Mary Hawkesworth analyzes the global processes of economic change and assesses the local and national challenges associated with these changes. She does so in an engaging and accessible manner that includes a comprehensive discussion of feminist efforts to challenge the inequities that accompany capitalist economic globalization. In addition, she historically situates her discussion of globalization and feminist activism and provides illustrations taken from feminist studies of economic change and women's activism to give the reader a gendered understanding of both neoliberalism and international politics.
Chapter 1 outlines the strong correlation between globalization and feminization. Hawkesworth argues that the absence of a gendered lens contributes to many misconceptions, including the mistaken impression that “globalization is not and has never been a women's issue” (p. 3). She explains that globalization can be characterized by processes of feminization, including the increase in women's migration, employment in low-paid work and demands for women's unpaid labor as a consequence of privatization, and cutbacks in social provisioning through the welfare state.
Chapter 2 places global feminisms in an historical context that includes a rich tradition of international organizing and declarations asserting women's equal capacity to govern themselves as well as nation-states. Hawkesworth describes the limits of what she terms “imperial feminism,” which supported racist social reform and colonial efforts to civilize the poor and uneducated (p. 46). She concludes that racism and imperialism tainted the transnational feminist activism of white Western women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, women from dependent and colonized countries challenged the imperialism of white Western-based international feminist organizations and organized autonomously to fight for women's rights. She also points to the work of anticolonial and socialist feminist activists, who embraced different approaches to international organizing but whose feminism was frequently disparaged by male-dominated party politics, among other obstacles.
Chapter 3 describes the diverse strategies that feminist activists utilize to press for progressive social change, including both insider and outsider tactics. An example of outsider tactics is the development of organizations to advocate for the inclusion of issues like violence against women into national and transnational political agendas. Feminist activists also bring attention to their concerns through symbolic and discursive politics. Hawkesworth illustrates the first strategy with the nonviolent mobilization of Women in Black, initially organized by Israeli and Palestinian women to protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Their approach has been taken up by women in other parts of the world to advocate for peace and demonstrate solidarity across ethnic and other differences.
Hawkesworth illustrates the use of discursive politics with reference to the gendering of human rights language, for example, to argue for women's rights as human rights. However, she points out, feminists have expressed concern that the human rights framework is limited in that it gives primacy to political and civil rights while marginalizing demands for economic and social rights. Insider tactics include working for the establishment of women's policy agencies within national and international government organizations and increasing the number of women in decision-making positions. Insider strategies also include gender mainstreaming, which some feminist critics fear contributes to “change without transformation” (p. 100). Hawkesworth concludes this chapter with a discussion of the development of “feminist civil society,” which involves the elaboration of transnational feminist organizations and the development of deliberative strategies designed to broaden the representation of different women's perspectives in the design of innovative approaches for challenging women's unequal status and enhancing social justice.
Chapter 4 foregrounds feminist organizing inside and outside the United Nations. Hawkesworth highlights how the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) provides “a free space of feminist activism” (p. 112). One of the most notable accomplishments of CSW was passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 1967. As she emphasizes, women from Eastern Europe and the so-called global South were the first to press for the passage of a women's rights declaration. It took more than four years for CSW to develop a document that would have the symbolic support of UN member states. It took another 12 years for the UN to pass the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that includes mechanisms for implementation. Hawkesworth also emphasizes the importance of the UN World Conferences on Women for building support for CEDAW and for also creating feminist space for debate and mobilization of women across the globe. One of the most important debates that has taken place at these conferences, as well as in other transnational feminist sites involves non-Western feminists challenging the domination and privilege of Western feminists in defining the agenda for transnational activism. These debates have contributed to the rich feminist analysis that links economic and social rights with civil and political rights, as is evident in the Platform for Action developed at the Beijing World Conference on Women in 1995.
The final chapter challenges the presumed death of feminist activism and argues against a postfeminist approach that depoliticizes feminism. Hawkesworth worries that “[p]roclamations of feminism's death invite the public … to ritually bury those whose cause is race/gender/economic justice while placing injustice beyond remedy” (p. 159). Fortunately, feminist activism is alive and well in local, national, and transnational movements for social justice. For example, as she notes, “The courageous struggle for inclusion, empowerment, and justice that Afghani and Iraqi women are waging at considerable personal cost is emblematic of feminist struggles that continue all around the globe” (p. 168). Hawkesworth has written a book that both honors these struggles and provides food for thought about the many obstacles that stand in the way of a socially and economically just feminist future.
