Colonial-native feminist rhetoric aimed to train women as caregivers, not liberate them
Evidence
Qasim Amin, a French-educated, upper-middle class lawyer penned The Liberation of Women in 1899, which reflected and reproduced colonial arguments. Amin argued that Muslim societies had to abandon their backward ways and follow the Western path to civilization and success. Egyptian women’s liberation lay in following the “noble duty” that mothers in “advanced societies” assumed, which was to raise good sons. Liberation meant liberation from Islam, so that Muslim women could be turned into good, docile, Victorian mothers. Amin’s book was not about the rights of Egyptian women or European women, but about making them better adjuncts and caregivers to men. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 148
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Western feminism’s emancipatory desire is complicit with colonial power — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 194; Imperial feminism weaponizes women’s rights rhetoric to justify colonial rule without improving women’s conditions — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 157; Colonial training schemes aimed to shape sentiments and restrict desires (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Colonial training schemes aimed to shape sentiments and restrict desires
#expands(0.85) - Imperial feminism weaponizes women’s rights rhetoric to justify colonial rule without improving women’s conditions
#complicates(0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 157 - Colonial feminism used saving Muslim women to justify imperialism
#corroborates(0.80) - Feminist rhetoric can function as a tool of imperial and nationalist agendas
#expands(0.80) - Western feminism’s emancipatory desire is complicit with colonial power
#expands(0.75) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 194 - Colonial pressures shaped Caribbean gender relations and blocked feminism as a spiritual force
#corroborates(0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 353 - Reading Muslim women’s plight as proof of Islamic depravity traces to colonial feminism
#expands(0.70) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209 - Welfarist colonial policy substituted social justice rhetoric for political independence
#corroborates(0.70) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 242