Abstract

SANTOS, Cecília MacDowell. Beyond «helping» or «not caring about» them: Teaching women in developing countries at an american university. Ex aequo [online]. 2008, n.17, pp.89-105. ISSN 0874-5560.

This essay is a reflection on the challenges for internationalizing the Women’s Studies curriculum in the United States. It draws on my experience teaching «Women in Developing Countries» at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit university with the stated mission of promoting social justice from a global perspective. One of the major challenges facing this type of course is the risk of reinforcing ethnocentrism and essentialism by reproducing what Chandra Mohanty calls the «Third World difference». Building on Mohanty’s call for a«noncolonizing feminist solidarity across borders» and using Peter Waterman’s typology of forms of solidarity, the essay discusses students’ approaches to «women in developing countries» and the forms of solidarity assumed or implicitly promoted by the theories on women/gender and development/globalization covered in the course.

Keywords : women and development; development; feminist theory; feminist and post-colonial solidarity; international solidarity.

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