ABSTRACT

Is it possible to speak of ‘feminist issues in the South’ without reductions to stereotyping? Does such a title suggest that these are separate and distinct from what one might presume to be feminist issues in the North? Certainly any number of issues spring immediately to mind: women’s human rights; access to equitably paid work and continuing non-recognition of unwaged work; violence; militarization; conflict resolution; reproductive health and rights; the effects of HIV/AIDS; migration; access to land, education, housing and other services; structural adjustment policies. This chapter is not, however, a ‘list’ of feminist issues (any list risks omissions and generalizations, and what is a pressing matter in one site will not be in another). Instead, it considers

some of the epistemological questions at stake in such a discussion, since it is very much bound up in questions of representation.