Kristen Ghodsee Feminism-By-Design: Emerging
Kristen Ghodsee Feminism-by-Design: Emerging Capitalisms, Cultural Feminism, and Women’s Nongovernmental Organizations in Postsocialist Eastern Europe Whatever happens in my part of the world, I see it in terms of class for- mation or the formation of income inequalities. I see gender and national sentiment as only helping these class formations.1 omen of color within the United States as well as women from de- veloping countries have attacked the hegemony of Western cultural W feminism. The idea of a global sisterhood erases important differ- ences in power and access to resources among women of varying races, ethnicities, and nationalities. These critiques, however, have often gone unheeded in the reconstruction projects of the former “second world.” Western feminists and their nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been employed by the multilateral and bilateral aid communities to help women in former socialist countries survive the process of economic trans- formation. At the same time, many local women throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have resisted the importation of cultural feminist ideologies. They have stubbornly refused to develop a collective gendered identity to advocate for their own rights. I wish to extend special thanks to Caren Kaplan, Inderpal Grewal, Pedro Noguera, and Irene Tinker, all of whom read and gave extensive comments on early drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Gail Kligman, Elissa Helms, Valentine Moghadam, Rebecca Do- linhow, Vangelis Stefatos, Anne Clifford, Jennifer Scanlon, and Christian Filipov for various forms of help with the manuscript. The research for this article was made possible by the generous support of the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission, the International Re- search and Exchanges Board, the Eastern European Studies Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the University of California, Berkeley, and Bowdoin Col- lege.
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