not. The orientation of particular groups may be shaped by the imperatives of undertaking or completing particular projects, Most important, what might initially appear to be an extraordinary opportunity- to get paid to engage in activism-may actually become a liability when activists find their work becoming increasingly professionalized and bureaucratized. Some organizations actually have found it harder to sustain the commitment of their members when ample funds dry up than they did before those funds first became available. It would be naive to attribute tendencies toward professionalization and bureaucratization to foreign funding alone. The focus of the women's movement on transforming the state has been responsible for its increas- ing reliance on institutional and legislative means rather than on grass- roots mobilization. For different reasons and in differentways, state agen-

80 AMRITA BASU cies and international donors both seek to fund organizations that can deliver the goods, whether this takes the form of policy recommenda- tions, reports, or implementing development projects. The very success of women's organizations at achieving these tasks can divert them from movement activities. How shouldwe evaluate the growing exchanges amongwomen's movements transnationally' To what extent are transnational forms of activism overcoming the tensions that until recentlybedeviledwomen's movements across North-South lines' Are new networks, coalitions, and alliances addressing the key issues that women face transnationally? These questions are of more than academic relevance. The major funding organizations are committed to strengthening civil society both locally and cross- nationally and have identified women's movements as key to this endeavor. For women's movement activists in the South, the question of what kind of transnational alliances to forge and resources to accept is a key concern. Transnational networks, campaigns, and discourses seem to be most effective where support for a particular demand exists locally, but its expression is constrained where the state is either indifferent or repressive towards women; and where the violation involves physical violence and redress can be found by asserting women's civil and political rights. Ex- amples of such situations include the mass rape of Bosnian women, the Taleban's violence against Afghan women, and the recalled plight of East Asian comfort women during the Second World War. By contrast, transnational networks, campaigns, and discourses have been less effective in strengthening women's movements where strong local movements al- ready exist. Furthermore, activists derive less benefit from transnational connections when the state concedes, however partially, to their demands. Although transnational women's networks have grown considerably, there is a danger of both crediting and blaming them too much. In India, as in many other places, the principal location of the women's movements is the national rather than the transnational level. Its priority is to influence the state. Women's groups have formed vital roles in nation-building in Namibia, South Africa, and Nicaragua; in conflict resolution in war- torn Ireland, Israel, and Bosnia-Herzegovia; and in the democratization of authoritarian states in central Europe and Latin America."' In all contexts, transnational linkages are likely to be most effective when redress can be sought by assertingwomen's civil and political rights, rather than their economic well-being, and when transnational linlkages are not primarily designed to provide resources. The extent to which

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCAL/LOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 8I women's organizations in the South have come to depend on Northern fundinghas impeded the open-ended, two-wayflowofideas thathas been so critical to the development of feminism. Economic reliance on West- ern foundations fosters the ever-present possibility of dependence and resentment. These problems are quite independent of the intentions of Northern-based funding organizations, many ofwhich have become quite sensitive to the issues. Meanwhile, women's economic situation remains perilous. Women constitute 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty and two-thirds oftheworld's illiterate population. Accordingly, the Beijing platform for action called on non-governmentalwomen's organizations to strengthen antipoverty programs and improvewomen's health, education, and social services. It called on NGOS to take responsibility for ensuring women's full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance, ownership of land, and natural resources. Interestingly, the only recommendation that NGOs have seriously embraced is to provide women with greater access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions. Important as microcredit schemes are in allowing women a larger share of the pie, they do not contribute to rethinking the implications of macroeconomic policies for women.12 Transnational networks and activists seem to be most effective when the basis for mobilization is sexual victimization. Moreover, the victims who generate the most sympathy generallyarewomen from the South who experience genital mutilation, stoning, or public humiliation. Important as campaigns like the coalition against gender apartheid in Afghanistan may be, they draw sympathy partly because of pervasive anti-Arab sentiment in the U.S., which is gendered. Muslim women often are considered victims of the Islamic faith and of the misogyny of men of their community. The dissemination of pieces of mesh fabric to signify the burqua by the coalition against the Taleban certainly implies that the purdah is inevitably associated with the degradation of women, thereby inadvertently exacer- bating anti-Muslim sentiment. That there is an alternative to the choice between a religious politics which undermines women's rights and universalist, liberal feminism, which undermines women's religious and nationalist loyalties, is illus- trated by the network Women Living under Muslim Law (WLUML). Estab- lished in I985, it provides information, solidarity, and support both to women in Muslim countries and to Muslim women living elsewhere. The network was formed in response to the rise of religious "fundamental-

82 AMRITA BASU ist" movements and the attempt by certain states to institute family codes thatwould denywomen fulu citizenship rights. BymakingMuslim women both its objects of concern and its leaders, and by showing how Islam provides both sympathetic and adverse characterizations of women's rights, theWLUML avoids disparaging characterizations ofMuslimwomen.What the WLUML campaign suggests is that global visions need to be further infused with local realities, while appreciating that the local is not merely local, but infused with global influences.

NOTES I presented earlier versions of this paper at a conference on Globalization and 8 Area Studies at Hampshire College, October i, i99 and subsequently as the Jackie Pritzen lecture at Amherst College in April I999. I am grateful for most helpful discussions with Mary Katzenstein, Mark Kesselman, Ritu Menon, Bina Agarwal, SoniaAlvarez, Carol Cohn, and Valentine Moghadam.This paper would nothave been published but for the patience and perseverance ofSusanVan Dyne. I also received helpful comments from anonymous reviewers for Meridians. I. For a sampling of the debates on global civil society, see Ronnie Lipschutz, "Re- constructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society, " Millennium 2I: 3 (I992): 389-420; Paul Wapner, "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism andWorld Civic Politics," World Politics 47 (AprilI995): 3II-40; andMar- garet E. Keck and lKathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networlcs in International Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 2. Valentine M. Moghadam, "Feminist Networks North and South: DAWN, WIDE and WLUML," Journal of International Communication 3:1 (I996): III-25. 3. Sonia B. Alvarez,"Latin American Feminisms 'Go Global': Trends of the I99OS and Challenges for the New Millennium," in Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Revisionina Latin American Social Movements, edited by Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dag- nino, and Arturo Escobar (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, I998), and "Even Fidel Can't Change That": Translnational Feminist Advocacy Strategies and Cultural Politics in Latin America" (unpublished paper presented at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, October I997). Also see Sonia Alvarez's contri- bution to this issue. 4. Esther Ngan-ling Chow, "MaldngWaves, MovingMountains: Reflections on Bei- jing '95 and Beyond," Signs 22 (Autumn I996): I87. 5. Charlotte Bunch and Susana Fried, "Beijing '95: MovingWomen's Human Rights From Margin to Center, " Signs (Autumn I996): 203. 6. Chow, "MakingWaves, MovingMountains," I89. 7. Valentine E. Moghadam, "The Fourth World Conference on Women: Dissension and Consensus," Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars, 28 (Jan-March I996). 8. Keck and Silkink, Activists Beyond Borders, I82. 9. Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism (N.Y.: Routledge, I997), chap. 3. Io. Radha Kumar, "From Chipko To Sati: The Contemporary Indian Women's Move-

GLOBALIZATION OF THE LOCALILOCALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL 83 ment," in The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective, edited byAmrita Basu (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 82. II. Cynthia Cockburn, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict, (London: Zed, I998). I2. Cecelia Lynch points to the ineffectiveness of social movements in confronting globalization in "Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization," Alterna- tives 23 (I998): I49-73-

WORKS CITED Alvarez, Sonia E. I998. "Latin American Feminisms 'Go Global': Trends of the I990's and Challenges for the New Millenium." Cultures ofPoliticslPolitics of Cultures. Revisioning Latin American Social Movements, edited by Sonia B.Alvarez, Bvelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. Alvarez, Sonia E. 1997. "Even Fidel Can't Change That: Translnational Feminist Advocacy Strategies and Cultural Politics in Latin America." Unpublished paper presented at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, October, I997. Bunch, Charlotte, and Susana Fried. I996. "Bejing '95: Moving Women's Hurnan Rights From Margin to Center," Signs 22 (Autumn): 203, Chow, Esther Ngan-Ling, i996. "Making Waves, Moving Mountains: Reflections on Bejing '95 and Beyond." Signs 22 (Autumn): 187, I89. Cockburn, Cynthia. I998. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London: Zed. Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink. I998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networkcs in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Klumar, Radha. I995. "From Chipko to Sati: The Contemporary Indian Women's Movement." The Challenge ofLocal Feminisms: Women's Movements in Global Perspective, edited by Amrita Basu. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. Lipschutz, Ronnie. 1992. "Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Society." Millenium 2I:3: 389-420. Lynch, Cecilia. I998. "Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization." Alternatives 23: I49-I73. Moghadam, Valentine M. I996. "Feminists Networks North and South: DAWN, WIDE and WLUML." Journal of International Communication 3:I- 111-25. Moghadam, Valentine M. I996. "The Fourth World Conference on Women: Dissension and Consensus." Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars Jan-March: 28. Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminisms. New York: Routledge. Chapter 3. Wapner, Paul. I995. "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics." World Politics 47: 311-40.

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TITLE: Globalization of the Local/Localization of the Global Mapping Transnational Women’s Movements SOURCE: Meridians 1 no1 Aut 2000 WN: 0028908255004

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