ABSTRACT
Women’s Studies began with other unifying themes, and one of them was the common idea that women share an identity as women. In the early days of second wave feminism the idea was that anywhere one found a woman, one found a sister. Women shared the same life stories of oppression; they all operated on the margins; they symbolized madness in opposition to men’s rationality; they were, as Simone de Beauvoir put it, a collective and individual “Other.” There is thus in many writings about women the idea that they are essentially alike, whether because they are intellectually inferior, automatically frivolous or nurturing, or often nobler than men because of a shared womanly virtue. At the beginning of the women’s movement and indeed one of the common denominators of the women’s movement is the idea that they together have some special quality that unites them all as women. As one Indian feminist said in the 1930s, women “were all sisters under the sari” (Chaudhuri 2004: 130). Belief in the commonality and lack of individuality of women
was also an idea shared by the culture as a whole and promoted by male writers over the centuries. That women were all the same in their inferiority was and remains a widely held belief. They simply lacked the rich individuality and wide-ranging capacities of men. The women’s movement, it is now seen, merely reversed the evaluation,
making it positive. Feminists pointed to women’s sameness as worthy mothers of citizens, their unity in being oppressed, and their innate value and even virtue. Women were all sisters, and they were all good. Soon after the founding of the most recent women’s movement, however, the idea of “difference” as opposed to an essential unity or sameness offered a challenge. Indeed, studies have made the idea of difference a pivotal idea in Women’s Studies. But what is difference and how does difference operate? The feminist theorist Donna Haraway gives one evalutation: “Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. Epistemology is about knowing the difference” (Haraway 1990: 223). Often difference can be the foundation for domination-let’s say of women by men, of blacks by whites, of local peoples by colonizers, of the physically weak by the strong, of the rich by the poor, and so on. Others have come to see a recognition of difference as key to building coalitions across various interest groups. This chapter sorts out the many forms of difference as they have shaped Women’s Studies. Scholars, feminists, and activists began dissenting from the initial
belief in the innate similarities that made up a single “womanhood.” Did lesbians have the same interests as straight women? Were rich and working-class women really sisters? In the classroom, were students supposed to feel a commonality with their teachers? It was asked whether the Maori of New Zealand shared a bond with women of European descent, given the oppression of local people. Thus many came to see that differences of all kinds should be emphasizing the importance of women as subject matter. Differences among all women, past and present, in varying parts of the world, in all walks of life, of varying races, ethnicities, and social status needed to be highlighted. The unity once attributed to women as a sex and gender is now repeatedly contested. Difference creates the rich and the poor, the gay and the straight, the raced and the unraced. The issue of difference is one that provokes questioning and that has led to some of the most important innovations not only in thinking about women but in thinking about society, the economy, and politics more generally. Many Women’s Studies thinkers and activists in newly independent
countries have little tolerance for the concept of difference, a major protest coming from women in India. They believe that the focus on difference gives frivolous attention to “identity,” “personality,”
and other cultural issues when in fact there are large political and economic structures governing and oppressing the lives of women and men alike that need analysis. Paying attention to shades of difference is a luxury women in emerging countries needing solidarity with men can’t afford. We consider this critique at greater length to show both that considering difference raises controversy and that it has also changed Women’s Studies and the way many disciplines think about their subject matter. Like interdisciplinarity, the concept of difference has provided a totally new perspective from which to study human experience. It is now at the heart of much Women’s Studies thinking, including the thinking of its critics.
