Durba Mitra - A history of global feminisms

The history of global feminisms is deeply entrenched in the history of colonialism and the history of the rise and fall of slavery in the 19th century.

About Durba Mitra

"I’m the Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University.

I am a scholar of the history of sexuality and epistemology in South Asia and the comparative colonial and post-colonial world."

Origins of global feminism

The history of global feminisms is deeply entrenched in the history of colonialism and the history of the rise and fall of slavery in the 19th century. In the first place, the origins of women’s movements begin in the 19th century – although women fighting for citizenship rights, the right to vote, and the right to have a voice in political and social life, happens long before then. But it’s in the 19th century that we see the emergence of long-term, wide-scale political movements where women make a claim to the right to vote and the right to citizenship in a broader sense. These rights and ideas cannot be disassociated from the end of slavery and the rise of colonialism in many parts of the world.

Why should we think about the origins of global feminisms with these complicated histories? The abolition of slavery gives us the first and most comprehensive language about humanism, equity in humanistic imaginations, and how we can imagine each other as humans. In particular, it gives us a language about how we can think about those people who have been treated as less than human, especially women, as part of and critical to political and social movements.

Key Points

• The history of global feminisms is linked to the histories of slavery and colonialism.
• The systematic exclusion of women of colour shows that the category of “woman” is never just about women.
• The emergence of feminist coalitional politics in the 1970s continues to be influential today.