ABSTRACT
In the past three or four decades, an enormous literature – overwhelmingly feminist in orientation – has emerged on the subject of “gender.”1 Originally concentrated upon women of the industrialized West, it gradually expanded to recognize and include the contributions of women of the global South. In this process of “worlding women,”2 the literature grew increasingly skeptical of generalizations about women as a global class, and more attuned to how other variables (notably race and social status) shaped women’s experiences worldwide.
