Transnationalism and the politics of feminism essay

Transnationalism and the Politics of FeminismIn the book Against the Romance of Community, Miranda Joseph argues that nonprofits have very important relation to community. The nonprofits always represent the communities politically and speak for the communities for which they are metonyms; however, nonprofit are often defined through their relation to capital. Supposedly, nonprofits are not for profit because the capital that they accumulate cannot be distributed as profit but they are not also considered as noncapitalist and not anticapitalist (Joseph, 70). With the transformation of capitalism and communism in the society, the demands for financial and labor aspects increased.

The latest developments during that time aimed specifically to women, giving them education and healthcare which drew effort women into the market economy. On the other hand, this change produced a backlash among men who relied on women’s labor for their income and status. Women are preferable borrowers, relative to goals of “ modernization” and greater integration of the poor into a capitalist economy, precisely because of their greater community-mindedness, their greater sense of obligation on their families and communities.

So, while the modernization goals of microedit, especially the goal of empowering women within their families, undermine “ community”, the disciplinary strategies of microlending simultaneously depend on and reinforce, even as they transform, just such communal hierarchies (99). The constant foundation of nonprofit organization did not benefit the communities alone; in fact, it brought awakening to women to demand for more learning and proper recognition in the society. The motherly figure of women and their vulnerability serve as their key to have a change in terms of status, income, and recognition.

The need of the people for an institution or organization that would answer their specific needs have given women a chance to be involved in the societal issues and increase their knowledge and awareness regarding important matters that are present in the communities. The society started to allow them to participate in making decisions and taking actions on specific problems which reinforced the class hierarchies and paternalism. In the book Women’s Activism and Globalization, Manisha Desai explained how global capital and, structural adjustment programs, and international institutions have shaped women around the world. According to her, it was a slow process of changing the women’s agency, slowly making women educated and aware of their rights as human without neglecting the fact that they are mothers and wives in a culture oriented society. When one shifts the focus to women’s agency in the global political economy, we see a complex set of relations that are built on preexisting patriarchal, racial, and ethnic practices.

One also sees women creating new sites for action at the local, national, and transnational levels in which to enact new political, economic, and cultural practices. In this way, women activists offer alternatives to the seemingly inevitable course of global capita. Consequently, women’s agency in this era of globalization challenges the dominant framing of globalization and opens up new directions for both feminist theorizing and activism (Desai, 16). Most women who have become educated during that era aimed for social equality and parcipatory process; however, it has not been totally achieved even in this post modern world.

However, the women’s liberation in terms of slavery and oppression have long achieved by women since the communities demand for their participation to the societal problems. Women are still viewed as vulnerable and powerless but the fact that women learned to answer the social needs had a great impact on the position of women today.  Works CitedDesai, Manisha. Transnational Solidarity. In Women’s Activism and Globalization. USA: San Francisco state University. 2002. pp.

15-33Miranda, Joseph. Not for Profit? Voluntary Associations and the Willing Subject. In Against the Romance Community.

USA: University of Minnesota Press. 2002.  pp. 69-118