ABSTRACT
Western feminism has a problem with nationalism. To be more precise, it has a problem with the nationalism of people who are, or who consider themselves, oppressed, and who struggle, in whole communities, against that oppression. For feminists, not only does nationalism project an ideology which supercedes gender and which appeals for national unity against an outside oppressor, thereby subsuming women's interests into those of the 'nation' as a whole, this ideology has clearly been internalised by large numbers of women, evidenced by their mobilisation through it. The fact is that nationalism has been more successful in consistently mobilising hundreds of thousands of women into political activity in countries outside the imperial metropolitan centres than any movement based on 'feminist' demands. This unity of purpose between women and men in nationalist movements drew particular strength from two specific conditions within the shared experience of colonial domination- the place of religion on the one hand and the family on the other.
