ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will deal with the political problem that contemporary women’s movements have faced as to how to defi ne and unite around common goals and demands in spite of basic differences of race, class, sexuality, nationality, among others. This political problem, sometimes seen as a more general problem of identity politics, has both a theoretical and a practical component. The theoretical question is this: if we reject essentialism and acknowledge that women have many power and privilege differences from each other which will enter into their political priorities and frame their interests, how can women, and their feminist male allies, unite across these differences to challenge patriarchal social structures that promote gender injustice? I consider several feminist answers to this question using different concepts of sisterhood and solidarity, including those of Robin Morgan and Chandra Mohanty, and defend my own view. I hold a view similar to that of bell hooks (1984), that there is a kind of solidarity which is transformational that can provide the base for global feminist coalitions across differences. Our view holds that political processes of debate, discussion, and action together can allow participants to reconstruct their interests so as to make them compatible.
